MPF-PA awaits clarification from Damares Alves on ‘torture of trafficked children’

Ívina Garcia – from Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – The Federal Public Ministry (MPF) is still awaiting the registration of formal complaint about crimes of torture suffered by children and babies allegedly trafficked, reported by former minister of the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights (MMFDH), Damares Alves, during campaign for president and re-election candidate Jair Bolsonaro (PL), on Sunday, 9.

Damares reported during a service at the Assembly of God in Goiânia (GO), that children from the island of Marajó, in Pará, are trafficked abroad and subjected to the extraction of teeth and severe diets to enable sexual practices and also stated that the number of rape of newborns has grown and that the Ministry would have on hand, videos of these actions.

Read also: Jurists say Damares Alves may be charged with electoral crime for spreading lies

According to the MPF-PA, the body responsible for receiving and investigating these reports, between 2006 and 2015, three civil inquiries and one police inquiry were opened based on reports of child trafficking in Marajó, but none of the reports had the “torture cited by former minister Damares Alves”.

The MPF unit in Pará is still waiting for information from the executive secretary of the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights (MMFDH), Tatiana Barbosa de Alvarenga, about the alleged crimes cited by the former minister. On Tuesday, 11, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office for the Rights of the Citizen (PFDC), an MPF body for the defense of human rights, and the MPPA also requested this information from the MMFDH. 

Read also: Former minister and senator-elect Damares says reports of child abuse ‘are conversations you have on the street’

Prosecutors in Pará are also asking the Executive Secretariat of the MMFDH to inform what steps it took when it discovered the cases and if there was a representation (denunciation) to the Public Ministry or the Police.

At first, the former minister and now senator-elect said that the denunciations were contained in reports from Parliamentary Investigation Commissions (CPIs) already closed and from reports sent to the Ministry’s Ombudsman. After the repercussion of her speech, Damares attributed the accusations to conversations she had “on the street” with people from Marajó.