Help find Jean Tighe
Munterconnaught woman Jean Tighe has been missing since July 2020.
Jean Tighe, Ryefield, Virginia, Co Cavan is still missing since 13th July 2020, in Parede, Lisbon, Portugal. Please keep Jean and her family in your prayers.
Also keep an eye on and follow MISSING JEAN TIGHE’s facebook page https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087960987592
The following is article from The Irish Examiner on 14th July, by Ann Murphy remembering Jean on the third anniversary of her disappearance: https://www.irishexaminer.com/maintopics/person-jean-tighe_topic-5220856.html
“The message to us is that Jean is not important’: Missing Irish woman's sister pleads for help.Just days before the third anniversary of Jean Tighe's disappearance, Portuguese police finally added her details to their missing persons website.WHEN the details of Irish woman Jean Tighe were added to the Portuguese police’s database of missing people recently, it was a day of mixed feelings for her family.
The decision to upload her details to the database last Monday came just days ahead of the third anniversary of the Cavan woman’s disappearance on July 13, 2020. For the past three years, the Tighe family have been pushing for action from the Portuguese police to pursue Jean’s case, who was 38 years old when she was last seen in Parede near Lisbon. She was on her second visit to the area that year and had booked a flight on July 12 to return home to Ireland. However, she has not been seen since leaving the Help Yourself hostel in the tourist resort the following afternoon, July 13. She was expected to return to the hostel that night but did not. She had been seen leaving the hostel by a hostel worker and that hostel worker has claimed that Jean left with a Brazilian man.
'Hoping and praying' - Jean is a keen traveller who lived abroad previously and is the middle of five children. Her sister Leona has travelled to Portugal on a number of occasions since her disappearance, to meet Portuguese police in a bid to have her case treated as that of a missing person. Leona stresses that she does not believe that her sister just decided to live a new life without contact with her family, as has been suggested on occasions. And while she is relieved that her case has finally been included in the database of missing persons in Portugal, Leona is realistic in her approach to the development. She desperately wants a public appeal for information by the police, which has not yet happened. She says: “We are just hoping and praying that something will happen that will spark a chain of events that will lead to Jean’s recovery.“At the end of the day, we don’t have the in-depth analysis on Jean’s social media accounts.”
Leona says that the social media companies have told the family that information about her use of them can be made available on receipt of a request from an authority. However, no such request has been made by the Portuguese police as yet. She adds: “We don’t have the basics here — we don’t have the bank account records or the social media account records, no public media appeal. How are you going to find somebody without that information? “There needs to be a public appeal made out in Portugal.”
When Leona was informed on Monday July 3 that Jean’s case was registered to the missing person’s database, she says it was a tough thing to process. On the one hand, she questioned how it took three years to reach this stage while also feeling that it was a very sad day to see her sister’s profile on the website. She says: “We are all very deflated. The message to us is loud and clear that Jean is not important because otherwise, we would have this information about her and it is very, very sad.” She fears that a “tonne of information” which could have been gleaned in the early days after Jean’s disappearance has been lost because of the delay in registering the case on the missing person’s website. Among the other missing people listed on the site is British girl Madeleine McCann who disappeared in Praia da Luz in 2007. Last Thursday, Masses were held in Jean’s native Cavan and in St Anthony’s Church in Estoril, close to where she was last seen. Leona says that prayers are regularly offered to Lisbon-born St Anthony, the patron saint for the recovery of lost items, in the hope that Jean can be traced.The Mass in Estoril was organised by neighbours who were on holidays in the area, and they also handed out flyers locally to highlight Jean’s story.
The family has now enlisted the services of the Lucie Blackman Trust in the UK, which specialises in searching for missing persons. The organisation currently has an appeal on its site seeking help in relation to the disappearance of Jean, with an offer of a reward of €10,000 put forward by her family for anyone with “verifiable” information which would lead to the “recovery of Jean”. The family also made a report to Gardaí in Dublin regarding Jean’s disappearance. Leona says that a video conference was to be held by the end of June between An Garda Síochána and the Portuguese police as an information-sharing exercise in relation to the disappearance of Jean and believes it still has not occurred.When asked specifically about this by the Irish Examiner, a Garda spokesman said the organisation does not “provide comment on details of ongoing investigations”. Gardaí confirmed earlier this year that Jean’s disappearance was reported to An Garda Síochána at Mountjoy as well as to the Portuguese police. The gardaí said they will continue to carry out local enquiries to assist the Portuguese authorities with the investigation. They said any information that has come to An Garda Síochána in relation to her disappearance “has been forwarded through the appropriate channels (Interpol) for the attention of the Portuguese Authorities”. Meanwhile, the family has also turned to politicians in Ireland for help, including MEP Frances Fitzgerald who raised the disappearance of Jean with her Portuguese counterparts before Christmas. Her family intends to continue putting on political pressure in a bid to locate her.They have been in contact with the Department of Foreign Affairs in their quest to find Jean. In a statement, the department told the Irish Examiner this week: “The Department of Foreign Affairs is aware of this case and is providing consular assistance to the family. As with all missing person cases, the responsibility for investigation lies with the relevant policing authority. The Embassy of Ireland in Lisbon will continue to provide support in engagement with the Portuguese authorities. The Department does not comment on the details of individual consular cases.” The Judicial Police in Portugal have been contacted for comment.
You can listen to Interviews on Radio, re Missing Jean Tighe.
RTE 1: Drivetime – Barry Lenihan. 17th Feb 2023. https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22214641/
Northern Sound: Shane P O’Reilly, 12-07-2023 https://www.northernsound.ie/podcasts/the-wider-view/listen-back-cavan-womanplaced-on-missing-persons-register-in-portugal-218604
