PJ police in Portimão are actively trying to trace a 15-year-old teenage runaway whose family believe may have fallen into the hands of internet pedophiles.
Sofia Gil already has a complicated past, explain reports.
She is ‘hooked on social media’ and has been supremely rebellious.
Following a stint in a youth institution in Lisbon, where she grew up, her mother moved with her to the Algarve – the idea being to remove the teenager from ‘former contacts’.
This doesn’t seem to have worked, explained Gameiro Fernandes, the lawyer hired by Sofia’s mother Rosa Laranjeira.
Ms Laranjeiro’s suspicions that things were unravelling led her to seizing her daughter’s phone, where she is understood to have found messages of a sexual nature exchanged with men, and a photograph of her daughter posted on a porno site.
The discover led to another ‘mother and daughter’ showdown, after which the traumatised youngster took pills.
She then appears to have ‘taken advantage’ of a family trip back ‘home’ to Amadora to go AWOL.
That was three weeks ago, and as Gameiro Fernandes has lamented the time it has taken for authorities to ‘get on the case’ mean that hopes of ‘saving’ Sofia are waning.
“If they had acted at the time (March 23, the day Sofia went missing) the contacts that existed (on the teen’s phone) could have been exploited. Maybe she could have been found in time. Now, we are beginning to doubt (this will be possible)”, he told noticiasaominuto.
The drama appears only to have been taken up by national media this week, which all cite Sofia’s ‘rebellious nature’ and the apparent attempts by her mother to control it.
Tabloid Correio da Manhã suggests that both mother and Sofia’s step-father are now due to be heard by PJ police.
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