A man sentenced twice in the same process to effective imprisonment for raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter in Fafe, Braga district, was acquitted by the Guimarães Relation, according to a decision consulted this Wednesday by Lusa.
In November 2016, the defendant, a marble worker from Fafe, was sentenced by the Court of Guimarães to eight years in prison in legal terms, for six crimes of aggravated rape, based on statements for the future memory of the victim.
However, after the trial, the victim said that she had made it all up and that no violation had ever taken place.
In view of this new position of the victim, the trial was repeated, by order of the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ), but the Court of Guimarães again sentenced the defendant to the same sentence in March 2022.
Dissatisfied with this decision, the defendant, the victim’s stepfather, appealed to the Guimarães Court of Appeal which, last September, revoked the conviction, absolving the defendant of all crimes.
The judges found that the victim gave a statement “absolutely opposite” to what he had previously given in terms of statements for future memory, concluding that there was a “reasonable and insurmountable” doubt.
The Public Ministry still appealed this decision to the STJ, but the appeal was rejected for “legal inadmissibility”.
According to the MP’s accusation, the abuses took place between 2014 and 2015, in remote places in the municipality of Fafe, after the victim’s mother entered into a relationship “analogous to that of spouses” with the defendant.