The city hall of Porto Alegreat the Rio Grande do Sul, announced on Thursday night, the 9th, the creation of an exclusive shelter for women and children. Decision takes place after arrest of six people on suspicion of rape in shelters intended for people who were left homeless after the floods that devastated the State.
The shelter will be installed this weekend at the Parthenon Regional Forum, in the East Zone of the capital, in partnership with the Court of Justice and other entities.
According to the city hall, of the 140 municipal shelters, 127 began to have private surveillance during the night as of this Thursday and the expectation is that this will become 24 hours a day from the next few days onwards. “We understand that people need to feel safe in this fragile moment,” said the person responsible for the shelters and president of Procempa, Leticia Batistella.
People rest in a shelter after their homes were flooded by heavy rain in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Saturday, May 4, 2024. Photograph: Carlos Macedo/AP
The arrests of the six people on suspicion of rape were also confirmed on Thursday by delegate Sandro Caron, state secretary of Public Security.
According to the Civil Police, which is investigating the cases, one of the crimes occurred in Viamão, a municipality in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul. The suspect was preventively arrested for the crime of rape of a vulnerable person.
Questioned by journalists, the governor Eduardo Leite (PSDB) said that there is suspicion of involvement of relatives of the victims in the cases investigated.
“What we observe are precisely cases that, in principle, regrettably, involve the children’s family members, which signals the possibility of these abuses having already occurred previously, and the situation in the shelters has exposed this and given the opportunity for action by public authorities,” he stated. the governor during a press conference.
At the time, Leite had already informed about the possibility of creating exclusive shelters.
The city hall’s latest report reports that 13,100 people are in shelters organized both by the municipality and other institutions.
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