The defendant was charged with 78 crimes of aggravated child sexual abuse, 39 of aggravated child pornography and three of aggravated domestic violence.

The criminal investigating judge decided not to proceed with the case based on a lack of evidence.

Speaking to Lusa, the defendant's lawyer was pleased with the decision, saying that from the first day she was convinced that her client was innocent and that these accusations were not true.

“These allegations of sexual abuse are nothing more than attempts to use the criminal process as a weapon in relation to the process of parental responsibility that is running in court, with successive non-compliance by the mother, who has prevented the father from seeing the children” she said.

The defendant also criticises the delay in this process, stating that between the time of filing the complaint and the preliminary ruling about five years have passed.

“As the father was no longer with the children before the complaint was filed, this means that for six years he had no contact with his children. This is something that cannot happen” she said, noting that her client is “very happy, but at the same time upset” because he thinks that “he will never recover the time spent without his children”.

According to the prosecution, the abuse began after the parents were separated in 2011 and lasted until 2013.

In statements to the Judiciary Police (PJ) in 2014, children reported that when they visited their father on weekends, they were forced to watch pornographic movies and to imitate some of the things they saw and when they refused to participate, they were beaten. They also said that their father even photographed and filmed these scenes.

However, the judge welcomed the arguments of the defendant's lawyer, pointing out several elements that “call into question the version of the facts presented by the minors” such as in the search for the defendant's residence no photographs or films were found proving that he would have done this to his children.

As for pornographic films that would have been viewed on television and on the computer, the judge states that there is no evidence that the defendant had television service that included adult movie channels, and access to adult pornographic content was not detected through his computer in the relevant periods.

It was further highlighted that the psychiatric expert report oncluded that “no psychopathological evidence or evidence compatible with the practice of anomalous preferential sexual activity or other paraphilic disorders, such as paedophilia, has been found.”