FILOMENA TEIXERA said goodbye to her 11-year-old son Rui Pedro Mendonca and he pedalled off happily on his bike. He was never seen by his mother again, writes John Follain.

Rui Pedro was not found despite an intensive search and international appeal. Until the case of Madeleine McCann, his disappearance on March 4, 1998, was Portugal’s most notorious case of suspected abduction.

Teixera, from Lousada in northern Portugal, said last week: “I know what the McCanns are going through. The anguish has never left but the news about Madeleine broke my heart.” Teixera’s anguish has been compounded by her conviction that her son was abducted and abused by a paedophile ring. A few months after his disappearance, police showed her a photograph from the Wonderland Club, a paedophile website.

The picture was not clear but it showed a boy who looked like Rui Pedro, naked and being abused by a paedophile. Teixera believes it was her son.

“I was shocked and traumatised,” she said. “I went to see an association in Switzerland [Innocence in Danger] to ask for help and I saw and heard horrible things. I was even more traumatised because I saw people did awful things to children.”

As the search for Madeleine continued last week, one of the greatest fears was that she, too, had been abducted by paedophiles. The Algarve has been become a haunt for British paedophiles as there is no sex offenders’ register.

Confirmed cases of children being kidnapped and used for images to be traded on the internet are rare. Most victims of child sexual abuse know their attacker — usually a family member or someone known to the family.

The Wonderland paedophile ring was uncovered by the National Crime Squad in London. It led to arrests in Britain, Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the United States.

More than 1,200 children were pictured, some suffering appalling abuse. One was only three months old. Even with the help of facial mapping software, only a very small number have been identified.

In another paedophile scandal in 2000, eight people were arrested in Italy and three in Russia on suspicion of trading in child pornography. Some of the abused children were said to have been abducted from orphanages, circuses and public parks in Russia and filmed as they were forced to commit sexual acts.

Despite the very low risk of a child being abducted, safety organisations say it is sensible to take precautions. Andrew Meltzer, founder of the National Association for Child Abduction Prevention, said: “The first few hours of an abduction are critical. You need to act very fast if your child has been taken by a stranger.

“You should have a safety plan and when you travel with them make sure you take details of their medical history and pictures with you. If they are old enough to go out, then agree times when they should be back with you and stick to them. If they are young, don’t let them out of your sight.”

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