a woman and her two children freed after being sequestered for 17 years

They had been living for 17 years in appalling conditions, hidden from everyone. A Brazilian woman and her two children were released by police in an advanced state of malnutrition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian police said on Friday (July 29th). “The two youths, believed to be the children of the woman and the suspect, were tied up, soiled and malnourished”explained in a press release the military police of Rio, who arrested the father of the family.

The authorities were alerted by an anonymous denunciation and the police operation took place Thursday, in Guaratiba, a popular district in the west of this city.

The woman and her two children, aged 19 and 22 according to local media, were hospitalized shortly after their release, in a state of “severe dehydration and malnutrition”said the municipal health services.

(CREDITS: RIO DE JANEIRO MILITARY POLICE / AFP)

According to the G1 news website, the mother of the family told the authorities that they sometimes went three days without food and that they were constantly victims of physical and psychological attacks. “You have to stay with me until the end, you won’t get out of here until you’re dead”said, according to her, her husband, Luiz Antonio Santos Silva, with whom she had been married for 23 years.