Five armed GNR agents stormed the house of a mother whose 12-year-old daughter has been missing school because she doesn’t like wearing a face-mask.
Paula Pinto has been described in a social services report as aggressive, explains tabloid Correio da Manhã which has carried stills of the video the distraught woman made as the police forcibly removed her daughter Leonor from her apartment.
The GNR was backed by a court order, explains the paper.
The judge’s instructions were very clear: “With resort to forced entry if necessary” stated the process for the “promotion and protection” of 12-year-old Leonor who has now been placed in the custody of her paternal grandparents for the next two months.
Paula Pinto’s video presented the situation very differently. “They are kidnapping my daughter”, she can be heard screaming as she filmed Leonor’s removal.
The mother’s version of this story is that Leonor “refused to wear a mask at school”. She told her mother she felt it was causing her to get “a lot of headaches”.
Paulo Pinto took Leonor to a doctor, who wrote out an official ‘atestado’ (sick note).
The school however appears to have called the Commission for Child Protection, alleging Paula Pinto was keeping Leonor away from school “because she didn’t agree with the use of the mask”.
This is the point where Social Services became involved, says CM. A report was compiled which accused the mother of being a liar.
The report referred to Paula Pinto having said that her daughter “did not have to support a lie invented by adults”.
Says CM, Paula Pinto alleges it was the school that has prohibited her daughter from studying, and that all entities discounted the doctor’s ‘atestado’.
Both mother and daughter have answered questions at their local courthouse (the Tribunal de Vila Pouca de Aguiar) “but their statements were not believed”, says CM.
Thus the case ended with the decision to remove the child from the mother.
Says the paper, the GNR, the school (name not given), Social Services and the Commission for Child Protection have all refused to comment.
