Portel father faces 864 child abuse counts as Porto man held on Brazil warrant

Charges and detention in Portel

Portuguese prosecutors say a 35-year-old man from Portel, in the Évora district, has been charged with at least 864 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of children and more than 7,000 counts of aggravated child pornography. The Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) published its statement on the website of the Évora regional prosecutor's office. The victim of the abuse counts is his daughter, now 13, and prosecutors say the abuse began when she was six or seven years old. It took place at the family home at least since 2019 and up to the arrest.

The Judicial Police (PJ) detained the man in flagrante delicto on 3 November, acting on the initiative of its Évora unit. He appeared for a first judicial interrogation on Wednesday, 4 November, where prosecutors argued there was a danger of continued criminal activity, of interference with the investigation and of social alarm. The judge accepted those proposals in full and ordered pretrial detention, and the man was sent to the Elvas prison in the Portalegre district. He is also barred from contacting the victim, her mother and her brother, directly or indirectly.

Evidence and the investigation

According to prosecutors, the man filmed and photographed the sexual acts and made the material available through online platforms accessible to an unspecified number of people. He lives in a de facto union with the victim's mother, and he is also the father of a 10-month-old boy. When he was arrested, officers found electronic and computer devices on him and inside the house. Those devices held thousands of files showing children and young people under 14 in erotic poses or with exposed genitals, including explicit sexual acts. The investigation continues under the direction of the 2nd section of the Departamento de Investigação e Ação Penal (DIAP) in Évora, with support from the PJ's Évora local criminal investigation unit.

Porto arrest on a Brazilian warrant

In a separate case, the PJ announced on 5 November that it had detained a 39-year-old foreign national in the Porto area. The man was the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by Brazilian judicial authorities over child pornography offences. According to the PJ, the acts took place in 2021 in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, when he used WhatsApp to repeatedly contact a victim who was then 12 years old. The force says he sent sexual content, pushed her to perform obscene acts and asked her to send intimate photographs through the app. It also says he proposed meeting in person to carry out sexual acts, knowing the victim was a child. The PJ says the offences carry a penalty of up to eight years in prison under Brazilian law. He was presented to the Tribunal da Relação do Porto for extradition proceedings and must report to the authorities every week while the case continues.

Next steps

The Portel case remains at the pretrial stage, and the investigation is still open under DIAP Évora. In Porto, the extradition request is being handled by the Tribunal da Relação, and the suspect's weekly check-ins remain in place. Both announcements came on 5 November 2026.