#Woman #children #rescued #Brazil #years #kidnapping #ordeal
A Brazilian woman and her two adult children, all suffering from dehydration and malnutrition, were freed by police after her husband’s 17-year captivity, authorities said on Friday.
The police became aware of the case in a slum in western Rio de Janeiro through an anonymous tip.
“The two youths, the children of the woman and the suspect, were tied up, soiled and starved to death,” Rio military police, who arrested the father, said in a statement.
The woman and her children, aged 19 and 22, according to local media, were taken to hospital in a condition of “severe dehydration and malnutrition,” local emergency services said.
According to Internet news site G1, the mother told authorities that she and her children sometimes went three days without food and were regularly subjected to physical and mental abuse.
Her husband, Luiz Antonio Santos Silva, to whom she had been married for 23 years, told her she would not leave home until “you were dead,” she said.
In pictures released by Brazilian media, the adult children looked like adolescents due to their malnutrition.
“When we saw the condition of the two children, we thought they would not have survived another week,” an unnamed resident of the Guaratiba neighborhood, where the family lives, told G1.
“I tried to speak to the mother in the ambulance but she was so weak she didn’t make a sound.”
Neighbors told authorities the suspect earned the nickname DJ because he turned up the music to drown out his victims’ screams.
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