A BELGIAN man, who allegedly abducted his three daughters and was the subject of an international arrest order, was arrested Monday night in Viseu, north of Portugal, after authorities received a tip-off from a local resident.
The girls were sent to a local child support institute and the case is now being investigated by the Polícia Judiciária.
The mother of the three girls, Marie Castermans, was immediately contacted and travelled to Portugal to be reunited with the children on Tuesday.
The father was allegedly using the girls to beg in the streets and the family was living in a motor home, parked on the outskirts of the city.
The first alert was given by a local businessman, José Alcides, who revealed he first spotted the group begging in quiet streets near the city hospital. He said: “When people beg, they usually look for populated places but they were almost hiding in the back of the houses.”
Although they looked clean and well dressed, Mr Alcides said he found “their suspicious behaviour” strange.
Godelieve, 14, Gerda, 10, and Truke Otto, seven, had been missing since January from Deurne near Antwerp.
As their parents were divorced, the girls were staying with the mother, but regularly received visits from the father.
Following a regular weekend visit on January 4, their mother launched a parental abduction alert, when the father, Cornelius Otto, failed to bring the girls back home.
Reunited
After being reunited with their mother, on Tuesday, it was stated the girls had confided to the social workers of the children’s home where they stayed that they were aware of their parents’ dispute over their custody. Ensuring that they had not been mistreated, Godelieve Otto, the older daughter, said: “I missed my mother a lot, but I was with my father.”
The Portuguese victim support authority, Instituto de Apoio à Vitima, had launched an appeal in the national media based on the suspicion that the girls could be somewhere in Portugal.
Authorities said the father didn’t resist arrest on Monday evening, although initially he told police agents he was just holidaying in Portugal with his children.
After being reunited with the girls, Marie Castermans said: “These girls are my life.”
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