Having gone public last year over the fact that parental abductions had leapt 50% since 2012, Patrícia Cipriano of APCD (the association for missing children) revealed this week that numbers are still rising – and legal delays are among the worst stumbling blocks in trying to rescue wrongfully-taken children.
A perfect example is the custody case last week in Faro’s family court over the future of half-Portuguese Ellie Kelly Silva whose father Filipe Silva still faces prosecution for his daughter’s seven-month-long abduction in 2012.
In a bizarre legal twist, the custody case was heard before Silva’s own trial for what is ostensibly a crime.
As the Resident reported last week, however, the public prosecutor summed up saying that Ellie should live with her mother, stepfather and brothers and sisters in Ireland. The decision took over six years in coming.
“There’s a huge sluggishness in legal cases like this,” Patrícia Cipriano told Correio da Manhã. “We are trying to recover a child in Spain and two in Brazil at the moment.”
In 2013, the number of parents calling on APCD for help reached 1,634, said Cipriano.
