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Rui Pedro Teixeira Mendonça
Rui Pedro Teixeira Mendonça (born 28 January 1987) is a Portuguese child who went missing on 4 March 1998 in Lousada, northern Portugal. Mendonça was 11 years old and riding his bicycle outside near his home when he disappeared. The subsequent police investigation was criticized by both the media and by the missing boy's family. Mendonça's whereabouts remain unknown, and he was declared legally dead in 2019.[1][2][3][4] HistoryDisappearanceOn 4 March 1998, at around 2:00 PM, Mendonça took his bicycle and cycled to his mother's workplace, located near the family home. He had asked his mother for permission to spend the afternoon riding in a car "with his friend Afonso" (Afonso Dias), a 22-year-old lorry driver. Mendonça's mother denied the request, and told him to go play in an abandoned lot outside her office.[5][6][7] SightingsThe investigation into the child's disappearance was slow to commence and soon slowed down further due to the lack of credible leads.[3] Nevertheless, the case had sparked public interest to a degree that sightings of Mendonça were numerous over the years since his disappearance. A prostitute, Alcina Dias, confirmed that Dias had taken Mendonça to see her on the day he disappeared. Dias allegedly drove up to see her in his car and asked her if she was working. When she assented, he offered to pay her to have sex with Mendonça. Alcina Dias said that Mendonça was extremely nervous and crying by the time he exited the vehicle, reportedly saying that Dias had forced him to meet her.[3] Alcina Dias added that she tried to calm the boy down and asked him if his mother knew he was there, to which the boy replied no. Mendonça then allegedly drove off in Dias' vehicle. Alcina Dias allegedly tried to give her deposition to the authorities, but could never identify Dias by name. In 2011, she finally identified him in a court of law.[8][9][10] In April 1998, the political commentator Nuno Rogeiro traveled to Disneyland Paris with his family. During the trip, the Rogeiro family snapped several photographs whilst on a ride; one of these photos depicts a boy sitting behind the family who reportedly looks remarkably like Mendonça.[3] Sitting next to the boy was a man in his 40s wearing a red jacket. The Portuguese police did confiscate the photographs for further analysis, but no further progress was made regarding this sighting.[11] On 1 September 1998, 13 police forces raided alleged members of an international child pornography ring known as the Wonderland Club. The operation was code-named Operation Cathedral and resulted in the confiscation of 750,000 images and videos depicting 1,263 different children. Mendonça was among the few children (16 only) that could be identified.[3] However, his whereabouts remain unknown. Police suspect that he was murdered by his abductors after being abused on camera for other members of the paedophile ring.[12][13] In Switzerland, a boy was heard saying in a restaurant in 2007: "I was also kidnapped. I'm from Famalicão and for me no one is looking." Police informed the family saying that the lead wasn't consistent. It was also highlighted that the boy could have been Rui Pereira, that disappeared two days before Rui Pedro.[14] InvestigationMendonça's tutor called his parents because the child had not turned up for his 5:00 PM lesson, and they quickly initiated a search for him.[3] Because Mendonça had told his mother that he was planning to meet up with his friend Dias, the police sought him for questioning. Dias was in an emotional state while being questioned, and simply replied that he did not know the boy's whereabouts, but that the police "should close the borders".[5] Dias was interrogated by the police. Mendonça's cousin, João André Mendonça, recounted to the police that he, Mendonça and Dias had had a conversation where Dias had invited them to go meet up with a prostitute.[15] The cousin said he had not joined Mendonça and Dias that afternoon because his mother would not let him leave the house. The police considered the possibility of kidnapping, slavery, homicide and suicide.[16] TrialDias' trial started on November 2011. Alcina Dias identified him in court.[8] On 3 October 2014, Dias, was sentenced to three years in jail for the kidnapping of Mendonça during the afternoon of his disappearance. On 18 March 2015, Dias was led to jail by his lawyer, after his arrest warrant had been issued. His sentence was reduced to two years for good behavior. On 29 March 2017, Dias was released.[17] Criticism and controversiesMendonça's defenseFilomena Teixeira said that police didn't investigate members of the family, neighbors and Dias' car, in which witnesses said they saw Mendonça go into.[18] She also said she was sexually harassed by one of the investigators.[19]
Teixeira called hospitals, traveled abroad many times, in one of those times she had to be hospitalized after seeing pedophilic material, searching for a lead of a boy in Switzerland.[21] When failures in the investigation were highlighted in court, Teixeira said "it served to prove that I was saying the truth. For 13 years, I got called crazy, and now, after all this time, the come to tell me I was right: after all, I wasn't crazy, I was right. (...) I was said that they were going the wrong way, that they weren't looking, that they weren't doing anything..."[22] Ricardo Sá Fernandes said that "we were shocked with what was said in court today, we were aware since the first moment that the inspectors knew about the prostitute Alcina Dias. They never heard her formally and justified it as forgetfulness." Manuel Mendonça believed that Dias could say something about Mendonça when in jail, since he got to choose and be put in a jail that looked like an "hotel" (when compared to the others).[21] Journalistic opinions and investigationsThrough the years, Ana Leal's[23] investigative journalism in TVI brought new leads to Mendonça's case, always before the police. She followed leads from the Benidorm video, information from various pedophile photos from Holland and Switzerland. According to the journalist "it only has one explanation: negligence from the many teams of the Judiciary Police (...) There wasn't a political desire (..) They got followed TVI's investigations (...) it was annoying for TVI to be ahead (...) shame to a PJ team."[24] In two photos presented in the PJ (Judiciary Police) process for a SIC report, the inspector Luís Bordadágua said that it was possible to see resemblances with Mendonça in the archives found with pedophiles. The reconnaissance was hindered due to the boy having his eyes shut in one of the photos.[25] A Public Ministry agent alleged that the leads were fake[26] and the PJ said later that they didn't have leads to follow such a line of investigation.[27] In another photo that Ana Leal had access to in 2002 and gave to the judiciary power, it's possible to see a gagged boy with signs of torture that the family recognized as Mendonça. With the appearance of these leads, Ricardo Sá Fernandes questioned the "worrying social passivity of the authorities of the European Union to destroy the international pedophile ring" and the "lack of capacity for investigation, mainly at a European level". Ana Leal got a hold of the photo from a computer of a pedophile that was killed and questioned the fact that fourteen pedophiles were identified in the series of 60 thousand photos, however the investigations didn't move forward. At the time, the suspect was arrested temporarily.[28] When the photo of the supposed Mendonça was presented to the media in October 2002, Sá Fernandes hadn't been able to access the PJ process for a month. That PJ attitude made the Mendonça family question what was actually happening.[29] According to an investigation published by the Correio da Manhã in May 2019, the Judiciary Police () "uses photos and secrets to deflect false information and photos of Rui Pedro". According to the Portuguese police, forensics proved that it wasn't Mendonça in the photos. The Benidorm video wasn't referenced.[30] When Dias was accused for the first time and much time after the beginning of the process, the journalist Hernâni Carvalho critiqued in many points the State's and police work:
The journalist also critiqued the law for having allowed for Mendonça's grandfather to have the role that the Portuguese State had spending money on the Madeleine McCann case. However, Mendonça's grandfather spent his fortune falling for all kinds of scams while searching for the boy. He also questioned the PJ's high rate of success in solving missing children cases, but this one went through three teams of investigation without success.[31] In another interview, he said that the Portuguese State should be on the defendant's bench in Dias' trial, for having left in the open who was, or were the defendants through the fourteen years, which could have affected the testimony of the witnesses in the court.[32] Afonso DiasIn one of the Dias' hearings, it was brought up that the defendant came from a poor family, was 22 and played with an 11 year old child at the time of the disappearance.[33] It was also brought up that the defendant was meeting up with Mendonça in private as Mendonça's parents had forbidden it, after Dias came back changed from the army and as a deserter.[33] Manuel Mendonça said that he and the neighbors noticed that Dias' financial resources increased after the boy's disappearance and that the first PJ team didn't believe the information received from both the prostitute and the family.[34] Dias was an unhygienic person, however in the day of the disappearance he took two baths. When Manuel Mendonça got to the PJ they said it wasn't possible to extract anything from the suspect's clothes.[21][35] Manuel Mendonça also said that Dias laughed while talking to Filomena Teixeira. He also said that the defendant's lawyer and family didn't want to help to find Mendonça.[21] The chief-inspector Henrique Noronha said in 2011 that in the reconstitution there was "a hiatus of time that we couldn't figure out (...) We were a bit perplexed [when Afonso Dias said that he] stood in a place looking at nothing and burning the midnight". The inspector also said that he didn't understand the reason of not following the lead of Alcina Dias.[36] Hélder Silva, that was one of the five children that saw Mendonça for the last time, told the Correio da Manhã that Dias "Was very weird. Afonso knew Rui Pedro's whole life, where he was, who he was with, what he would do the next day. In the two weeks prior to the disappearance he created a total obsession with him, he didn't leave him alone". After speaking against Dias, Silva said that he and the other witnesses were scared and didn't receive police protection.[37] In 2011, João André Mendonça that when he was giving his testimony in GNR (Republican National Guard) in 1998, Dias asked him to "not open his mouth" and that "the authorities should close the borders (...) Maybe they still have time".[15] In 2012, Paulo Gomes, Dias' lawyer, declared that "Mister Afonso isn't talking because his freedom is on the line".[38] In the same year Dias said that he was going to talk about what happened with Rui Pedro, but he would do it outside of the courtroom.[38] In an interview to Grande Revista of RTP in 2012, he said that he does not talk more because of all the help he gave to authorities that only served for his prosecution thirteen years later. When questioned about Rui Pedro he answered after a long silence: "As I see it... I don't know... three weeks after another kid went missing in Famalicão. Either it was a kidnapping or he fell in a well... I don't know".[39] Later (in 2018), he said he did not have a theory on what happened with the boy.[40] Ricardo Sá Fernandes, Mendonça family's lawyer, stated in 2017: "I keep saying that what I would really like is for Afonso Dias to tell us what happened with Rui Pedro after they left the prostitute. But he didn't say anything in court, and continues to not reveal what I would like for him to reveal. And, I repeat, what I would really like would be for him to say what he knows."[41] In 2011, Sá Fernandes said that he had a solid accusation, but didn't want to turn Dias into an "escape goat", and in case there was any doubt, he wouldn't ask for his conviction.[33]
When Dias' arrest was definitely announced, Manuel Mendonça said that the now convicted had multiple opportunities to tell what he did to Mendonça, even by anonymous letter and highlighted that he didn't want his conviction. After being freed, Dias said in 2018 that he was a victim of "a great injustice" and blamed Mendonça's family for his jail time.[40] WitnessesAfraid of being kidnapped and missing Mendonça, one of the boy's friend at school tried to commit suicide, two months after the disappearance.[43] In the crime's reconstitution, Dias couldn't explain what he did between 14 (2 P.M) and 18 (6 P.M) hours on the day Mendonça disappeared. With the reconstitution it was proven that the investigation let leads and important witnesses slip by. The inspectors didn't want to explain to the press the reason why they devalued Alcina Dias' testimony.[44] A man that worked in a gas station guaranteed that at the time of the disappearance he saw Mendonça, in the centre of the village of Lousada, walking next to two other boys. The court questioned the witness about his statements to the GNR the day following the disappearance, where he said he saw two children passed by on bikes, but that neither was Mendonça. The witness insisted that he couldn't remember giving the testimony to GNR, even thought his signature was in the records. They also heard a witness that said they saw Mendonça's bicycle at 16 (4 P.M) hours.[45] Without being identified, a boy that was 14 at the time of the disappearance, told RTP that PJ didn't value the different testimonies given to the police. The witness, along with four other young people, was waiting for Mendonça to arrive to play football. When Mendonça got there he said he wasn't going to play anymore, hid his bike and got in the car.[46] In 2003, in the Casa Pia Process, a man said that he was with Mendonça in a pension for sexual meetings, in the end of January 2001. He added that the same child appeared in a pornographic movie. It was said the lead is unconsidered for not sustaining itself.[18] Involving the law2002 reconstitutionEduardo Souza that was one of the chief-inspectors of the investigation team of PJ, said in a SIC interview that in the first reconstitution of Mendonça's disappearance that happened in 2002, it was possible to see that Dias was lying:
The police investigated, the Prosecution didn't accuse. Souza also said that some failures in the process may have occurred and that it wasn't legally defined that his competence was to investigate missing people.[19] Afonso Dias' acquittal
In Dias' trial the following facts were given as proven by the judge Carla Fraga:
Such proven facts didn't avoid the defendant's acquittal in March 2012.[19] Manuel Mendonça questioned the coincidences that the court used to come up with the hypothesis that unlinks Mendonça to Alcina Dias, given that even if it was another child, it wouldn't be normal for they to be accompanied of a man to meet up with a prostitute and that this event hadn't been investigated.[19]One of the inspectors of the first investigation team, José Ribeiro dos Santos questioned in court the testimonies of Carlos Teixeira and Alcina Dias, even being interrupted multiple times so he wouldn't tell testimonies of people that would later appear as witnesses.[48] Ricardo Sá Fernandes said that the use of testimonies of the inspectors to discredit Alcina Dias in court, was illegal.[32] According to the lawyer Fernando Arrobas da Silva the doubts raised in court were the reason a conviction was avoided in the 2012 trial.[32] João Rouxinhol's lieJoão Rouxinhol, one of the inspectors of the first investigation team of the PJ stated in court in 2012 that he lied to the press in 2005 when he accused Mendonça's family of having hidden the fact that Mendonça suffered from epilepsy.[19] When questioned by the press about the following statement given in court he said that it doesn't match with a lie:
The inspector received a punishment for the lie.[49] João Rouxinhol also said that because of "forgetfulness" he didn't listen to the witness Alcina Dias. Other crucial witnesses were heard years after the disappearance and by another investigation team.[19] One of them a merchant that said he saw Alcina Dias with a boy.[50] Answers to the investigation's problemsIn the show Praça da Alegria, of RTP, the judge Rui Rangel was questioned about the thirteen years of investigation for a kidnapping accusation and the lack of its efficiency. The judge answered that the police is efficient, but that it "was needed that the Public Prosecution explains with clarity why it took thirteen years".[51] When questioned by the press, the answer of the Attorney General of the Republic, Pinto Monteiro, was the following: "It probably couldn't take less time (...) I can't follow 550 thousand proceedings, especially one that started nine years before I became Attorney General (...) the investigators, better than anyone, will be able to say (...) the Prosecution doesn't have any comment to make".[52] In cameraIn 2007, the case was put in camera for a few months.[53] Police investigationAfter the high-profile case of Madeleine McCann, that garnered attention to the kidnappings of children in Portugal, the Mendonça case received another investigation team. That team had a terrible performance, with Mendonça's family asking for the team's replacement.[21] The leads that connected Mendonça to the international networks of pedophilia were closed in 2011. According to Cândida Almeida, of the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DCIAP), there wasn't any more evidence and everything of this line of investigation was investigated to "exhaustion". Another reason for the closing of this line of investigation, was that the Public Prosecution considered there were "enough evidence" to accuse Dias. The DCIAP entered the case in September 2003.[54] That new team moves forward, with one of the working theories being that Mendonça accidentally had an epileptic attack while he was with Dias.[21] In 2019, Hernâni Carvalho interviewed Carlos do Carmo, an old investigation coordinator of PJ in Linha Aberta, of SIC.[34] Carlos do Carmo stated that the case should have been immediately have been declared as a kidnapping, because the child followed a routine when he disappeared. He added that the bicycle and the place where it was found in the day of the disappearance should have been examined, which didn't happen since it was a missing person case.[34] They looked for Mendonça's bicycle, but they didn't find it.[50] Carlos do Carmo said he didn't know the reason why Dias had said: "If you want Rui Pedro close the borders".[34] Hernâni Carvalho ended the interview by telling Carlos do Carmo:
Júlia Pinheiro questioned Francisco Moita Flores in 2011 about the police not having connected the fact that Afonso Dias had ties to Holland. Moita Flores agreed that it was a path that should have been followed. It was also questioned the fact Dias' financial life wasn't investigated and that during the reconstitution, the camera stopped recording the event, without it being noticed.[50] Manuel Mendonça said that the police "joked around" with the case for three or four years, without recording things, gathering samples or DNA tests, always thinking that Mendonça would come back because he was playing or had ran from home.[21] Media coverageMendonça's disappearance was widely covered by the Portuguese media and the case's developments continue to make headlines.[55][56] Films
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