Sexologist mother and stepfather sunned themselves on café terrace after abandoning their children aged five and four in Portuguese woods – as CCTV shows couple on way to dump the boys

A sexologist mother and her partner, accused of abandoning her two young sons in the Portuguese forest, were caught sunbathing just hours after setting off without their children.

French mother Marine R, 41, and stepfather Marc B, 55, were arrested yesterday for allegedly dumping schoolchildren aged five and four hundreds of kilometers from where they grew up.

The brothers were found wandering along a rural road between the Portuguese towns of Alcacer do Sal and Comporta on Tuesday evening. The parents were arrested in the city of Fatima, 200 kilometers north of Alcacer do Sal.

The brothers told the local couple who found them that their parents had left them blindfolded, with only a change of clothes, two pieces of fruit and two bottles of water.

French sexologist Marine and her partner Ballabriga were caught by police more than 100 miles away, enjoying snacks on a sunny terrace at a cafe south of Lisbon.

The couple were located after a woman who had spoken to them called police, suspecting they were the couple police were searching for following reports that two children had been abandoned.

According to cafe owner Jorge Lopes, who spoke to the Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha, the couple, who “speaked only French”, spent “more than five hours” on the terrace of the facility, eating cakes and drinking coffee.

The boys could be seen climbing into the gray car while the parents loaded it up.

Two young siblings were abandoned by their parents in a forested area in Portugal.

This comes after CCTV footage emerged showing the couple heading off to abandon their young children.

New footage obtained by local media shows the children playing innocently in their parents’ car at a gas station in Miranda do Douro, near the Spanish border, after arriving in Portugal.

Marc appears to be driving the gray car as he pulls into the gas station.

Both he and the Marine can be seen exiting the vehicle before walking towards an officer.

In the back, one of the children was seen climbing around the front seats while the other was seen leaning towards the front of the car into the gap between the seats.

Portuguese broadcaster TVI reported that the footage was shot at 18.16 on May 11; This was the day the family reached Portugal via Bragança on the Spanish border.

They crossed the border after the French woman She disappeared with her two children about two weeks ago before embarking on a journey to Portugal. Previous reports had stated that the little boy was three years old, not four.

Marine’s mother, the boys’ grandmother, reported the boys missing to the police and told them they had been kidnapped by their mother.

Born in 1984, Marine graduated from Paris Pierre and Marie Curie University, department of psychomotor therapy, in 2008.

She worked in the town of Troyes for 10 years before studying sexology at Diderot University in Paris between 2019 and 2022.

The French woman left Troyes in 2025 and settled in Colmar. She gained custody of her two children following her separation from the boys’ biological father.

As a sexologist, Marine ‘specializes in body-based practices, developmental dynamics, and specific trauma care,’ according to LinkedIn; ‘He offers consultancy in France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland and also via video conferencing’.

He adds: ‘I help men and women achieve sexual satisfaction. ‘At your own pace, even if you’ve been traumatized.’

There are no pictures or videos of his children on Facebook, but he promotes his business heavily.

She said she helps women with sexuality after ‘traumatic stress related to birth, rape, assault, humiliation, pain, hurtful words, discrediting of your erotic potential and femininity’.

Marine also organizes master classes on the ‘co-construction of sexuality’ for ‘parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, for every member of the family, for anyone who wants to convey something about sexuality to children, adolescents or young people, respecting their sensitivities and level of development’.

The boys’ biological father, who was given only ‘limited and supervised visitation rights’ to see the children, also filed a child abduction report with the police. Colmar prosecutor Jean Richert said on Thursday: ‘He’s like everyone else, he doesn’t understand.’

The family traveled more than 310 miles after arriving in the country; He first went to the Miranda do Corvo area and then further south to Alcacer do Sal.

The French couple and their children stayed at a hotel in the town, about 19 kilometers from where they were found.

On Tuesday the young boys were found by a local couple, Eugenia and Artur Quintas.

Artur said: ‘They were crying, they were terrified. ‘They were crying and calling for their father.’

Marine was seen handcuffed at a police station in the city today.

The children were taken to hospital for examination and police spoke to them there.

He added that both were covered in dirt and bruises, and one had injured his knee. Neither child had any identifying documents on them.

The Quintas took the young children to their home and called the police, who quickly arrived and took them to Setúbal Hospital for a full medical evaluation. There they were given a clean bill of health.

The toxicology report revealed that the children were not drugged by their parents.

After questioning them, they realized that the children were actually from France.

The children told authorities that their parents told them they were going to play a game to “exorcise the devil.”

The couple blindfolded them and took them to a wooded area, telling them that they could only remove their eyelids after finding the knife the couple had buried in the ground and use it to cut them open.

The children dug in the ground for a few minutes before the older boy took off his blindfolds. The children realized in shock that they were all alone.

Believing they were still playing, the children wandered around the area for several hours in a part of Portugal where temperatures can reach up to 30 degrees during the day at this time of year.

Artur told local media: ‘The eldest told me that he and his brother got lost in the forest and their father and mother left without them.’

He added: ‘I knew immediately that their backpacks had abandoned them. ‘When I saw how the backpacks were packed I knew they had been abandoned.’

On Thursday, Portuguese police announced that they had arrested a 55-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman ‘in connection with an incident involving two young children found alone near a public road in the municipality of Alcácer do Sal’.

They were arrested on the terrace of a cafe in Fatima on suspicion of harassment, endangering others and abandonment.

Marine was seen in handcuffs at a police station in the city today.

They were given nothing but some clothes, two pieces of fruit and some water.

The children were left to wander in the forest area between Alcacer do Sal and Comporta.

When information about the children was requested from the French embassy in Portugal, it was revealed that they had no blood relatives in the country, so the children were placed in foster care.

French authorities are now preparing to process the children’s return to their country of origin.

French police already know about the existence of the stepfather, who is believed to be suffering from psychiatric disorders. French prosecutors are filing a child neglect case.

Experts fear abandonment causes long-term psychological damage to children.

Psychologist Melanie Tavares told CNN Portugal: ‘It’s a feeling of abandonment, of being lost, of being unprotected, of ultimately not having familiar resources to calm the fear.’

Being left in the woods can impact their emotional safety and cause sleeping difficulties, eating disorders, irritability and isolation, he said.

Tavares said: ‘This will bring with it some symptoms in the coming days that those caring for these children will need to be very careful about.

‘We are talking about several situations, namely great difficulty in sleeping, falling asleep and staying asleep, changes in normal routines including eating, irritability and even almost permanent isolation, and also often great difficulty in accepting the rules and the context in which they exist, because none of this is familiar to these children.’

He added that parents acting as if they were playing a ‘game’ could lead to serious distrust of parental figures.

He said: ‘These children will be in constant distress, great distress from abandonment, great distress from separation.

‘This is a trauma that will remain, just like when we got a tattoo. It stays for life.’