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V. Beatings and Collective Punishment

“They beat us.  They beat us with wood,” Carlos P., a sixteen-year-old in Santo Expedito, said in a rush as soon as he sat down to speak with us.  When Human Rights Watch’s researcher asked him who did the beating, he replied, “The guards [os agentes].”⁶³

We heard similar accounts from other youths we interviewed about their experiences in Santo Expedito and Padre Severino.  When we asked Marcos G., age seventeen, whether he felt safe in Santo Expedito, he said, “Not at all.  They beat us all the time.  In Padre also.  You get a thrashing on arrival.”⁶⁴

Anderson F., age seventeen, told us that he had been beaten in Padre Severino nine days before we spoke to him in May 2005.  “One of those officials bashed me there.  You’ve seen this purple eye,” he said, pointing to a bruise below his right eye.  He continued: 

This is from there. . . .  We were playing a game, and they thought we were fucking with them.  It was time for lights out and they were having a barbecue outside. . . .    At that time, there can’t be any more noise.   So then they caught me, because I was part of the group, and they gave me a bunch of blows to the face.⁶⁵

Silvia R., the mother of seventeen-year-old Marcos R., saw a guard hit another youth when she was visiting her son in Padre Severino in May 2005.  “I saw an adolescent take two blows during the time for visits, in front of everybody, including his mother,” she said.  She explained:

The adolescents were mouthing off.  So a [female] guard gave two blows, hard blows with her open hand, on the back of one.  She looked at the other and said, “We’ll talk later.”  Right away I got up to complain, but my son asked me, “Mom, don’t do this, because I’ll get beaten also.”

We asked her if she ever saw another situation like this one during a visit.  “Yes,” she replied.  “Once in a while I saw an adolescent taken away by a guard.  When he returned, he would have a bruise on his head, and he said he fell.  No way did he fall.”⁶⁶

Other parents reported that the guards in Padre Severino beat their sons. For example, Cristiane B.’s son told her that guards had beaten him.  “He had these purple bruises.  But it wasn’t possible during the visit to lift up his clothes to see.  If he had, they would have beaten him even more inside.”⁶⁷

We heard reports of beatings at CAI-Baixada as well.  “In CAI I was beaten also, but less than in Padre,” André S. told us.  “I only took one blow on the back there.”⁶⁸  The girls we interviewed in Santos Dumont, in contrast, told us that they had not seen or heard of beatings in that detention center.⁶⁹

Forceful blows with an open hand were the most common method, youths told us.   “Many slaps on the face,” reported João T., age seventeen.  “I’ve seen kicks also, them kicking others.  Slaps on the chest, too.”⁷⁰   Guards in Padre Severino and Santo Expedito also beat youths with pieces of wood, some of which they gave names.  André S. told us:

In Padre, there was the famous Kelly Key.  A big piece of wood, tough to break.  Whenever they took it out, everybody got quiet.  They also had the Thundercat, a big, thick club, enormous.  The Thundercat sword. . . .  They beat us with that, too.  They gave us [open-handed] blows on the chest and the face.  They hit us right on the face.⁷¹

“I ended up swollen here,” he added, pointing to his arm.  He was hit twice on the head on another occasion, he said.⁷²  His account was not the first time we had heard of the use of “Kelly Key”—in November 2004, the nongovernmental organization Projeto Legal reported that a guards in Padre Severino had delivered blows to a youth using “a piece of wood called ‘Kelly Key.’”⁷³ 

When guards in Padre Severino and Santo Expedito beat youths, it was often for failing to follow arbitrary rules.  In Padre Severino, for example, André S. told us:

You had to eat fast.  One person couldn’t finish before [the others]; otherwise, those who didn’t finish were beaten.  And no talking.  Keep your head down and stay quiet.  If you speak, it’s over.  I saw one guard bash a boy’s chin into the table.⁷⁴

Other instances of violence lacked even the pretense of a justification.  For example, Silvia R. told us that a guard threw toiletries at her son.  She explained how this happened:

They’re numbered, you know?  So my son was new there; he didn’t know the system, so he didn’t know that normally they shout out their numbers and throw the supplies into the cells.  So my son went to the door of the cell thinking that he would be handed [the soap].  The guard threw the soap in my son’s face.  During the visit, I saw that he had a bump on his eyebrow.⁷⁵

We also heard reports that guards beat youths after provoking them with insults.  In Padre Severino, for example, “they have that tendency,” André S. reported.  “They know that our mothers are sacred [to us].  They keep insulting our mothers.  So then one of us will say something and then they’ll give him a blow to the face.”⁷⁶

Guards administered some beatings as collective punishment.  For instance, seventeen-year-old João T. told us that when he was in Padre Severino, “There when they come to beat [somebody] in one cell, they beat [people] in all [the cells], not just those who did something, and that’s wrong.  In a cell, if somebody misbehaves [fazer bagunça], everybody pays.”⁷⁷  André S. said, “In Padre, if one person does something, everybody pays.  I got beaten because of [something done by] somebody else.  If one person got up to something, everybody paid for it.”⁷⁸  Anderson F. gave a similar account. “In Padre, one person does something, but everybody pays.  It isn’t that somebody takes the blame and just that person gets beaten.”⁷⁹

Marcos G. described a recent instance of collective punishment in Santo Expedito:

One day just a while ago they locked us all down here.  They beat everybody, everybody from the section.  They stopped only when some people took the blame. . . .  But I didn’t have anything at all to do with it.  All the same, we stayed locked up all day in a room without water, without food, without anything.  There were about fourteen of us.  We stayed there for one day.  They gave us something to eat for lunch and dinner only after a long time.  At the beginning there wasn’t any way to go to the bathroom, and finally after a long time they took us out to go. . . . .  The ones who took the blame were taken before the court . . . .  They went through the system all over again.⁸⁰

André S. initially told us that guards did not administer collective punishments at CAI-Baixada.  “There, only those who did something paid for it,” he said.  Later in our interview, however, he suggested that group punishment did occur there.  Explaining how a beating might occur, he said:

For example, if there were a bunch of people talking at 10 pm, then they would take only the one who was talking out of the cell to the little room.  They had a little room where they beat people between the offices and the infirmary and the triage area where the most rebellious stayed.  If nobody admitted to it, they would take out everybody and give us blows on the chest.⁸¹

We heard accounts that extended cell confinement is used as a group punishment as well.  Maria N., a sixteen-year-old in Santos Dumont, told us that when one person does something wrong, “All of us get locked up for two days at most or maybe three.”⁸²  Youths reported the same at Santo Expedito.

It goes without saying that Brazilian and international law prohibit guards from beating youths in detention.⁸³  International standards also call for the prohibition of collective sanctions.⁸⁴  More generally, international standards only permit authorities to use force in restricted circumstances—for example, to prevent a youth from inflicting self-injury, injuries to others, or serious destruction of property.  Even then, the use of force should be limited to exceptional cases, where all other methods have been exhausted; use of force should never cause humiliation or degradation.  Finally, detention center officials should always inform family members of injuries that result from the use of force, and should do so immediately if the use of force results in serious injuries or death. ⁸⁵

Much of Santo Expedito was destroyed in a November 2002 fire, leading to severe overcrowding in the remainder of the facility when Human Rights Watch visited in July 2003.
(c) 2003 Michael Bochenek/Human Rights Watch.

When Human Rights Watch returned to Santo Expedito in May 2005, the destroyed portions of the buildings had been renovated but were no longer used for housing areas.  A bottle recycling project and administrative offices occupy an area that formerly contained approximately 45 percent of the detention center’s cells.
(c) 2005 Michael Bochenek/Human Rights Watch.