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A 61-year-old teacher was stabbed to death by her partner in Madeira in 2016. The report reveals that complaints to the authorities were of no use.
Over 16 years, the PSP, Social Security and the Commission for the Protection of Children and Youth (CPCJ) of Porto Santo, Madeira, received 14 complaints of mistreatment, assaults and death threats by an unemployed person to your couple. And his family. Of these, 12 were archived, one was provisionally suspended and another resulted in a conviction, three months after the beheading of Maria Madalena Teixeira.
For the Retrospective Analysis Team on Homicides in Domestic Violence (EARHVD), the authorities showed “condescension to the aggressor’s conduct” and “lack of proactivity in the criminal investigation.” This, added to the “inconsistency of the judicial action”, resulted in the lack of protection of the teacher and in the strengthening of the “feeling of impunity” of the murderer.
Maria Madalena Teixeira began a romantic relationship with Jorge in 2005 and, shortly after, the attacks began. Consumers of drugs and alcohol, the unemployed began with death threats, but quickly moved on to aggression. Not only his partner, but also his daughters and grandson. The abuse occurred, in most cases, within the family’s home, but also on the street and in the school where the special education teacher taught. Also in 2007, the deputy principal of the school filed a complaint after Jorge entered the school and pushed María Madalena against the glass of a classroom, breaking it. The events were witnessed by several children, who were scared. Neighbors also denounced the attacks and also those in charge of the health center where the victim arrived to receive treatment for injuries caused by slabs, punches and hair pulling. In total, EARHVD said, 14 complaints were made, including the one investigated by CPCJ, which would close the case with the victim’s grandson. Living with her grandmother, the girl was beaten and threatened with death several times.
The victim dropped the complaints
Almost all other complaints were also filed. The silence of the participants or the withdrawal of complaints by the teacher made, in the perspective of the Public Ministry (MP), “the evidence collected fragile and scarce.” In fact, only one of the violent episodes went to trial, but when Jorge was sentenced to two years and five months in prison, he had already murdered his partner.
It all happened in January 2016, after another complaint by María Madalena to the PSP. The escort saw her leave the police station, waited for her at home, grabbed her hair and hit her on the mouth several times. The grandson heard the calls for help and jumped out of the bedroom window to go to the nearest cafe for help. When he returned with a neighbor, Jorge appeared at the door with María Madalena around his neck. He then stabbed him several times, one of which was fatal to the neck.
“The social protection of the victim must be a constant concern in the work of the criminal police forces, the Public Ministry and the courts. This is an element that characterizes the profile of the action to be taken to combat this crime. In the case Under analysis, this protection was not achieved and the aggressor was strengthening, over time, his feeling of impunity ”, defends the EARHVD.
Sentenced to 20 years in prison
The murderer of Maria Madalena Teixeira was sentenced to 20 years in prison and to the payment of compensation of almost 138 thousand euros to the teacher’s family. The trial took place at the end of 2016 and the judges found the defendant guilty of the crime of homicide. Subsequently, the court added the two years and five months to which Jorge had been sentenced for domestic violence and, in legal terms, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Before these convictions, the court even prohibited the murderer from approaching the victim and his residence. However, the coercive measures were terminated, for the maximum period established by law, without Maria Madalena Teixeira having been notified. From then on, the attacks returned.
“In the interventions that took place in 2006 and 2007, there is a clear condescension towards the behavior of B [homicida]. The importance and rationale for the public nature of this crime of mistreatment (unequivocal since 2000) were not yet sufficiently consolidated in judicial practice, opting, as happened here, for other legal and criminal qualifications of the facts. which allowed the termination of the complaint withdrawal processes, revealing a lack of knowledge of the legislative evolution and the cycle of domestic violence “
In the case analyzed, there are serious doubts about the legal and criminal classification of the ill-treatment that [Maria Madalena Teixeira] was a victim and this allowed the filing of some inquiries into the withdrawal of the complaint, as well as the solidity of the verification of the free and clarified nature of the victim’s request for the provisional suspension of the investigation process, which was carried out in 2009. Sufficient consideration of the need to guarantee due protection to the victim is also manifested in the failure to notify the victim of the termination of the forced expulsion measure applied to B in 2015 [obrigação que resultava já de uma adequada interpretação do artigo 15.º da LVD, mas que hoje consta expressamente no artigo 11.º n.º 9 do Estatuto da Vítima em processo penal, tendo a Diretiva n.º 5/2018-PGR, sobre violência doméstica]”
“The judicial action was inconsequential, which aggravates the feeling of insecurity and makes the victim regress in the will to act to free himself from the fear that dominates him, reinforcing the aggressor’s feeling of impunity.”
“In the present case, the intervention that was triggered after the criminal complaints was not assertive. Contact with the Social Security team was occasional, at a time when A and B were geographically far apart (and remained that way during about 4 years), having been presented with a proposal to leave his house and place of residence, where the aggressor would continue to live (a proposal that, according to his brother’s information, the PSP had already made him), which may have confirmed the feeling of vulnerability of A Only later, in 2015, was B applied, in an investigation then instituted, the measure of coercion to leave the residence and prohibit contacts with A, but the MP allowed it to be extinguished with time and without That this victim was reported, who was surprised by the presence of B and the new attacks, which will undoubtedly have aggravated her conviction that she was unprotected, choosing to define her own, unsuccessful, strategy AI for “risk management”.
“The action developed to protect C [neto da vítima] was unclear and inconsequential, and this child suffered and experienced for at least 6 years, between 3 and 13 years of age, continuous and growing violence in his home without effective measures being taken to preserve his safety and conditions for development healthy “
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