Safe home in Northern Ireland, the couple whose allegedly drunken holiday antics in Albufeira led to their baby daughter being removed by the authorities last week claim the whole story was “ludicrous downright lies”.
Talking to the Daily Mail, James Moreland and Lee-Ann O’Donoghue further allege police brutality and say they lost 500 pounds during their altercations with police.
Officers “yanked” Moreland’s arms up behind him until he screamed, said the 29-year-old father, adding: “They checked my wallet for ID and when I got home, I saw that all of our spending money had gone.”
Claiming the whole incident was the result of “The Madeleine Effect”, the couple vehemently deny eye-witness reports from Hotel Paraíso that they were drunk.
They also deny that they had hurled their daughter into the hotel swimming pool, after ‘sedating’ her.
The sedation claims – mentioned in Correio da Manhã newspaper – may have been related to the discovery of a bottle of Calpol in the couple’s Albufeira hotel room.
“‘The police saw the bottle and said that it was an ‘illegal drug’ in Portugal,” the child’s mother told the Mail.
Both she and her partner described how they were handcuffed after police arrived to remove their daughter.
O’Donaghue was handcuffed after protesting about the needles hospital staff were using to test her daughter for drugs, and Moreland was handcuffed after getting “angry and starting to swear”.
“A group of about seven policemen started hitting me, they put me in handcuffs and threw me on the floor in the back of a police car,” Moreland told the Daily Mail.
Needless to say, neither the police nor witnesses in Portugal appear to corroborate the couple’s claims.
A spokesman for the GNR said they could not comment on the (DM) news report and the couple’s accusations.
“We can, however, confirm that the GNR were called to the scene because hotel staff and guests – both Portuguese and foreign – feared the child was at risk,” said the spokesman.
“We called the INEM ambulance because the child required medical treatment and informed the Public Prosecutor about the situation.
“Following this procedure, a decision was taken by the latter that the child should be removed from the parents until further assessment of the case.
“We also confirm that the couple was not arrested. But we won’t make any further comments.”
TV reports on the couple’s return to Belfast yesterday featured the hotel manager in Albufeira saying police had been called twice to his hotel as a result of the parents’ behaviour – once to take the child to hospital, and the second time because the child’s father had started to “cause trouble”.
As to the ‘Madeleine Effect’, this is the term used allegedly by police.
Said 34-year-old O’Donaghue: “The police told us they had acted like they did, that they had been heavy-handed, because of the Madeleine McCann effect. They said the case had been very bad for them and that they had to be very careful when it came to the welfare of British children on holiday.”
Welfare of all children – on holiday or otherwise – came under the spotlight as a result of this case with children’s rights campaigner Dr Luís Villas Boas saying it is high time stricter parental controls were put in place on a pan-European level.
“In England, a story like this would have been dealt with far more severely than it appears to have been dealt with in Portugal,” he told The Resident.
“Laws have to be put in place to stop parents treating children anyway they like. I am not aware of the full details of this case, but it smells bad.”
