A ‘firewoman’ (bombeira) who did nothing to help her children when her abusive partner immersed one in boiling water and circumcised another with a pair of dressmaker’s scissors has finally been jailed for 18 years.
Cláudia Silva, 35, had successfully appealed the sentence on two occasions but Supreme Court judges were clearly revolted by the evidence that came before them, and have now confirmed the original sentence.
Silva is already in Tires jail, and set to stay there until 2028.
The true horror of what she and her former partner did shocked the country in 2014 as the tiny body of their daughter was carried in what looked like a vast bin bag out of the family’s Marvila apartment block.
The four-month-old baby had been tortured by immersion in boiling water, and then into a mixture of cold water, wine and salt.
As she lay dying in agony for nine hours, Silva is understood to have “gone out shopping” for meat, wine and champagne.
She told judges she had not used the occasion to make any kind of call for help for her daughter, as she feared the reaction of her partner Emanuel Mário – now serving 25 years for the child’s murder.
With both parents in jail, judges have also ordered them to pay €10,000 in damages to the three year old son they so brutally circumcised.
The little boy has been adopted, reports national tabloid Correio da Manhã.
