Brazil: Teen “raped” while in police custody

Brazilian police have come under fire after a teenager claimed to have been “raped and tortured” in a jail cell by as many as 20 men for nearly a month.

The teenage girl had been allegedly arrested for stealing in Para state and was apparently the only woman in a police cell filled with nearly two dozen people. She was freed earlier this week though one report noted that she was “covered in bruises and cigarette burns.”

The governor of Para has vowed a full investigation into the girl’s allegations, though human rights groups claim that her situation is not an isolated one:

The regional human rights representative of Brazil's Lawyers Association, Mary Cohen, said she believed the girl had been subjected to "every imaginable type of physical and sexual aggression."

The revelations have unearthed a series of other cases in which women were apparently imprisoned alongside men.

On Wednesday there were reports that a 23-year-old woman had shared a cell with around 70 men in the Amazon town of Parauapebas, also in the state of Para.

Brazilian jails have been infamous for being overcrowded and squalid; a May study by Amnesty International condemned the country’s prisons, while a 2006 State Department report found that male officers “often abused and extorted the prisoners for sexual favors.”

Sources- AHN, BBC News, Guardian UK, The Latin Americanist, State Department

Image- Human Rights Watch (Overcrowded jail cell in Sao Paulo, Brazil)