Throughout life, we learn that there are some things we shouldn’t talk about, others we shouldn’t even think about. However, by keeping quiet about the obvious, the absurd gains ground until it becomes normal, and from normal, it becomes necessary and correct. Sometimes you have to think differently and risk saying the wrong thing.
Newsdesk (27/12/2023 15:08, Gaudium Press) The woman was surprised when there was a knock on the door, as she wasn’t expecting anyone and it wasn’t normal to receive a visit so early, not even from the postman, as it wasn’t yet seven in the morning. She put her dressing gown over her pyjamas and went to answer the door.
At the door, a friendly middle-aged woman introduced herself as a social worker, accompanied by a young man and two smiling girls. The young man was carrying a basket and one of the girls a bouquet of flowers. Faced with the surprise of the owner of the house, who didn’t understand what was going on, the leader of the group asked if they could come in.
Once inside the house, she explained that they had come to assist her and her husband and also to prepare breakfast for them. The young man smiled and showed her the basket containing a variety of good quality food.
The social worker also explained that the two girls were in charge of tidying up the house, a good clean to put everything in order. Still unable to understand the unusual situation, the lady went to wake up her husband who, being depressed, was no longer able to get up early as usual.
– Wake up, Antonio, there are some people there. They say they’ve come to make us breakfast and clean the house.
– But what’s the point? We don’t have the money to pay for these things.
– I told the woman, but she said it’s all taken care of by the government.
The reason for the visit
While the couple eat their hearty breakfast, the social worker reads a message of encouragement to them, with a beautiful musical backdrop, and the boy with the basket serves them. Let me explain who these people are.
Mr. Antonio and Mrs. Mercedes had only one son, Robson, 17, an exemplary, studious and hard-working boy. He went to secondary school at night and during the day he worked as an assistant in a pharmacy in the neighbourhood where they lived. An honourable, God-fearing family, they brought up their only son very well, and they were very proud of him. No wonder! Despite working from a young age and studying at night, the boy had done very well in the national exams and managed to get into a public university to study Biomedicine.
Two weeks earlier, on his way home from a snack bar with friends, he was approached by two boys on a motorbike. A robbery. All very fast. They took his wallet and mobile phone. According to witnesses, there was no reaction, yet one of the motorbike occupants shot him three times. Robson’s life was also taken.
A recovery centre for relatives of victims of violence
The parents were devastated. How to understand something like that? How to accept it? Fortunately, Antonio and Mercedes live in an almost perfect world and, despite the terrible pain of losing their only child in such a brutal way, the government took steps that would change their lives.
The team returned twice more that week and, the following week, they came with news. The government decided that they deserved to go to a more appropriate place for their recovery: a kind of spa, where they wouldn’t have to worry about anything apart from recovering from the trauma they had suffered.
Mr. Antonio would no longer have to work, but would continue to receive his salary as normal. And Mrs. Mercedes, who was a housewife, would no longer have to worry about household chores. In the place where they would be taken to live out the next few years of their lives, she would have workers at her disposal who would wash, iron, cook and keep the house in order. In this place, a rehabilitation colony for relatives of victims of violent acts, they would have a beautiful little house with flowers in the window and a trained dog to keep them company.
They would attend workshops in handicrafts, gardening, carpentry, classes in several languages of their choice, physical exercise three times a week, massage therapy and individual and group psychological counselling, as well as various interesting outings. All at government expense.
Well cared for orphanhood
Another case is that of three minors, Tales, Mariana and Douglas, aged 9, 7 and 5, children of security guard Jesualdo Serafim, who was killed in a robbery at the bank branch where he worked as a security guard. Jesualdo was taken hostage and used as a human shield. He died in the exchange of fire between the bandits and the police.
Soon after the murder, the younger children were removed from the community where they lived, together with their mother, and placed in a nice apartment in a good area of the city. The three of them were transferred from public school to private school and will have their studies paid for by the government until they finish college, as well as receiving a hefty allowance that allows the mother to look after them without having to work, pay for various extracurricular courses for the children and a person to help them with the housework.
The family was also given a car, but as Mrs. Marcia is afraid to drive, the government provided a driver, who takes the children to and from school every day and accompanies Mrs. Marcia wherever she needs to go.
What would it be like in a perfect world?
This treatment and compensation certainly won’t erase the pain caused by the violence that took the lives of young Robson and the hard-working father of the Serafim family, but it will at least ease the difficulties of these families and address the wounds caused by these losses. In both cases, the killers were arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison, without the right to parole.
This is how justice works in an almost perfect world. In a perfect world, these families wouldn’t go through this, they wouldn’t suffer these losses, because there would be no robberies or violence.
I’m writing this text in a car, returning from a cultural activity at a rehabilitation centre for juvenile offenders. Apart from the heavy iron gates and bars that separate all the rooms, the interior is very beautiful, with vegetable and flower gardens and a large dining hall where five meals a day are served, prepared under the supervision of a nutritionist.
On the day of the visit, which took a long time to arrange due to the children’s busy schedules, some were unable to attend because they were in another city at a basketball tournament. After a round of reading and conversation between the guests and the young people, a hearty and tasty snack was served.
We were then shown all the areas of the house: games room, a mini sports hall, video room, library, study rooms and computer room. The young people also take part in vocational courses, both inside and outside the unit, have music lessons, theatre classes and various artistic and sporting activities. All funded by the government.
So young and already deprived of their freedom
With the exception of the bedrooms, whose doors are locked at night, circulation in all the rooms is free and there is an atmosphere geared towards the well-being of the young men who live there. Young men with a few characteristics in common, such as not looking at their interlocutor and saying “sir” every three words they speak.
I can’t help but admit that the situation was uncomfortable for me. And even more uncomfortable was hearing from one of the ladies who took part in the activity, with a tone of pity: “Poor things, so young and already deprived of their freedom!”
Regardless of the social issues and the alleged reasons for committing the offences, there are no innocents there. They are criminals under the legal age for imprisonment. They are thieves, drug dealers and murderers; apparently “repentant and recovered”. In practice, most of them are repeat offenders: they do their time, get out, commit new crimes and come back. Any one of them could have killed the son of Antonio and Mercedes to steal a wallet with no money and a mobile phone. Any one of them could have taken the life of a good citizen who worked honestly to support his children.
I know these are words that may shock you, but they are words devoid of hypocrisy, and I write them only because I would prefer to live in a world where the victims and their families are treated with respect and dignity, since a world where injustice and violence don’t even exist is a long way off.
By Afonso Pessoa
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
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