24-year-old English hitchhiker, Kate Juby, went through a hellish ordeal for 18 months after she was brutally raped during her time in Portugal back in April 2017. She was on her way to a culture and music festival close to the region of Aljezur and, to get there, she decided to hitchhike.
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She had been assured that the area was safe to do so, but she ended up regretting her choice after the series of events that followed.
What happened when they met?
33-year old Tiago Curado de Sousa stopped his truck to pick Kate up off the side of the road. She was holding up a sign saying where she wanted to go, Praia de Amoreira beach, hoping that someone would take her there. When Tiago stopped, she got in the vehicle, but they had barely been driving for 10 miles before the Portuguese man turned off into a side road.
He told her he was stopping to pick something up but as soon as he got out of the truck, he forced Kate out as well, shouting, ‘come on baby’. Afterwards, he attacked her and forced himself on her against the truck. Kate was horrified and truly felt that this was the moment she was going to die.
After endless attempts at fighting and resisting, the young Brit managed to push her rapist off her and ran back to the road. On the road, a car belonging to a German couple stopped and she asked them for help. The kind pair even waited with her until the police finally arrived.
His reaction to the sentence
But Kate's tribulation didn't stop there. After waiting 18 months to take her rapist to court, it was revealed that her lawyer was only able to meet her 2 hours before the trial began.
Following the excruciating trial, Tiago was merely given a suspended sentence and a hefty fine before walking out of the courtroom in laughter. Despite the possibility of a revised sentence, only has to pay for the damages and harm that he caused her with money.
