Disappeared and Abducted Children and Young Adults > Portugal's missing children and child kidnapping cases.
Algarve businessman to stand trial after fleeing with daughter.
John:
Algarve businessman to stand trial after fleeing with daughter
Portugal News
19-02-2015
Portuguese businessman Filipe Silva is next month to stand trial over the suspected kidnapping of his daughter Giselle Silva, commonly referred to in the press as Ellie, whose mother has dual British-Irish nationality.
Ellie Silva with stepfather Philip Gannon before boarding her plane home in May 2014.
The trial is due to commence on 17 March 2015 in Faro, it emerged this week.
A source from the Attorney-General’s office confirmed the case is currently “in a judicial phase and under the jurisdiction of a Judge.”
Silva, whose last known address was in Vilamoura, is to be brought before a judge after refusing to return his daughter to her mother following a two-week holiday in September 2012. He is accused of unlawfully keeping the girl, then seven, from her mother, his ex-partner Candice Gannon, who had been granted parental custody and lived on the island of Madeira at the time. Silva is also said to have flouted a court order to return the girl to her mother.
He was eventually detained by PJ detectives in early 2013 following a complex investigation which culminated in the issuing of an international arrest warrant. Ellie, by then eight, was handed over to the authorities by her paternal grandmother in February 2013. It is thought she had spent several months living with her father in Oporto, northern Portugal.
Reports this week by Correio da Manhã claim that should Filipe Silva be found guilty of kidnapping his daughter he could face up to ten years in prison.
www.theportugalnews.com/news/algarve-businessman-to-start-trial-for-fleeing-with-daughter/34054
John:
As Ellie kidnap drama comes to court, family reveals tug-of-love Algarve dad “hasn’t paid a penny” in child support since 2011
Published 20 February 2015
Ellie Silva (Gannon) with her younger sister Olivia pictured in Ireland
The tortuous kidnap drama gripped the nation after Vilamoura businessman Filipe Silva hid his eight-year-old daughter Ellie from her distraught mother for seven agonising months. That was three years ago - but only now is the case against Silva coming to court.
Speaking to us from Ellie’s new home in Ireland, her mother Candice Gannon told the Resident that Silva will also face charges relating to his non-payment of child support.
“He hasn’t paid a penny in child support since 2011,” she said. “The criminal prosecutor has decided to try him for that, along with the kidnapping.”
But whatever happens when the case is heard next month (scheduled to start on Monday, March 16), Ellie and her mother will not be turning up to find out.
“We would never allow Ellie to step foot back in Portugal again,” Candice vowed.
The fears that she could somehow lose her child again were exacerbated last year when Portuguese TVI station carried a startling-biased report on Ellie’s story, just as the little girl was due to be returned to her mother after an enforced separation ordered by the courts (see: http://portugalresident.com/%E2%80%9Csinister-plot%E2%80%9D-almost-block...)
Candice had had to be flown to Ireland for specialist treatment during her twin-pregnancy, and the Faro Child and Minors court did not allow Ellie to travel with her.
Instead she was made to live another seven months in a hotel with her father - the man who originally abducted her.
In that time, Silva contacted TVI and the damning report was aired the night Ellie flew out to Ireland.
“We were so lucky,” Candice told us at the time.
“If we hadn’t got out, it could all have ended so differently.”
But as it was, Ellie returned to the bosom of her amplified family (meeting the two little brothers she had never seen) and generally healing the emotional scars of the past.
Silva meantime has “made no attempt whatsoever to contact Ellie since last summer”, her mother told us.
“He has never once visited her in Ireland, and even if he did, Ellie would refuse to go with him as she is terrified he will kidnap her again”.
Thus, all the ‘evidence’ to be given by Ellie and her mother will have to be organised through video-link.
This may mean that the trial is delayed, says Candice as her lawyer has told her that video links “can take quite a bit of time to arrange”.
With any luck, the evidence Ellie gave state psychologists after her kidnap ordeal “will suffice for the criminal trial” said her mother - and leave Ellie, now aged 10, to the simple pleasures of childhood.
“She is enjoying sleepovers with school friends and loves her new school,” said Candice. “She is a big help with the twins and inseparable from Olivia (her youngest sister) who adores her. Life could not be better for us! A chill runs up my spine when I think that they almost got away with it. To think that Ellie was left in a hotel room with her kidnapper for seven months while they prepared his trial for full custody... Lies, deceit, corruption. It’s good to be back in civilisation!”
www.portugalresident.com/as-ellie-kidnap-drama-comes-to-court-family-reveals-tug-of-love-algarve-dad-“hasn’t-paid-a-penny”-in
Anna:
That poor little lass, must be very confused with it all. Living in a not very nice, place to raise a child .
I hope the family are now very happy and that Elllie's father is regretting his action.
We must wait and see what the punishment will be, but I suspect it will be very light.
John:
--- Quote from: Anna on February 20, 2015, 08:17:13 PM ---That poor little lass, must be very confused with it all. Living in a not very nice, place to raise a child .
I hope the family are now very happy and that Elllie's father is regretting his action.
We must wait and see what the punishment will be, but I suspect it will be very light.
--- End quote ---
Check out the additional post at #3 which reveals the extraordinary behind-the-scenes manoeuvres by an Albufeira magistrate in the high-profile abduction of nine-year-old British Ellie (Giselle Silva) by her Portuguese father, Filipe Silva. No less than 25 secretly recorded telephone conversations with the child's paternal grandmother?
That particular attorney got off very lightly imo.
Anna:
--- Quote from: John on February 20, 2015, 08:37:18 PM ---Check out the additional post at #3 which reveals the extraordinary behind-the-scenes manoeuvres by an Albufeira magistrate in the high-profile abduction of nine-year-old British Ellie (Giselle Silva) by her Portuguese father, Filipe Silva. No less than 25 secretly recorded telephone conversations with the child's paternal grandmother?
That particular attorney got off very lightly imo.
--- End quote ---
I don't think he will give up easily by the sounds of it, so I hope he gets long enough for the girl to be grown up, before he endeavours to kidnap her again, but as I said, I doubt it will be a harsh sentence. They sure look after their own.
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