A French mother and her partner have been arrested in Portugal after allegedly abandoning two young boys in a remote forest by blindfolding them and telling them they were playing a treasure hunt game — leaving the children to wander alone for hours in temperatures of up to 30 degrees.
The boys, named as Barthelemy, five, and Zacharie, three, were found crying and distressed on a remote road linking Alcacer do Sal and Comporta in southern Portugal at around 7.30pm on 19 May — more than 1,200 miles from their home in France. They had no identification on them but were carrying a backpack containing a change of clothes, biscuits, fruit and a bottle of water.
The man who found them, Artur Quintas, said the older boy told him that his parents had left without taking them. “The oldest told me that he and his brother had got lost in the forest and that their father and mother had left without taking them,” he said. The contents of the backpack immediately raised his suspicions. “I realised straight away that they had been abandoned because of the backpacks, the way they had been made up,” he added, before calling the police.
According to reports, the boys told locals they had been blindfolded by their parents, who said they were going on a game to find a toy buried in the woods. The children reportedly believed they were playing a game called “drive away the devil,” in which they were told they needed to find a hidden knife to cut off their blindfolds. When they removed the coverings themselves, their parents were gone. Still believing the whole episode to be a game, the two toddlers walked through the forested area alone for hours in the intense heat.
Police brought the children to a local station in Alcacer do Sal before they were taken for medical checks at Setubal Hospital near Lisbon. The French embassy subsequently made contact with the children at the hospital and requested their return, following reports they had been taken from their legal guardian.
Portugal’s GNR national police force confirmed on 21 May that a 55-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman — identified in reports as Marc and 41-year-old Marine — had been detained in Fatima on suspicion of domestic violence, exposure and abandonment. “Given the situation of evident vulnerability, the children were taken to the home of a local resident, where they remained and received initial care in the presence of the officers until they were transferred to a hospital unit,” the force said in a statement.
The GNR added that the investigation was being led by its Specific Victims Investigation and Support Unit and that a report had been submitted to the Judicial Court of Grandola. The case is ongoing.
