A Brazilian woman enslaved as a maid from the age of eight for almost four decades and forced into marriage has been rescued in a rare crackdown on domestic slavery.
The 46-year-old was found living in a small room in an apartment in Patos de Minas, in the south eastern state of Minas Gerais. She had worked for the family for most of her life without pay or any time off, according to labour inspectors.
The victim was given up as a child by her destitute parents to a professor at Patos de Minas University, Unipam, and raised by his mother, inspectors said.
“They gave her food when she was hungry, but all other rights were taken from her,” Humberto Camasmie, the inspector in charge of the rescue, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The woman’s name has been withheld to protect her identity.
Domestic servitude in Brazil is difficult to identify and tackle because victims rarely see themselves as modern slaves, officials said. Of 3,513 workers found in slavery-like conditions between 2017 and 2019, only 21 were held in domestic servitude.
A lawyer representing the professor’s family said that they had been presented as guilty before their case was heard in court. A spokesman for Unipam said the professor had been suspended by the university and that “all legal measures are being taken”.
