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17 September 2008
Open letter to Mrs Kate Healy
Dear Madam,
You will forgive my boldness, but after I read your comment (in an
interview to Expresso newspaper) concerning Gonçalo Amaral, my husband
and the father of my daughters, I cannot avoid sending you these words
of gratefulness. For many years, I have been trying to make myself heard
in this sentiment that unites us both: "- as a professional and as a
person his behaviour has been a disgrace." Look at it closely:
a) Professionally
- As a Coordinator of Criminal Investigation for the Polícia Judiciária,
my husband has always refused to sit around from 9 to 5 in the
comfortable chair in his office, as his hierarchical status implies.
Instead, he spent the day (and very often, the night) with the
investigators on the terrain, coordinating searches, surveillances,
apprehensions and other diligences 'in loco'. A disgrace!
But if it was only the fact that he was subject to the weather, it
wouldn't be serious, as our climate is not too bad, as you know. The
problem is that this dedication to the cause has earned him a non
promotion in his career. Indeed, I will explain this to you, even
because this case happened when the searches for your daughter were
under way. My husband applied to the category of Superior
Coordinator, and in between drug apprehensions, sequestrations and
homicides, he somehow managed to produce a thesis about drug trafficking
by sea, which he defended in Lisbon, in front of a Jury that
congratulated him. Full of hope, Gonçalo Amaral returns to the Algarve
and awaits the result. To his surprise, he was passed over by other
colleagues (real coordinators, truth be told),
because he had not been able to score points in the "professional
formation" parameter.
That's right, Mrs Kate, my husband spent his life working, involved in
complex investigations, he was the man who apprehended the highest
volumes of drugs in Portugal, but given the fact that he had no time to
go to Lisbon to parade himself up and down the corridors of the PJ's
Institute, he was not promoted. A disgrace, madam, a disgrace!
- As you probably know, even because you seem like a very well informed
person to me, my husband's salary was less than 1.5 times the lowest
salary in your country. But as a wife, as a mother and as a Portuguese
citizen, I can't complain, because Gonçalo Amaral's salary was equal to
4.5 times the lowest salary in Portugal. But pay attention to the
following, which is an example of what I'm going to explain next:
At some point, an individual shoots a member of the PSP [urban police]
and flees into neighbouring Spain. A PJ team follows him, including my
husband. They stayed there for over two weeks. Now at that time, the
international expense coverage was around 100 euros. As you can easily
imagine, it's not possible to sleep and eat in Spain with this amount of
money, much less shortly before Christmas and taking into account that
the value will only be paid at around Easter time (if one's lucky).
But Gonçalo Amaral never refused, not even for one day, to search for
the
escaped murderer, relaying the expenses onto our family accounts. And
this is just one example among many. At some point in time, I suggested
that we should create a fund or something similar to deal with these
extraordinary expenses, but he never listened to me. You see, we also
have mortgages to pay around here- A disgrace, Mrs Kate, a disgrace!
b) As a person, his behaviour has also been a/ disgrace/, because to
begin with we could never distinguish that he even had a personal life,
due to the manner in which he dealt with the profession that he
embraced. But if my good friend Mrs Kate allows me, I can offer you some
examples:
- 5 years ago, a child named Joana "disappeared". Her mother, just like
you, Mrs Kate, tried to project the case into the media, but she didn't
make it any further than SIC- Eight days later, came the confessions and
the evidence: during an incestuous act between mother and uncle, the
child was beaten, then dismembered and her body dumped who knows where.
Mother and uncle went to jail, in a process that was coordinated by
Gonçalo Amaral and which earned them almost 20 years in jail, each. But
let us go a bit back in time. The child died on the 12th of September.
On Christmas eve, our family was reunited for prayer, when my husband
asked me to prepare a bag with some food and warm clothes, because he
had not carried out his Christmas act of penance.
Can you, Mrs Kate,
imagine where Gonçalo Amaral went on that
Christmas night under heavy rain and thunder? He went to the Olhão
Prison, where João Cipriano, Joana's uncle, a confessed murderer and a
clinically diagnosed psychopath, is detained. According to my husband,
to simply offer an alimony to some beggar was not a sacrifice to him.
The fact that he embraced and shared his Christmas meal with João
Cipriano was the sacrifice that he offered to God, in memory of Joana.
Is this not a disgrace? You should also know that every year, on the
12th of September, my husband has a mass celebrated in memory of Joana
Isabel Cipriano Guerreiro. He says that nobody will ever remember the
poor little girl again. Right, but they remember to unjustly accuse him
of actions and crimes that he never committed. Isn't this a disgrace,
Mrs Kate?
- There is a last episode that I will report to you, one that I still
find hard to talk about. Last year, in May, we started to move our
family to Portimão. My husband was supposed to enjoy a holiday period
starting on the day after your daughter's disappearance. "For obvious
reasons" that didn't happen. I started on a new job, looked for a house,
moved house, and tried to integrate our daughters in new schools and new
routines. All of this I did alone, without any help from my
husband, who for obvious reasons, was looking for your daughter,
Mrs Kate. In October,
on his birthday, a week after our daughters started school, Gonçalo
Amaral was dismissed and returned to Faro. This was supposed to be the
time of the family's reunion and it turned out to be another separation.
Isn't this a disgrace?
Our daughters never
managed to understand, and we never
managed to explain to them what obvious reasons were those that rewarded
in this manner a father who left his own daughters to go looking for a
child that he had never met and whose parents had neglected her. It was
a pity that my dear friend Mrs Kate was not around anymore at that date,
because you could have been very helpful to me in explaining these
"obvious reasons" that led to their father's dismissal, to our
daughters. Finally, I can only report to you that intimately, Gonçalo
Amaral is precisely what the latinos are famed for: shameless, as my
prudency does not allow me to write any further.
I ask you, my good friend, to forgive these confidences from a wife and
mother, but I'm certain that you will understand.
I finish this letter
asking you to send your mother my most sincere praises.
She sounded so sincere to me, when during an interview she referred that
she felt like slapping the face of the person who left her grandchildren
alone. She spoke so openly that she sounded like a genuine Portuguese
grandmother-
My dear friend Mrs Kate, without wishing to bother you any further, I
would like to request one last favour from you: now that you have
started to tell some truths, please continue, and let the world hear the
truth that it has been waiting for.
Best regards,
Sofia Leal
Wife and Mother of the Daughters of Gonçalo Amaral |
