EDITORIAL – The Sefer Case: equal justice for the five “Ps”
14 de August de 2025
By Márcia Guimarães – From Cenarium
“People are treated differently according to their status, their skin color, and the money they have. All of this plays a huge role in the judicial system and especially in impunity.” The words of the then president of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Minister Joaquim Barbosa, in May 2013, at a UNESCO event in Costa Rica, are a polished version of the popular saying that in Brazil, prison is only for preto (black), puta (prostitute), and pobre (poor), three “Ps” of inequality. Barbosa, a black man in the highest position of the Brazilian judiciary, knew well what he was talking about.
The former minister’s words say a lot about this cover story. In this edition, we bring the “Sefer case,” in which former state deputy of Pará, Luiz Afonso Sefer, sentenced in 2010 to 21 years in prison for continuous sexual abuse of a vulnerable minor, has not served a single day of his sentence to this day. The victim, a girl aged 9 at the time, taken from an interior municipality to Belém to “work in a family household” and study, suffered abuse until she was 13 years old.
The conviction was overturned at least three times in the Pará courts. With endless legal maneuvers and appeals, the ex-legislator’s defense manages to obtain decisions that continuously delay the execution of the sentence, even though the conviction was already confirmed by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ). And so, 16 years have passed with the former deputy free, while the victim lives in a sort of prison without bars, included in a protection program, hidden to stay safe. Now, Sefer is two months away from turning 70, when there will be chances for possible prescription of the sentence.
Besides being a former politician, Sefer is a white doctor whose family owns companies in the health sector. He also maintains close relationships with powerful figures, such as Governor Helder Barbalho. If he were an ordinary low-income worker or a “black, prostitute, or poor,” would Sefer have managed to stay free? This is a question that the people of Pará have been asking themselves over the years.
To our readers, we leave this edition hoping for the day when prison in Brazil will no longer be only for blacks, prostitutes, and the poor, but also for politicians and the powerful. Equal justice for the five “Ps.”
The subject was the cover story and journalistic special of the new edition of CENARIUM MAGAZINE. Click here to read the full content.
