The cots in which the aggressor kept his children tied in Rio de Janeiro. Military Police of Rio de Janeiro
Military police rescued a woman and her two children after being held captive for 17 years by the family's patriarch in his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The aggressor was arrested at the same place.
The victims were located by the authorities in a shack in the north of the city after receiving an anonymous complaint last Thursday.
The veteran agent who first entered the dark and smelly room where the trio lived has told some details to the local press.
“We found two young men tied to their feet.
At first, we thought they were children, up to that point the girl and the boy were malnourished”, he told the
O Globo
newspaper .
The daughter is 22 years old;
her brother, 19. "The atmosphere in the house was horrific," added the police officer.
The victims were also dehydrated and showed signs of having been assaulted.
They were located in a room with windows boarded up with wood, without water, in which there were only two filthy beds, without sheets, in addition to feces and a stove.
Both sons have therefore spent almost their entire lives locked up in that room, in deplorable and inhumane conditions, on a street with residents of the Guaratiba neighborhood of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
The patriarch, who is around 45 or 50 years old, has been accused of torture, ill-treatment and keeping them in a private jail.
Only the aggressor's wife was able to communicate with the agents who came to rescue them.
She was the only one who could speak.
“The two young men were agitated.
They babbled and moved around a lot.
It was a situation that seemed unreal, difficult to understand,” according to the veteran military police officer who found them.
He has also said that, when he offered food to the aggressor's wife, she rejected the offer: "She said 'No, no, no, I can't eat, she won't let us eat without her permission,'" the captain explained to the Rio de Janeiro newspaper. William Oliveira, head of the Military Police team.
Both the woman and her two children were taken from her home by ambulance and taken directly to a municipal hospital.
The information published by the Brazilian press allows us to broadly reconstruct how the rescue took place and learn some details about the protagonists of the horrifying case.
The entrance to the premises where a man kept his children and his wife locked up for 17 years in Rio, in an image released by the Military Police.
Military Police of Rio de Janeiro (EFE/Military Police of Rio de Janeiro)
A neighbor of the neighborhood where they were kept kidnapped for almost two decades told the
Folha
de São Paulo newspaper that the rescued woman managed to get out of the shack a few days ago thanks to the failure of the door.
“It was the first time they saw her.
She asked me to call her sister.
She had carved her number into her head years ago.”
After several attempts, she managed to talk to her sister and alert her.
The sister has told the São Paulo newspaper that, at the beginning of the relationship between her sister and the aggressor, the couple lived in another neighborhood.
She details that they were cousins on her mother's side and that the rest of the family was then in charge of resolving what she describes as a "jealousy crisis".
The situation changed with the birth of the children, she maintains.
The aggressor decided to disappear with the three.
The neighbors have explained to the Brazilian press that many years ago they used to see the victims at the door of the house, greeting people.
But they have long since disappeared from the sight of the community, although it is clear from their testimonies that even younger people knew of their existence.
The now detainee was considered an aggressive person who played the music very loud despite the protests of the neighbors.
They say that he left home early and returned late.
The detainee gave the police officers who arrested him some clues about the reasons that led him to give his family such inhumane treatment.
He "he told us that the children were mentally ill and needed to be locked up."
It was then that the lady told them that "she and her children had not left the house for 17 years," explained the captain, who suspects that the victims were also physically assaulted.
There is a suspicion that the horrifying drama of the victims could have been less prolonged.
The Brazilian press published that the juvenile protection council received a complaint a couple of years ago, but that no body acted to remedy the daily horror that the victims have suffered during the last two decades.
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