Brazilian police have freed a woman and her two children who are suffering from advanced malnutrition after they were held by her husband in appalling conditions for 17 years in Rio de Janeiro, a police source said Friday.
“The two young men, who are believed to have given birth to the mother and her suspected husband, were bound and malnourished,” Rio de Janeiro’s military police, which arrested the head of the family, said in a statement.
The police received a report regarding this case from an unknown person and carried out their operation on Thursday in the popular Guaratiba area in the west of the city.
Local media reported that the woman and her two sons, aged 19 and 22, were taken to hospital shortly after their liberation, and they were suffering from “severe dehydration and malnutrition.”
According to the sources, the mother told the authorities that she and her two sons sometimes went three days without food and were constantly subjected to physical and psychological abuse.
The mother quoted Luis Antonio Santos Silva, her husband of 23 years, as telling her, “You must stay with me until the end; you will not leave here until you die.” Pictures published by Brazilian media show the two adult boys with a teenage-like bodies due to malnutrition.
“When we saw the condition of the two boys, we thought they wouldn’t live until next week,” one of the family’s neighbours told the local media.
She tried to talk to the mother in the ambulance, but she could not speak because she was too weak.”
Neighbours told the authorities that the father was nicknamed “DJ” because he used to play music to muffle the screams of his victims.
Some point out that there were reports of this case two years ago without receiving any response from the authorities.
