Alert through western Algarve after 40-year-old woman raped in Barão de S. João

An alert is going out over social media today following the rape of a 40-year-old woman in rural Barão de S. João, near Lagos, last night. The woman, who is currently being supported and has been taken for tests in hospital, has described her attacker as ‘white, very dirty, driving a white van’. The man speaks Portuguese with a foreign accent. He is large-bodied, with a shaved head: very possibly from Eastern Europe. The van however is particularly distinctive in that it has a design, or painting, of flowers/ leaves ‘much like creepers’, over the bodywork, and is long-wheel-based, like a camper. The woman’s ordeal began just after midnight as she was leaving a restaurant where she works. She was not ‘released’ by her attacker until early this morning, when she was thrown from the van in the area in the village close to the cemetery.