Killer kidnapped & raped me but is out after 6months
Lauren’s horror as brute is on street
A BRITISH bar worker in Portugal has told of her horror after the brute who kidnapped and raped her was freed from jail after just six months.
Donald Fernandes, who is also a convicted killer, was given the shock release from his 14-year sentence thanks to a legal loophole.
He is now free to walk the streets while his appeal is reviewed – on the condition that he signs in each day at a police station.
But terrified victim Lauren Caton, 21, who has bravely waived her anonymity, told the Sunday People: “I’m absolutely devastated.
“I’m still healing from the trauma I went through and I will be for the rest of my life. Hearing he’s free is like having salt poured on an open wound.”
Lauren was 19 and working in the Algarve when she was kidnapped in May 2019 by building firm boss Fernandes, who held her for nine days.
She was only saved after handing a Burger King worker a scribbled note on a napkin begging for help during an outing in Faro.
Shot
Fernandes’ release was triggered when an appeal judge agreed to review his conviction
That meant the conviction was “suspended” and he could only be held as a remand prisoner.
But he had already served more time than the maximum allowed for nonconvicted suspects under local laws.
Fernandes, 37, will be sent back to jail only if the judge rules his original conviction was correct.
He earlier served seven years in jail for manslaughter in his native Canada.
Fernandes was the getaway driver in a bungled 2003 robbery in Montreal in which a pensioner was shot dead. He moved to Portugal but was jailed last July.
Lauren, who is originally from South East London and still lives abroad, said:
“I stand by everything I told the police and the courts that formed part of my evidence.
“No one’s told me why the appeal is going to be considered.
“I understand someone has the right to appeal. But when we’re talking about something as serious as rape and kidnap it seems astonishing to me that he can be back on the streets before that appeal has been resolved.”
Fernandes pleaded his innocence in court, claiming Lauren and another accuser, a Brazilian woman he met and befriended before targeting the British
I’m still in trauma – it’s like having salt poured
on a wound
teenager, knew each other and had concocted a plan to frame him.
Fernandes was convicted of six rapes, kidnaps, assaults and threats.
The trial judges ruled it had been proven Fernandes had threatened to “pimp, kill and bury” Lauren after offering her a lift home following a late-night drink.
They also said he had cut her neck with a knife, kicked and punched her and sexually abused her at his villa in Benfarras. The Brazilian woman said she had been made to eat soap and had her head pushed down the toilet in the same house days earlier.
Judges branded his treatment of both as inhumane and degrading.
Psychopath
Lauren was freed after handing a note to a restaurant worker, which said: “Don’t make a scene but I am a missing person. Please call police. Please act normal.”
She branded Fernandes a “psychopath with a Jekyll and Hyde personality”. Fernandes protested his innocence throughout his on-off trial which started in December 2020 in Faro and finished with his conviction by a panel of three judges last July.
Officials have confirmed the appeal hearing will take place behind closed doors in the southern city of Evora. No date has yet been set. Fernandes has had to surrender his passport in the meantime.
His lawyer Joao Nabais, who accused lead judge Ana Lucia Cruz of a lack of impartiality before the guilty verdict, has yet to comment.
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