A Portuguese court sentenced six men to jail yesterday for sexually abusing dozens of children at a state-run care home and procuring minors to be raped at orgies, at the end of a marathon abuse trial.
The convicts included a star television presenter, a former ambassador, a doctor, a lawyer and a former administrator at the Casa Pia children’s home in Lisbon, who each received sentences of between five and seven years.
The heaviest sentence, 18 years, went to Carlos Silvino, a former driver and gardener at the home and the only defendant to have pleaded guilty to more than 600 cases of sex abuse and procurement of minors for prostitution.
A seventh defendant, the woman owner of a house where sex abuse sessions were said to have taken place, was acquitted after the longest running trial in Portuguese history, which opened in November 2004.
Prosecutors had called for minimum sentences of five years in the mass abuse case, which has deeply shocked Portugal.
In their verdict, the judges detailed dozens of cases of sex abuse and procuring minors for clients, committed against 32 children at the Casa Pia children’s home, which they considered to have been proven.
Six of the 32 alleged victims were in the packed courtroom to hear the judgment, which reportedly reached several thousand pages and took several hours to read out.
All six punched the air in sign of victory, smiling broadly with relief as the verdict was read out.
“We are all very happy,” one of them, Bernardo Teixeira, told reporters outside the courtroom. “At long last we can say that the paedophiles have been convicted.”
“I hope this day will allow us to show the country that the boys have told the truth from the start,” Pedro Namora, a former Casa Pia resident now in his forties who suffered sexual abuse, said before the session began.
The court heard from nearly a thousand witnesses and experts, and the trial went on for so long that none of the defendants was in detention, the legal limit for pre-trial custody having expired.
The Casa Pia scandal broke in November 2002 when an inmate of the home for youngsters in difficult circumstances told the press of being raped by Silvino.
Other residents and former residents came forward to tell of rapes and “special evenings.”
Aside from Silvino, the defendants had consistently claimed their innocence, and said before yesterday’s verdict that they would continue to fight the charges no matter what the verdict. A number of other media and political figures have also been investigated and cleared in the case.
In March 2006, a court ordered the Portuguese government to pay two million euros in compensation to 44 former Casa Pia residents, saying it had failed in its duty to protect the children.