Me, kidnapped

Originally published on 12/12/2005 by O Estado de S. Paulo

EDUARDO NUNOMURA
“Get in, get in, get in”, shouted an armed man, pushing Amanda into the car. “If you open your eyes, you die.” Within seconds, she jumped to the back seat, closing her eyes so hardly that she felt pain. She noted the presence of another man with a weapon over his leg. The getaway vehicle took off in a rush, making her fear for her life. It rained and it was 15 ºC in São Paulo, where another kidnapping had just started. It was the 46.º day of that year, 2004.
In the following minutes, hours perhaps, Amanda thought about many things, but mainly about her family. Would they be worried? Everybody already knew. One of her sisters, who was with her at the scene of the crime, a child buffet in Moema, started to write in the computer: victim’s name, telephone, car model, description of the suspected kidnappers. The police would be informed.
During the getaway, the men ordered Amanda to stop crying. They yelled. But they tried to calm her. They said it was a carjacking and they only wanted to take the car, a silver Citröen Xsara Picasso. Amanda’s mobile started to ring. It was her mother. She did not answer the call. But the kidnappers were already negotiating with another person in their cell phone, looking for an accomplice in some point of the South Zone. “We are passing in front of (market) Extra in (the Bridge) João Dias.” When the car stopped, a third, violent, man announced: “This is a kidnapping.”
Amanda, then a 22-year-old college student, trembled. She peed her pants. She even menstruated ahead of time. Without knowing, she was becoming a part of the statistics of urban violence. The unwilling character in a crime that terrifies São Paulo and other Brazilian capitals.
Last year, there were 112 cases of kidnapping in São Paulo State. Less than the epidemic that spread between 2001 and 2002, when the numbers peaked at 307 and 321. In the three first months of this year, there were 28 cases – the same average of 2004. Last week, there were 7 people in captivity – in the worst years, there were days with 18 kidnappings in course at the same time. Some new gangs appeared since then, but the arrest of leaders and their conviction to more than 20 years in prison have reduced the crime rate.
“There were many cases and we were few. Some police officers suffered from panic syndrome. I was sent to the hospital because of overworking”, recalls sheriff Wagner Giudice, from the Anti-Kidnapping Division (DAS). Today, he has 130 well-trained policemen, almost triple of four years ago. Created in September of 2001, DAS discovered a gang in the Americanópolis neighborhood that was responsible for the epidemic of this crime in the poor districts of the South Zone. They were about 30 youngsters, under 25 years of age, former thieves and a few leaders who acted quickly. They seized the victims and in a couple of days collected a few thousands of reais (Brazilian money) in ransom. “They acted almost without planning, but it worked.”
TECHNOLOGY
This is a crime that evolved through errors and skills. Nelson Piedade, an older outlaw, today imprisoned and condemned, taught the younger ones to refine the kidnappings. One of the basic tactics was to know well the place where the ransom would be delivered. This would prevent arrests. Another lesson was to always threaten the family and demand that the DAS would not get involved in the negotiations. Contacts should be made only by cloned mobile phones, impossible to trace. That was the way Amanda’s kidnappers acted.
“They always made called from a mobile and were always on a motorcycle”, remembers Amanda’s older sister. She could hardly hear what they said because of the noise of the engine in the background. From the first day she became the family negotiator. Methodical, she wrote down the origin of the calls in a map of the Great São Paulo, based on DAS information. Butantã, Lapa, Socorro, São Bernardo do Campo, Campo Belo, Diadema, Capão Redondo, Osasco, among others points, were maked with small pins.
“They see American movies and think Brazilian police can trace the calls.” The tracer only locates the radio base stations, which cover a huge area, with several streets and avenues. The calls from Amanda’s kidnappers had been very fast, most of them lasting for less than two minutes. They did not give any clues about the welfare of Amanda.
TERROR
In a South Zone slum, Amanda suffered. No physical violence, but a lot of verbal harassment. They tested her all the time, with interrogations in the middle of the night. “That was my terror. They asked me everything. I knew that what I said had to match with what my family said to them.” A nightmare that started on a Tuesday and seemed without end from the point she was hurled onto a poor mattress, a stinking blanket and an improvised pillow.
The first orders were: look straight to the corner of two walls, never look backwards, always whisper, make little noise. She had to ask to go to the bathroom, and could never close the door. The hideout smelled bad. The irregular wall tile did not hide the poverty of the house. All the windows had been painted silver. On the first night, Amanda rolled herself in the blanket and felt she would suffocate. She only cried, but did not dare to disobey any of the rules.
At least, she was not hungry. The kidnappers attended her wishes for a sausage sandwich, yogurt, fruits, juices and soft drinks. She could watch soap opera, but only when they allowed it. The rest of the time she had to listen in high volume to police shows such as Cidade Alerta. They wanted to know if the police was after them, if they had become celebrities in the world of crime. Amanda had no idea about what was happening at the home of her sister, the family negotiator.
“From the first call, they told us not to speak to the police”, recalls the sister. They had made three calls, all quick and harsh. On the third day, they asked for the ransom: US$ 1 million. An investigator instructed the family to lie and say they were financially broken, so that the criminals would lower the ransom. “His calm was not in tune with our state of mind.” The three following days were desperate ones. There were no phone calls. The family feared the worst. But everything was going along with the script of kidnapping cases.

Weekend: recess in the kidnapping
It is common to have a break in negotiations during the weekends, which, in the criminals agenda, can start on Fridays or finish on Mondays. The outlaws live a double life. At home, they live with their mothers, women and children. Most of the relatives do not imagine that they sleep with kidnappers, because they pretend to be serious and busy workers. In the weekends, they have fun and even travel to the beach or to the country. After that, they come back to the hideout to frighten victims such as Amanda.
“One day the negotiator arrived in fury because he suspected his cell phone was bugged. Nobody spoke to me and I thought they planned to kill me.” The night lasted forever. Amanda knew she was in a slum and that it was dark already, because of the silence. Different from daylight, when she heard sounds come from the street, such as women speaking loudly, children playing, trucks running, knife and scissor sharpeners, and the sound of “pagode” and funk in the distance. The dawn was only interrupted by the whistle of a night vigilant.
By the end of the ninth day, the family had received almost 20 calls. In one of them, the kidnapper was clear:
– This is a company for me, and she is a product.
– Then I am a businesswoman and I won’t pay if I don’t see the product.
A few hours later, the sister received the proof she asked for. A family friend picked up a letter by the road. When he arrived with the envelope, everybody was shocked by an image of Amanda chained, with knives and weapons pointed at her. Blood dripped from her head. It was ketchup, the DAS officers told them. But how could they know if the photo was really a fake? By that time, Amanda’s family had gathered R$ 5.000. It was nothing, the kidnapper said.
‘SON OF THE DEVIL’
The days passed, with a break in the following weekend. When the negotiations restarted, the sister warned them: “We put together R$ 20.000. It’s everything we have, we are broke.” The kidnapper, perhaps a youngster, no more than 25 years old, who spoke correctly and whose only verbal temper was to say “son of the devil”, thought he could get more money out of the family. He was annoyed by the sudden rise of the ransom. The sister, a 32-year-old trader, remembered a conversation she had with a paranormal friend, in that 14th day of suffering.
“My friend told me Amanda was well, that she would make it out of this, and that I should try to calm down the kidnapper. She told me to say something about my children”, remembers the sister. “This changed his behavior.” In captivity, Amanda did not feel the difference. “You are killing my hope. If you don’t let me go, I’ll commit suicide.” They believed her. The two guards who remained almost 24 hours with her stopped giving her knives for supper, her only daily meal.
In the sixteenth day, Amanda’s sister called the recorded number in the mobile. She was called “insane”. Another call. Without knowing, her boldness calmed down the kidnapper, who imagined that no relative would call if the police had been tracking them. But it was. Kidnappers hate DAS for two reasons. First, because of the risk they represent. Second, because the experienced policemen can get the price of the ransom to fall down brutally from a high amount to some thousands of reais. “You’re a liability for us”, the kidnapper told his victim.
Amanda was despaired by this sentence, but found consolation in an unusual way. In captivity, she heard a neighborhood girl sing songs in awful English almost every day. “One day when I was crying a lot, I heard the girl say: ‘Oh, you are so sad. I’m not. I am so happy.’ It seemed that she was talking to me.” Coincidently, the kidnappers had allowed her to take a bath – the first and only one in seventeen days. She stinks. Her hair, always treated by a fancy hairdresser, was a mess. The few drops of water that fell from the shower could never clean her body.
FAMILIAR TENSION
A new day of silence and the family anguish led to an unnecessary exchange of accusations. Amanda’s sister was stressed out. Her husband too. Her mother, even more. The mother’s husband, stepfather of the victim, got into arguments with everybody. “I gave him the mobile phone and went home.” The next day, irritated by the change of negotiators, the kidnapper said: “Let’s finish this now.” That was the last one of his 63 phone calls.
The ransom money was carried by a taxi driver. He received instructions through the cell phone. He drove around for more than three hours inside the city. There were cases where the delivery lasted up to eight hours. In one road, when he drove over a bridge, he threw the R$ 25.000 in a bag out of the window. The package fell on the road below. That’s one of the tactics used by the kidnappers. Probably, a car was watching the taxi from far away, while someone on a motorcycle picked up the money and ran away.
Back in the hideout, on the night of the 20th and last day, Amanda heard the iron gate of the house opening. The old car was hard to start. She heard the order: “Your time has arrived. If you look at me, I’ll shoot you.” The university student was filled with joy, but also with fear. She put on a shirt given by the kidnapper and closed her eyes. She does not remember if the ride back lasted for minutes or for hours. She was dropped off in Jardim São Luís, in the South Zone. “They told me to count up to 100 with my eyes closed. I counted and when I opened my eyes I saw a gigantic slum.” It was the first vision of freedom.

A scar that lasts forever
The first hug on her mother and sister. The first bath, hot, long and perfumed. The affection of her friends. The comfort of the recently remodeled and decorated apartment. The worst seemed to have passed for Amanda, after twenty days of kidnapping. “Some weeks later, my nightmare started. My home turned into a prison.”
Amanda became a victim of post-traumatic stress, a condition that affects people who live through highly stressful situations, such as kidnappings and assaults with hostages. With more or less intensity, people develop fear, anxiety, anguish, sleeplessness, depression, false recognitions and affection blockades. “The person does not live anymore”, says psychiatrist Eduardo Ferreira-Santos, from the Institute of Psychiatry of Hospital das Clinicas (HC). “We can heal the wound, but the remaining scar is hard to erase.”
Urban violence drives its victims into a permanent state of tension. War survivors know that the battle is finished. For victims of kidnapping, however, the sensation of threat remains. Amanda had three months of therapy with Ferreira-Santos’s team. In her group there were three victims of kidnapping and four of “fast kidnapping” (when the kidnappers keep the victim for short periods inside the car and force her to withdraw money from the bank). She was treated by psychologists Irene Erlinger Calabrez and Kátia Camargo, both volunteers at the HC service. “Amanda arrived very scared, looking aged and with deep dark rings under her eyes from the lack of sleep. A human rag”, remembers Irene.
Those days in captivity were enough to bring back serious and already forgotten family problems – drugs, paternal absence, divorced parents. In the first sessions, as with the other patients, Amanda only cried, played with a small cloth and chewed on her nails, an old habit. “The memories are forever. Sometimes they stay hidden, but they can come back any time”, Irene explains. Before starting therapy, Amanda watched the street all the time from the window of her apartment. She called down to the reception at the slightest sign of movement in the night. She had to take pills to sleep and rarely left the apartment anymore.
Today she remains in fear that criminals will slide through the bathroom window and break into the building. Amanda has reasons to feel like that. During the kidnapping, she discovered that the criminals knew everything about her daily life. Details that she did not even realize until then. They tried to take her twice before. The college student kept a Swiss routine. And until today she does not know if her kidnappers are free. The Anti-Kidnapping Division (DAS) arrested two suspects, but four or five of the kidnappers continue to walk the streets. The group is charged with four other crimes. The hideout was never discovered.
DAS has a database with thousands of cases of kidnappings in São Paulo. The information includes names of the kidnappers, telephone numbers, recorded voices, hideouts and answers to questions “how, when, where and what for”. There are already 600 addresses of hideouts, victims’ characteristics, ransom values and schedule preferences of the criminals (early morning or night). But that brings little comfort to the victims. “The trauma persists forever. I feel awful for them. I think a lot about the families”, says DAS commission agent Wagner Giudice. He’s also a victim of urban violence. His father died on January 1st of 2000, murdered. “I wish that it had been a kidnapping, because I could bring him back.”
LOSS OF STRUCTURE
Amanda’s family broke apart. Mother and children talk very little. The oldest sister believes they are trying to avoid memories of the kidnapping. She remains disturbed, one year later. “When it’s over, the scar hurts in everyone. I take pills, I do not leave the house, I quit my job, I do not want to be part of society anymore”, she admits. “Today I live in my room, looking at the garden through a window with bars. We are the ones in prison.”
For psychiatrist Ferreira-Santos, the biggest challenge for patients such as Amanda and their relatives is to get them to see themselves as survivors instead of victims. And to face violence as something that has passed by and will not return. But the difficulty, he says, is that few people see the side of the patients, who feel abandoned. “Any outlaw has human rights and NGOs that take care of them. Victims don’t have that luxury.”
Amanda went back to college. Her friends do not speak of the kidnapping. She works at home now. Today, when she thinks about her nightmare, she does not hide the fact that she would like to see the kidnappers punished. “I wanted them dead, to be honest.” And explains: “Kidnappers don’t want money to support a family, they don’t steal a piece of bread to give to their children. They only want to have more than you have. But the only thing they did was put an end to my life.”