A Brazilian woman and her two now grown children have been freed by police after being held captive by the family’s father for 17 years. Thanks to an anonymous tip, the police found the family in the Guaratiba neighborhood in western Rio de Janeiro.
“The two youths, who are the children of the woman and the suspect, were tied up, soiled and starving,” the city’s military police said Friday. The father has been arrested.
According to local media, the children in the family are now 22 and 19 years old. They were taken to the hospital with their mother. According to local emergency services, all three victims were “seriously malnourished and dehydrated”.
The mother is said to have told authorities that she and her children sometimes went without food for three days and that they were regularly physically and mentally abused by her husband, to whom she had been married for 23 years. The man allegedly told her that she could only leave his house “when she was dead”.
Local residents of the family reportedly told authorities that the suspect was known in the area by the nickname ‘DJ’, because he would regularly put on loud music. Presumably he did this so that the screams of his victims could not be heard.