Brazil’s Sanctuaries From Abuse

IT’S LIKE ANY OTHER Saturday night in São Paulo’s infamous Pedreira slums.

Music blares out from a line of makeshift bars. Dark brown bottles clang together as neighbours celebrate the end of another week. The air is filled with cheap cigar smoke and with laughter. A young couple is samba dancing in the muddy main street. Everyone, it seems, is in a jubilant mood. But away from the revelling drinkers the atmosphere is far less cheerful.

Martina Alberto, a young mother of two, sits on her bed waiting for her husband’s return. For Martina, surviving unscathed until Sunday morning is always an achievement. Her husband, Rogerio, an unemployed labourer, bursts in soon after midnight. In one hand is a bottle of home-brewed cane liquor, and in the other there’s a carving knife.

In a fit of drunken rage Rogerio swears that he’ll chop up their two small daughters. Weeping hysterically, Martina pleads with him to take his fury out on her rather than the children. Eagerly, he agrees. An hour later and Martina has been kicked, beaten, stabbed with the knife, and raped.

With her eyes swollen, her body bruised from the kicks, and her face badly cut, Martina runs from the house. It’s three a.m. Clutching her daughters, Andresa, six months, and Paola, three years, she staggers through São Paulo’s dark streets. The sound of singing from the backstreet bars has now been replaced by high-pitched police sirens and sporadic exchanges of gunfire. The only men still out are drunks, and the only women, prostitutes. Calming her daughters as best she can, Martina heads for a large, modern building at Campo Grande, a sprawling suburb in São Paulo’s south zone. This, the 9th Police Precinct, is located at the violent heart of Brazil’s largest city.

With determined strides, Martina hurries her daughters inside. She heads straight for a stark waiting-room. She knows the way well. Since her marriage to Rogerio, she’s been a regular visitor there.

It looks like any other precinct, but this is a police station with a difference. Named Delegacia de Policia de Defesa da Mulher, the station is run by women officers, for women in trouble. The imposing size of the building hints at the number of women in the community who need police help. There are more than a hundred and twenty similar stations in São Paulo alone. Delegacia, which were first established in Brazil in the ’eighties, play an important role in the war against household violence.

From the outset, the stations were an instant success, taking seriously battered women’s pleas for help. Like much of Latin America, Brazilian society suffers from machismo syndrome, a society that closes ranks to protect abusive men.

Before there were Delegacia, women reporting domestic violence, even rape, were usually chased away from regular police stations. For the few sympathetic male officers, domestic violence was a matter beyond their jurisdiction.

More than three hundred thousand women take refuge at Delegacia across Brazil each year. Most of them, like Martina, are too terrified at first to report their spouses’ crimes. But genuinely fearing for their lives, and those of their children, Martina and thousands like her have no other choice.

Waiting for her name to be called, Martina glances around the room. About two dozen other women sit about on red plastic chairs. Some are weeping. Others nurse fresh wounds, or comfort their children. A teenage mother sitting beside Martina holds a bloodied bandage to her thigh. The early hours of Sunday morning are always the most eventful at São Paulo’s Delegacias.

At six a.m., Martina is still waiting.

Her baby daughter is crying for food. The officer, a tall middle aged woman wearing a dark blue uniform, leads her to an interview room. Staring at her across the desk, Martina says simply: ‘I want him put in jail. You must do it. Please help me.’

In charge of the 9th Women’s Division, Detective Katia Marinelli notes down the complaint and sighs deeply. ‘We will do all we can to help you,’ she replies, ‘but will you assist us this time, by taking him to court?’ Staring blankly into space, Martina nods her head, and is taken away by a clerk for an examination.

Detective Marinelli rubs her eyes and looks at her watch. It’s almost six-thirty. ‘Tonight we’ve had about seventy women here,’ she explains. ‘We often get many more than that. The worst is when “Corinthians” – one of the most popular soccer teams in São Paulo – have lost their game. I’m not a follower of football, but I always pray that the Corinthians win.’

The detective pauses to sign an official document, ‘Most of the women we get here are in their twenties,’ she continues, ‘but an increasing number are teenage wives. Those are the saddest cases. They’ve usually been made pregnant and have got married to abusive, alcoholic men. Most don’t have a clue what they’ve got themselves into. For them, this is an escape from Hell.’

Next door, Martina is being examined by Roseli, a clerk of about the same age. Roseli lifts up the blood-splattered blouse to examine the mass of plum-coloured bruises. The cut on Martina’s face and another on her forearm are scrutinized. Then Roseli types in the statement at a computer terminal. With its details of drunken debauchery, rape and stabbing, the report is so usual that Roseli feels as if she knows it by heart.

‘When I first met Rogerio,’ Martina says softly, ‘I knew he was an ex-convict. But I was in love with him and he seemed intent on bettering his life. Soon after our marriage he lost his job. Then he started drinking heavily. Now I want him in jail, otherwise he will kill me and the kids. He’s already sworn to cut off their fingers when I bring them home.’

Martina puts her signature beneath the printout of her statement, and wonders what to do next. She is too afraid to return to their home. ‘I think I will go and stay with a cousin in Belo Horizonte,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to find a job. I never want to see Rogerio again.’

The Delegacia has a special shelter for women too afraid to go home. The abrigos, shelters, support homeless and vulnerable women and their children for up to three months. The details of such safe houses are kept secret, for fear that a violent husband would come to get revenge on his wife.

At nine a.m. officer Marinelli is still at her desk.

Sunlight is streaming in through the window. ‘All the drunks will be sobering up by now,’ she says weakly, ‘getting ready for another evening of drinking. At least ninety-nine per cent of the cases we deal with involve alcohol. Illegal cane liquor is cheap and strong. They should put a warning in the bottle: drinking it won’t just damage your health, but the health of your family.

‘We always try to reconcile the parties involved,’ continues Marinelli. ‘Slamming an abusive husband in jail may get rid of him, but it often leaves a family without a breadwinner.’

When Governor Franco Montoro originally decreed that women-only police stations were to be built, the idea was met with a mixed reception. Pressure groups insisted that special treatment was necessary for women in such a macho society. But the powerful male lobby greeted the proposal with skepticism. Nowhere else in the world had women’s police stations, they said, so why did they need them?

Brazil’s first all-woman police station was at Parque de San Pedro, a run-down area near São Paulo’s long distance bus terminal. From the first day, the office was over-flowing with female victims. In the years since, the Delegacia have spread like wildfire through Brazil’s major cities and beyond. Now they are not only found throughout Brazil, but across Latin America, from Argentina to Venezuela. Dozens of other countries around the world now are calling for their own forms of Delegacia as well.

Inspector Maria Valente has been with the Delegacia project right from the start. From her spacious ninth floor office at the Public Security Headquarters Building in downtown São Paulo, she controls more than a hundred women’s police stations across the city and its state.

São Paulo, which is regarded by the United Nations as one of the world’s most dangerous places to live, boasts an average of forty murders each weekend. The majority of the city’s twelve million inhabitants live below the poverty line. For many men, unemployment is a reality they bear uneasily. Large numbers turn to alcohol, drugs, and wife battering to alleviate the frustrations of poverty.

Facing domestic violence head on, Inspector Valente and her team are used to the tales of savage attacks and stabbings, rape, and even incest.

‘Beating up women is as old as history and happens everywhere,’ says Valente sharply. ‘Of course we register more wife abuse amongst the poor, simply because there are more poor than rich in Brazil. Rich men do terrible things to women too, but they have money to pay good lawyers when a case gets to court. We had one case where a wealthy businessman smashed his wife’s head against a wall for dropping a plate of food; and another where a teenage girl came to us, made pregnant by her father – himself a pillar of society.’

For Valente and her staff, the problem of getting women to come forward to testify in court against their spouses, is a vexing one. ‘Women are terrified that if the husband gets off, he’ll hunt them down and kill them. It’s that simple,’ she says.

In a society where beating up your wife is sometimes almost seen as a man’s birthright, his prerogative, the challenge is breathtaking. To meet that challenge at hand, Inspector Valente and her colleagues look for female officers who have what it takes to deal with the traumas of the job. ‘Most of the officers we recruit are aged below thirty,’ says the Inspector, as she stares out across São Paulo’s rooftops. ‘They can empathize with the young mothers who seek our help. We need women who are patient, caring, and who are unlikely to be deterred by the sight of blood, or by the intimate details of a rape.’

Officers working at the Delegacia encounter a wide range of frustrations every day. ‘One of our biggest problems,’ continues Valente, ‘is that when battered women arrive here, they’re often hysterical. They beg us to throw their violent husband in prison and throw away the key. Unfortunately, we have to act according to the law. That’s one reason why officers are advised to avoid striking personal friendships with the victims, even in the most heartbreaking cases.’

With a view to reconciliation, the Delegacia often summon the husbands to explain themselves. ‘When men turn up to give their side of the story they can behave very arrogantly,’ explains Sandra Claro, a new officer at the 9th Precinct. ‘They swear and jeer at us, but soon they realize that although we’re women we are police officers, like any others. It’s then that they get nervous at the prospect of a spell in jail.’

Back at the reception of the 9th Precinct a steady stream of assaulted women have wandered in during the day. As usual, the waiting-room is full to capacity. Some of the tired, frail figures sitting there refuse to file complaints. Too fearful to formally document the crimes, they come in to have a chat with the officers, and to pause for breath in the security of the station.

Deputy Sandra Claro is dealing with a typical case in interview room Number Three. A young woman called Olivia is sitting across from her. Married just three weeks before, Olivia, who’s only nineteen, has seen her husband’s true character revealed for the first time. ‘On Friday night he went out with his friends. At two in the morning he came back… and he brought another woman with him. I found him with her on the couch,’ she says. ‘When I asked him what was going on he slapped me on the face and said that he’d bite off my nose if I didn’t leave him alone.’

Olivia’s statement is typed out and presented for her signature. An illiterate, she whispers for an ink pad. Then, almost ceremonially, she adds her thumbprint at the end of the document and bursts into tears.

Two doors down, in another interview suite, Marcia is telling her tale. ‘My husband doesn’t drink much,’ she explains. ‘But he’s addicted to heroin. It’s always in the morning when he’s craving the drug he gets so violent. We have no money. We can’t pay the rent. And now he threatens to pour gasoline over me when I’m asleep and set me alight, unless I go out and steal to pay for his addiction. I don’t know what to do.’

Marcia stares at the young female officer beside her, tears rolling down her face. ‘I’m so frightened, can you please, please help me?’

When an abusive husband refuses to make an appearance at the Delegacia Precinct, officers are sent on a mobile patrol to investigate the situation. The 9th Precinct’s territory covers all kinds of areas, ranging from millionaires’ mansions to the perilous shanty-towns of south São Paulo.

Silvia Rodrigues has been with the all-female police force for six years. Carefully checking her .38 calibre black service revolver, she prepares for an investigation along with her partner, Vera Lucia. ‘Most men don’t believe it when we turn up and ask them to accompany us to the Precinct,’ she says. ‘For archetypal Brazilian macho males, the ultimate humiliation is to be arrested by a woman. When we handcuff the suspect and lead him away, a crowd often gathers. Then the gossip spreads – everyone recognizes us and our vehicle. They know why we’ve come.’

‘We do get shot at from time to time,’ says Vera Lucia. ‘We’ve had to wrestle men to the ground so many times. I’d never go on patrol without my .38. You see, especially in the slums some men think they’re gods. They’re worshipped by everyone. Our job is to make it known that there’s only one God, and it’s not them. We want to increase the equality level between men and women. Equality between the sexes is something that just doesn’t exist in Brazil. When we enter poor neighbourhoods we’re greeted by the women and children with great respect.’

It’s evening again at the 9th Precinct. The waiting-room is packed with familiar faces. Detective Marinelli is in a sombre mood. Her worst nightmare has been realized – the Corinthians have just lost their game.

‘You better put some extra chairs in the waiting-room,’ she says to her assistant. ‘It looks as if things will get really busy here tonight.’