Elderly woman ‘enslaved’ in an upscale neighborhood of SP wins compensation of R$ 350,000

The Justice determined that a domestic worker kept in a situation analogous to slavery in a house in the Alto de Pinheiros region, an upscale area of ​​the capital of São Paulo, receives R$ 350 thousand in compensation for moral damages. The amount must be paid by the former employers.

The court decision was confirmed by the 12th Panel of the TRT-2 (Regional Labor Court of the 2nd Region) last Thursday (17), when the judicial secrecy of the process was also withdrawn. There is still recourse.

The woman was rescued in June 2020 in an operation by the Public Ministry of Labor and the Civil Police, after an anonymous complaint was made through Dial-100 of the Secretariat for Human Rights of the Presidency of the Republic.

In addition to the indemnification, the Court also determined that her labor rights were recognized, such as signing the contract and collecting wages, social security contributions and FGTS (Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço).

Despite having worked for the family since the late 1990s, the elderly woman can only receive amounts referring to the interval between 2015 and 2020 due to the prescription rule, which provides for a limitation on old charges.

Only the amounts of the five years prior to the action can be paid. Recognition of working time, for the right to retirement, for example, is maintained, even without payments.

For federal judge Jorge Eduardo Assad, rapporteur of the case in the 12th Panel, the three former employers – mother, daughter and her husband – were unable to prove that the woman was just a day laborer, with no long-term relationship with the family, nor even though she was autonomous.

In statements, they said that she also worked for other people in the neighborhood and argued that there was no employment relationship.

Assad considered that the testimony of the former employee made the situation of the former employers even more serious. She reportedly said that they “didn’t hit her, they were friends and they helped her”.

“See that, we are not talking about a normal work situation, but a form of submission of the person to the [vontade] of others that exploits them, denying them the condition of employee and even of being human, insofar as it submits them to a condition defined by law as analogous to that of a slave”, he wrote.

The three former employers were also sentenced to pay R$300,000 for collective moral damages, money that must be collected from the FAT (Worker Support Fund). The amounts were increased by the TRT – in the first instance, the collective damage had been calculated at R$ 100 thousand, and the individual damage at R$ 250 thousand.

In addition to the compensation for the maid, the defendants must pay a total amount of at least R$650,000.

The report tried to get in touch with one of the former employers’ defense lawyers, but could not until the text was published.

Elderly woman lived in warehouse and slept on old sofa

According to the Labor Prosecutor’s Office at the time of the rescue, the woman started working with her family in 1998 and remained for 13 years without formal registration. No right, therefore, to vacation or 13th salary.

As of 2011, she moved to another family member’s house, as the property she lived in collapsed. She continued working as a maid, but stopped receiving a salary. She had moved in 2017 to the house she was rescued from.

There, she lived in a room at the back of the lot, which functioned as a kind of storage room, with chairs, shelves and boxes piled up. An old sofa was used as a bed and there was no bathroom.

For Justice, the family admits that there was provision of service only between 1998 and 2011 and only as a day laborer. The storeroom, which they call the edicule in action, would only occasionally be used by the woman for sleeping. According to them, she did not live there.

For the judge reporting the case, the history of the relationship between the maid and the family has deteriorated over the years. “Going to extremes, not only for the payment of wages much less than the minimum, but involving the freedom of the worker”, he said.

Former bosses are sentenced to semi-open

The Justice also sentenced the three ex-bosses on the basis of article 149 of the Penal Code: reducing someone to a condition analogous to that of a slave. The sentences were set at two years and eight months of imprisonment in a semi-open regime.

For Judge Silvio César Arouck Gemaque, from the 9th Federal Criminal Court of São Paulo, the victim was treated “as an object, not as a human person, insofar as he did not receive the minimum conditions that matched it.”

“The defendants took advantage of the fact that the victim was a simple person, as it turned out, to gain an advantage over a similar person,” he wrote in the January 2022 judgment. They can still appeal.