In 2000, the National Congress established May 18 as the National Day to Combat Abuse and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents. The date was chosen in memory of Araceli Cabrera Crespo, a girl who was murdered 50 years ago in Vitória. In 1973, the body of Araceli, who was 8 years old, was found days after she disappeared outside school. From the evidence, it was concluded that she was raped and killed. Two heirs of powerful families in Espírito Santo, Dante de Barros Michelini and Paulo Constanteen Helal, were accused of drugging, raping and killing the girl. Furthermore, the father of one of them, Dante Brito Michelini, was accused of contributing to the crime and using his influence to hinder investigations. All pleaded not guilty and, despite having been convicted in the first trial, were acquitted after appeal. Due to impunity and high visibility, the Araceli case has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence against children and adolescents. Now that the case completes five decades, Espírito Santo journalists Felipe Quintino and Katilaine Chagas have released the book O Caso Araceli – Mistérios, Abusos e Impunidade, in which they have looked at the judicial process in an unprecedented way, in addition to interviewing witnesses and analyzing journalistic coverage of crime. In an interview with Rádio Nacional, with a transcript reproduced by Agência Brasil, they explain that the objective of the work is to reveal the gaps in the investigation that contributed to Araceli’s death going unpunished. Q: Why were you interested in retrieving information about the case? Felipe: It has always had a very strong impact here in Espírito Santo. I already saw some journalists older and more experienced than me talking about the case and I realized that this was a topic of great social relevance and of great importance for the discussion about violence against children and adolescents, right? Then came the idea of trying to tell what this story was and also trying to pass on the understanding of what it was at that time, and what it is today, the theme of violence. So, I think the central idea was to discuss crime in order to understand the stages of the whole process and also how it influences and is repeated today in Brazil. Q: The book is subtitled Mysteries, Abuses and Impunity. Why do you use the word “abuse” in the plural? Katilaine: The word abuse first recalls the violence that the girl suffered, but also the exploitation they made of the whole case: political exploitation, media exploitation… And the exposure that the family suffered with all this is also abuse, especially the mother her. That she was a victim, when she lost her daughter, and is still a victim when she is associated with responsibility for the crime. One thing that is mentioned a lot is that she asked her daughter to be released from school early on the day of the crime, as if it had not been a family decision. The second thing is that some newspapers at the time even claimed, with complete certainty, that she knew some of the accused and even that she was grooming her daughter. And there is no proof of that. And we think that this is a current issue because even today, mothers of victims are also seen being abused. Sometimes the mother was not even at the scene of the crime, committed by the child’s father or stepfather. The mother is not even aware of the situation, but she is blamed for violence that she did not commit. Felipe: There was also abuse by the authorities themselves: leniency, delay in the investigation, delay in the trial. For example, her mortal remains were held here in Vitória for three years, while investigations were ongoing, before her burial in the city of Serra. This is abuse, right? This is tremendous violence. Q: The case has become a symbol of the fight against child sexual violence, and it has always seemed very resolved. What mysteries did you find? Katilaine: The process, which has 33 volumes and 12,000 pages, has many gaps. The narrative of what happened is not given. It is a reflection of what was the quality of the investigation, the omission of the investigation. A mixture of incompetence and willful ill will. To this day, it is not known where Araceli was killed, for example. It is speculated that it was not where she was found because she had her body there, but there was nothing else of her. She was without clothes, she didn’t have the school supplies she used when she left school, she didn’t have blood in her body anymore. There are even doubts about how long she stayed there until she was found, which is one of the points that the defense of the accused uses to break the narrative of the Public Ministry. Felipe: The book also comes to try to shed light on these issues. We have to take this to the 70’s. What context was that? What police was that? What Holy Spirit was that? Now in 2023 there are still cases that remain without a definition, so imagine that in 73, during the military dictatorship. We also try to see with the look and structure of that time. But the police, even in this situation, should have carried out a more organized investigation. Like the main court case in Espírito Santo, we don’t know where the photos taken by the police ended up, which disappeared? Carlos Éboli, a well-known expert from Rio de Janeiro, came to Espírito Santo to analyze the case and, when he returned to Rio, he wrote a letter to say that he believed that people of great economic power were involved in order for them to erase the evidence. The dynamics of crime is a gap. There is a question whether she was kidnapped on foot, whether she was kidnapped from a car. Where did her death happen, when did it happen. Katilaine: Throughout the entire process, there are several citations to powerful people who may have influenced the disappearance of the evidence, without naming them. Then these names appear. There is dissatisfaction even among the police regarding external interference in the case. One of the accused participated in the proceedings. The reader can weigh in and say whether he thinks they are innocent, or guilty, but these complaints existed within the police themselves as well. Another gap is that it was concluded that she was sexually abused by the way she was found, by the characteristics of this type of crime. But no evidence of this has been produced. Q: A lot of true crime, investigative mystery crime content is being made these days, and a lot of it tries to uncover the truth about these crimes. But that’s not the point of your book, is it? Felipe: Our idea has always been to tell a story. We are journalists, so we look for the court case, interviews and also press material. Our focus was to investigate the information from the process, to dispel some rumors, to check what matched what the authorities said. Sometimes, we think we know a story, but when you look at the documentation, it’s another reality. And the reader needs to understand that this documentation also needs to be questioned, that it is an official source like any other. And then we try to confront the possible sources to try to tell the story. It is the first time that the Araceli case is discussed with information from the process. From the beginning, the idea was not to bring a possible discovery of what happened in the sense of a police plot, but to try to make a connection with the current situation of violence against children. The accused were convicted in the first instance in 1980, but they were not arrested, they were only held preventively before conviction. Then, they appealed against the sentence, and it was annulled more than 18 years after the crime, in 1991. The book also shows these different understandings. A judge thinks he has the evidence; another judge thinks he doesn’t, looking at the same material. There are more than 300 testimonials that the book also tries to show, in addition to these changes in legal understanding over time. Q: In addition to the desk review, who did you interview? Katilaine: We tried to listen to the main characters in this story. Araceli’s and the accused’s families, and we managed to speak with two of her brothers, we spoke with the boy who found the body and with people who lived at the time. Journalists who saw firsthand what happened. But we came across people who are too afraid to speak, even today. Some people said, off the record (confidentially), that they were threatened and did not want to be interviewed. Felipe: The journalists gave a little of the context of the time to help us analyze the press material and the judicial process. I spoke with one of the Michelini family lawyers and with the Helal family lawyer, who even scheduled an interview, but later canceled it. But, unfortunately, some witnesses are still afraid. How is it that, 50 years later, these silences still mark the case? Q: One of the main avenues in Vitória is called Dante Michelini, in honor of the grandfather of one of the accused. This has always been a huge controversy. How do you see this issue? Katilaine: This is something that still touches the hearts of people from Espírito Santo. It is always a discussion, some councilor or councilor tries to change the law to change the name of the avenue, and we have noticed that it is an agenda of the readers. Perhaps they could place the responsibility on the population to decide the best alternative, keeping the name or adopting another one. Felipe: It is worth explaining the context a little. Who was Dante Michelini? He was a coffee grower here in Espírito Santo, president of the Coffee Trade Center in the 1950s. He died in 1965, before the crime. And he is Dante’s father and Dantinho’s grandfather, who were two of those accused of the crime. But the avenue has other contradictions. The Bar Franciscano, where the Araceli girl would have been taken, according to the complaint, was also on that avenue. And, at the end of it, there is now an Araceli Memorial. Some projects have already passed in the Chamber of Vitória to try to change the name [da avenida], and all were rejected. I defend the idea that 50 years ago, it’s time for a popular consultation, for the population to know the whole story and give their opinion on whether or not they want this avenue to change its name. Q: How does your book reflect on current cases of violence against children and adolescents? Felipe: Fifty years later, it is still a current case, because there are many similar cases. Cases with extreme visibility and in which the culprits have not been satisfactorily identified, to the point of being considered the real culprits by the Justice. If, in this case, with this visibility, there was no conclusion, imagine in cases that do not have the same visibility. We think of this book as a way to throw these issues in our face, as a society. In the book, there is even a chapter dedicated to more recent and similar cases. It’s a story that has to be told so that it inspires other people to keep looking for answers, not just in the punitive sense, but not to let it happen. To mess with the culture of society that allows this case to continue current. Katilaine: When we see the investigation of the case, we notice a lot of lack of care. There is a more recent case that we cite, which was only revealed because the mother chased after it. She reported her daughter missing, the police made no visible effort, so the mother herself investigated and discovered video surveillance footage of the moment her daughter was kidnapped and, from that, they reached the abuser, who pointed out where the body was from the girl. It’s absurd for this kind of thing to happen. Children still do not have their legal rights respected. Another recent case, which also became a national issue, was that of a raped girl, who was impregnated by the abuser and had her data leaked by the public authorities. This is absurd, and it’s not a 50 year old case, this happened now. Felipe: The idea of telling this past is how it can help us understand this present of permanence of violence. Data show that four girls aged up to 13 are raped per hour in Brazil. These are alarming data, which are still underreported. They are the ones who reach the authorities. And we can’t forget that it’s a series of violence, right? Impunity is also violence. Fifty years later, looking at what happened to Araceli, and the consequences of that, is to shed light on this current moment of permanence of violence against children and adolescents. And we have projects to continue working with this and other cases of violence in Espírito Santo. And who knows, maybe one day he will stop being an example of impunity.
Agência Brasil
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