Ground-breaking revelations which continue this (Monday) evening on TVI as part of the series entitled “Love you Mom” have resulted in the return of at least two children to a Portuguese mother living in the UK.
The youngsters were removed from their mother after her five-year-old complained she had tweaked his ear, reports the station.
She told reporters that she was deemed “harmful” to her children, and lost them both overnight.
Represented by a lawyer who “did absolutely nothing”, the situation only changed following the arrival in UK of a team of Portuguese lawyers, agreeing to work pro-bono to help nationals caught out by a system they cannot understand (click here).
Talking to TVI, Pedro Proença – the lawyer leading this fight – said the case was “just another example of a Portuguese mother fighting without support” in the UK.
She was in imminent danger of losing her children forever, he said, when the lawyers’ group arrived to help, and lodged a simple request through the courts.
This was all that was needed, he explained, for authorities in Britain to realise the woman was legally-backed. Her children were shortly afterwards returned to her.
“This mother had been supported by a lawyer from British social services who did absolutely nothing”, Proença added.
Elsewhere, Portuguese mother Marília told the station how she had been accused of causing her baby’s death, when medical reports showed clearly that he had been affected by epileptic seizures and ‘cerebral swelling’.
TVI’s campaign to fight for Portuguese children “taken” by British social services follows numerous stories that have peppered the press since 2014 when five children were forcibly removed from their Portuguese parents on the basis of a story later retracted by the eldest child (click here).
The Pedro children remain to this day in foster care, their parents “forbidden to talk to the press”.
