Former Portuguese official hands files to police in paedophilia affair

RDP Antena 1 radio, Lisbon

[Presenter] The Attorney-General's Office has announced in a communique that in 1982 the Judiciary Police received a complaint of alleged paedophile acts at Casa Pia in Lisbon, but the case was shelved in 1987. More than six years later, in 1993, the indictments were rendered void.

Yesterday Teresa Costa Macedo handed over to the Judiciary Police [PJ] the two reports on this case, those she already had when she was secretary of state for the family.

[Reporter] The reports handed in by Teresa Costa Macedo are those which started the process 20 years ago, a process which became void in 1993. Eleven years passed between the initial warnings by the then head of Casa Pia to the then secretary of state and the case being dropped. The reports led to a complaint being filed with the fourth PJ brigade. The Cascais court was assigned the case and in 1987, five years after the warnings, the court shelved the case for lack of evidence. The case would be reopened if new and better evidence was received - but this never happened...

In the communique the Attorney-General's Office explains that the investigation in this case took four years - between the filing of the complaint and the decision to shelve the case - in that time an ordinance was issued stating that shelved cases were to be nullified. This is what happened to this case in 1993, six years after the court shelved it.