Dear Editor,
It was very good to read that the stepfather of Bruna Nunes, the poor girl from the borough of Aljezur murdered so terribly over two years ago, has finally been arrested and extradited to Portugal for trial. But it leaves us all wondering how much longer this means it will take to effect the same kind of development in the case of 15-year-old Rodrigo Lapa, the boy killed in Portimão apparently by another so called ‘stepfather’ who appears to have taken refuge in his home country which conveniently does not have an extradition agreement with Portugal.
The anniversary of Rodrigo Lapa’s horrible death is about to come round. He does not have the same kind of throngs of people seeking justice that rail over social media every day for little Madeleine McCann, but his haunting expression is one that no one who followed this story can forget.
Rodrigo had many dedicated friends who have been pushing for action in this case, but so far very little appears to have been done, and the friends, most of them very young, are impelled by force of circumstance to channel their energies onto constructing their own lives.
I cannot help but feel that if Portugal’s media really took up the case when the anniversary comes round, and asked inconvenient questions as to why the promised PJ letter rogatory has not been answered by authorities in Brazil, something finally might be achieved.
The deaths of young people full of hopes and dreams is just too painful for us to roll over and forget.
Name and address withheld
