Legal News

A two year old toddler, whose British parents living in Portugal were accused of drinking wine while the child was left to wander next to a road, has been put in an emergency centre for children while the Portuguese authorities are contemplating filing charges against the couple.
Colette McPartland, 38, and her partner Stephen Street, 42, were accused of neglecting their daughter Scarlett. But the couple had denied the allegations as false.
Police claimed the British couple were drinking white wine at a bar in Portugal while their daughter Scarlett played 100 yards away. Eyewitnesses too claimed they were staggering around.
Now it emerged that the mother of the toddler was pregnant a friend of McPartland has revealed. The colleague in her hometown of Middlesborough, Teeside, told the Sunday Express that McPartland had sent them a Facebook message on August 27 saying that she was pregnant.
The colleague was quoted by the paper saying that McPartland shouldn’t have been getting drunk, as she was pregnant.
The couple who live in Portugal told their neighbour that the allegations of neglect were all lies and they wanted their little girl back.
But the officers claimed the couple were ‘clearly drunk’ and showed little concern for Scarlett.
The pair was spotted making their first visit to the care home carrying a giant teddy bear.
The incident happened on Monday evening in the village of Carcavelos, 15 miles west of the capital Lisbon.
The couple had been drinking in a bar called the Manhas do Chocolate in a tree-lined square in the village, where they were both believed to work as English language teachers.
They were sitting at a table drinking white wine on a pavement terrace faces the busy two-lane street that runs through the middle of the square. The owner of the bar said that, after the girl was taken into care, Mr Street returned at midnight and began shouting.
The woman, who asked not to be named, said the toddler’s father obviously thought that she had made a call to the police and came looking for her. She said she heard him scream while she was with her two young children in the basement.
Scarlett was expected to undergo a psychological assessment in the next few days. The final decision on her future rests with a youth court.
A neighbour at their block, who asked not to be named, added that it was a shocker to learn that the couple involved. They’ve told a neighbour they were fighting to get their daughter back.’
They married in the UK in 2004 and moved to Portugal around five years ago.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Mr Street's father Ray, 70, said that he couldn’t believe it as his son and daughter in law both were not drinkers and they wouldn’t hurt the child.