The sole survivor of the House of Death dies.
Inês Etienne Romeu died this Monday at the age of 72; she spent about two months in the house where she was brutally tortured, raped, and witnessed victims of the military dictatorship being tortured and killed.
Flávia Villela - Reporter for Agência Brasil
The only survivor of the clandestine torture center Casa da Morte, in Petrópolis, mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, Inês Etienne Romeu, died today (27) at the age of 72. Inês spent about two months in the house, where she was brutally tortured, raped and witnessed victims of the military dictatorship being tortured and killed.
Inês was born in Pouso Alegre (MG), but moved to São Paulo in her youth, when she joined the Revolutionary Popular Vanguard (VPR). She was arrested and kidnapped in May 1971 in São Paulo. Thanks to the struggle of her family and lawyers, Inês was handed over to the Justice system and sentenced to life imprisonment, which freed her from clandestine imprisonment. She was also the last political prisoner of the military dictatorship to be released in Brazil, eight years later, in 1979, by the Amnesty Law. In 2009, she received the Human Rights Award in the category of Right to Memory and Truth, presented by then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Inês helped the Truth Commissions in the search for the whereabouts of disappeared political prisoners and in the identification of torturers. In her testimony, she reported being forced to cook naked in front of her jailers and being raped twice by one of them. Inês Etienne identified nine left-wing activists who, according to her, were murdered in the House of Death.
In 2003, at the age of 61, Inês was attacked by a carpenter hired for domestic work, suffering several blows to the head, which left her with neurological limitations. The carpenter was never identified. At the time, she lived in Niterói, in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro.