Quem viu um filho, um irmão ou um neto desaparecer sem rasto acalenta a certeza de que o vai voltar a abraçar
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TWENTY YEARS OF ABSENCE
Maria Manuela and Pedro Augusto Sepúlveda have aged, are over 60 years old. Jorge Manuel disappeared when he was 14. That's all his parents know about him today, almost two decades later. "We don't miss him," says the mother. "We always think he was gone."
For criminal psychologist Ana Valente, each family has its own dynamics. "They organize themselves in such a way as to have an affective continuity with the child [even if absent]. They cannot assume the affective rupture because they cannot grieve".
ROOM STORED IN BOXES
Jorge Manuel's room is kept in boxes. The bed, the cabinet with his drawings and the markers. The family eventually moved out of the house to minimize the nightmare - but never to stop looking for their son. "It was unbearable to have a closed door [to Manuel's room]. And if it was open it was even worse" - they justify. The void of the room could be heard.
Manuel got up early on the holiday of August 15, 1991. He went to the kitchen to experiment with the oven. "What are you doing?" asked his mother, when he woke up at seven in the morning and surprised him in the kitchen. "Everyone is sleeping, your father, your sister. Go get some sleep or play." The kid went to the room without replying. Shortly after, it is assumed, he went down the porch to a carport and fled through the farm at the rear of the villa, in São Pedro do Estoril. "He was certainly going to the beach, because he was seen by a schoolmate next to the wall towards Tamariz", remembers Maria Manuela. "Manuel had a small percentage of autism. He was a kid with a superior intelligence" - confesses the mother. It was not the first time that the son ran away, but for the first time the case didn't even give time for tears. It was necessary to act, inform the authorities.
"We went out every night. I even gave money to street kids, others drove with us to take us to places where our son could be," says the mother. At the time, only her husband worked, but soon his medical sickness drove him away from the commercial part of Swiss Air.
In Lisbon, there were containers from Belém to Beato. They entered them all, one by one. They discovered that families were sleeping in the train carriages when they stopped at Cais do Sodré. "They were dangerous nights because when people who are sleeping on the street are uncovered, you never know how they will react - some of them had a knife in hand, a pistol. In the containers, where there was drugs, it was no joke either. We took the photograph of Manuel and we said: 'I'm sorry, but didn't you see this boy around here?' "- recalls his father, Pedro Augusto.
Even today, the Sepúlveda family is revolted. Few compliments are given to the actions of the PJ inspectors - "there were only two and one of them, a lady, did not go out at night" - who, despite the "sympathy", never resolved the case.
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