Posthumous letter to Sabrina Bittencourtt

Night was falling in Rio de Janeiro when I started receiving the first messages reporting your disappearance, Sabrina. The disappearance of the activist for the rights of victims of sexual abuse, the disappearance of a friend, the woman who helped expose the medium João de Deus and also the "guru" Prem Baba, two of the many religious leaders accused of rape in Brazil.

From the girl who was abused in childhood by Mormons, men of her family's religion who should have protected her, to the woman who became strong and created the NGO United Victims, activist Sabrina has been doing fantastic work against the silence and hypocrisy that protect abusers in Brazil.

A few minutes after arriving home, I received a message from my friend Gabriela Cilento Montenegro, asking me to help her find out, through friends at the Brazilian embassy in Lebanon, if you had gone to the Middle East, since you had been frequently changing countries due to death threats you had received. But the information I was getting, Sabrina, was confusing and made us apprehensive.

Some friends claimed that you had indeed entered Lebanon, and hours later, your son, Gabriel, confirmed that you had indeed entered Lebanon, in the Middle East that has welcomed me so many times and where my grandparents were born.

Today I believe that perhaps we could have saved her, Sabrina, if you had distanced yourself a little from the toxic atmosphere of social media, from the threats of medieval men who dedicate their empty lives to hatred of women, to misogyny, and to the virtual inquisitorial bonfires that social networks have become in Brazil.

You fought hard to give voice to the victims of a John who was never of God. You made long emotional and geographical journeys, but remained connected to something too dark, being targeted by one of the most dangerous, shadowy, and hypocritical criminal factions in the world today: the fundamentalist, pseudo-Christian far-right that came to power in Brazil.

The faction that propelled men like Jair Bolsonaro to power, as well as the fanatical followers of Malafaias, Olavos, Joãos, and Macedos.

You were geographically distant, but remained accessible to the most cruel and vile elements in Brazil, receiving death threats from insecure and unmanly men who celebrate the deaths of indigenous children, Palestinian children, and Black children in Rio, who dream of a weapon that will make them feel more manly than they actually are. Men who celebrate the deaths of women throughout Brazil and claim that femicide doesn't exist. Men who idolize the genocidal state led by Netanyahu, men who have never read enough to understand that the current Israel, which was born in 1948, is not the biblical Israel that ended more than 2 years ago (and the Bible itself says so). Men who smell of sulfur and worship only death.

Hydrophobic, lobotomized men, fed daily rations of misogyny and hatred for moral dwarfs like Paulo Pavesi, Olavo de Carvalho, and Silas Malafaia.

A little over a year ago, Sabrina, in addition to my work as a writer and journalist, I started recording videos talking about religious intolerance in Brazil, about misogyny in Brazil, about what surprised me in what I saw in the Middle East, about my work with refugee women, and about the religious hatred fueled by Olavo de Carvalho. That's when thousands of Olavo's insane followers – and Olavo himself – cowardly invaded that space to attack me, causing immense pain to my family and my daughter, who was only 12 years old at the time.

I decided to fight.

You, Sabrina, fought tirelessly too, but yesterday, for reasons that only you truly know, you decided to leave.

We couldn't save her.

The false prophets, who have nothing in common with the message of Christ, triumphed on last night's dark night.

Forgive me, Sabrina.

I would be passing through Spain in April, before returning to Syria for my humanitarian work with refugee women, and we would meet in Barcelona.

Forgive me, Sabrina.

Forgive me for crying today for you, for Brazil, for the country we have become, for the hug I didn't give you in time, for the words I couldn't say to you in time, for the book I couldn't give you, for your life, which I couldn't save.

Pain tears me apart today, but I know that, somehow, you will live on in each of us.

You were a seed of wheat and will germinate forever in each of us.