©Annie Spratt via Unsplash
The two French brothers aged 4 and 5 who were abandoned in Portugal last week have been returned to France. The court of Setúbal, in southwestern Portugal, announced this.
The court had announced on Tuesday that the little brothers would be taken care of by the social services of Colmar, the French city where they lived with their mother. The children returned safely to their homeland today. Portugal has been holding the 41-year-old mother and her 55-year-old partner since Saturday. The woman is accused of child neglect. Her partner also faces charges of aggravated assault on one of the young boys. Social services will now take over the care of the children until a further court decision.
Left blindfolded on abandoned country road
At first, the children thought their parents were playing a game with them. Unfortunately, it was deadly serious. The French couple left their 4-year-old and 5-year-old sons all alone and blindfolded on a deserted country road in the Portuguese countryside.
A bewildered Portuguese local resident found the children in a panic near the village of Monte Novo do Sul, south of Lisbon. "I saw them running toward me screaming and crying," the man told local media. "I quickly realized that they had been deliberately left behind: they were carrying backpacks containing clean clothes, a packet of cookies, two pieces of fruit and a bottle of water." The man took the children to the local police station.
They then told Portuguese police how their parents had taken them and dumped them. "They were given a blindfold, and then had to go find something in the forest. At first they thought it was a game, but it soon became clear that they had been abandoned by their parents," local authorities said.
Mother and partner arrested at cafe
The children were medically and psychologically examined under the supervision of youth services and then transferred to the French embassy in Lisbon. The biological father of the abandoned children has since reported to Portuguese police. His ex-wife allegedly fled France with their children; the woman and her new partner allegedly left the children behind. The biological father has already filed charges in France for kidnapping his children.
What is the evidence now? The French brothers had already been reported missing by their father on May 11. Eight days later they were found in Portugal, by the side of the road.
The mother was picked up with her partner at a café in the Portuguese pilgrimage town of Fátima, some 180 kilometers from where she had left her sons.
According to CNN Portugal, when police arrived, the couple had already spent "several hours" on the café's terrace, with their (ditched) car parked next to the business. They were detained by members of the National Republican Guard (GNR) and are suspected of domestic violence, neglect and abandonment.
©Annie Spratt via Unsplash - illustration image of a person with a flashlight in a forest