Employers are suspected of taking benefit of an elderly woman held for 27 years in slavery

An action by labor auditors and the Public Ministry of Labor rescued an 82-year-old woman who, according to the agency, had been working in a job analogous to slavery for 27 years in a house in an upscale neighborhood in Ribeirão Preto (333 km from São Paulo ).

According to the investigation, the bosses withdrew social security benefit from the victim without passing it on to her. The report tried to hear the boss, a pediatrician, in one of the health units where she works, without success. The Federal Police did not disclose the name of the lawyer of the couple suspected of the crime.

According to the complaint, the victim lived for three decades in a maid’s room with a bathroom attached to the bosses’ mansion, in Ribeirânia, an upscale neighborhood in the interior of São Paulo, and worked without weekly days off or vacations. She also helped raise the bosses’ children, who also became doctors.

Illiterate and a domestic worker since childhood, the victim went through three employers and would have been “given”, as belonging, to the current employer by a friend of hers, according to investigators.

Prosecutor Henrique Correa said he had never seen “such a cruel case” in his career: “She had a spartan routine of chores around the house, she didn’t know how to use a cell phone. Apart from the so-called ‘damage of annihilated existence’, because that person had no chance to have a dignified life”. She told auditors that she didn’t date and never dated.

In addition to maintaining the abusive relationship, according to the Ministry of Labor, the pediatrician and the textile entrepreneur who employed the victim also defrauded the social security system and withheld the benefit to cover the victim’s household expenses. According to the elderly woman, the boss claimed that she saved the money to buy her a house.

The inspector from the Ministry of Labor, Jamile Freitas Virginio, stated that this was a classic case of contemporary slave labor, with denial of the person as a subject of law.

“We had an abuse of a situation of vulnerability, salary withholding, a systematic denial of all labor rights. Even the weekly rest was not respected as it should have been, vacations were not granted”, said Virginio. The Continued Social Security Benefit received on behalf of the elderly woman was granted irregularly.

The court ordered a blockade of the couple’s assets worth BRL 815,300 and the transfer of sale of a vehicle belonging to the defendants was prevented. Article 149 of the Penal Code, article 149, establishes imprisonment of two to eight years and a fine for those who commit a labor crime analogous to slavery, in addition to the corresponding penalty for violence.

The names of those involved were not disclosed, but a neighbor who requested anonymity told the Sheet having recognized the maid from the photos in the press.

The neighbor said that the elderly woman, always in shabby clothes and wearing worn slippers, asked her for basic items such as pain medication and soap to wash clothes. This led her to think that her doctor neighbor was mean, but she never imagined that she committed the crime analogous to slavery.

The doctor, who attends to children in the municipal public health network, went so far as to say that the housekeeper was “as if she were part of the family”, according to the investigation, but the tax audit of the Ministry of Labor found that she was not invited to the weddings or children’s graduations.

“I asked [à idosa]: Is she your friend? And she said she was a boss, and had no friendship, no,” reported the prosecutor.

Two days were given for presenting the documentation, but there were no receipts for labor rights, social security or any type, even informal, of salary payment. The doctor only presented a late registration of the last five years and the payment of R$ 5,000, considered insignificant in view of the damage caused to the victim.

The police heard those involved and three other employees of the house (a handyman, a gardener and a day laborer) and, according to Pereira, they all received a salary.

The elderly woman, after being rescued and understanding the situation, asked to return to the family home, in Jardinópolis, where the city’s Social Assistance has offered her psychological support. No mistreatment was found, but harassing practices with “forced labor” or “work in degrading conditions”.

“There was the false promise of a house and that really holds the worker back. If you leave, you really don’t get paid. She had the dream of having a house as a reward for all those years of work, and she expressed that, she had this very strong belief that receive it from the employer”, says Virginio.

Anyone who finds people in a similar situation can report anonymously through the website https://www.gov.br/trabalho-e-previdencia/pt-br.