Rio de Janeiro councilor Gabriel Monteiro became a defendant in the Rio de Janeiro Court, accused of filming sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl. The complaint was accepted on May 2 by Judge Marcelo Almeida de Moraes Marinho, who gave Monteiro a period of 10 days to present a preliminary defense and indicate witnesses and defense evidence.
The process movement in the site of the Court of Justice indicates that the summons and subpoena was issued yesterday (17).
The complaint was presented by the Public Ministry of the State of Rio de Janeiro (MPRJ), through the 1st Public Prosecutor’s Office for Territorial Criminal Investigation in the Zona Sul and Barra da Tijuca area, on April 8.
According to the MPRJ, the crime took place about five months after the councilor’s first meeting with the teenager. The complaint points out that Monteiro used his cell phone to film the explicit sex scene.
The councilor has claimed that the sex and filming were consensual and that the minor told him she was 18 years old.
Ethics Council
The councilor also goes through an ethical-disciplinary process that he investigates in the Council of Ethics and Parliamentary Decorum of the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro, for breach of parliamentary decorum. In a meeting yesterday afternoon (17), the collegiate defined that two witnesses for the prosecution, both former advisors to Monteiro, will be heard today (18); Heitor Monteiro de Nazaré Neto and Vinícius Hayden Witeze.
Two other witnesses will be heard on June 1, names still not defined. According to the chairman of the council, councilor Alexandre Isquierdo, a new deadline was given for Monteiro to nominate witnesses for the defense, which has not been done so far.
“To seek the material truth, we decided to give one more deadline so that councilor Gabriel Monteiro can have his full defense guaranteed. He will have until Friday (20) of this week to nominate names, if he is interested.”
THE Advice also rejected the requests made in the preliminary defense, delivered last week, which requested the filing of the case.
Next Tuesday (24), the collegiate will meet with the parliamentarian’s lawyers to clarify details of the rite. The instruction phase has 30 working days to complete, extendable for another 15 days. Then the rapporteur, councilor Chico Alencar, gives his opinion within five working days, concluding that the representation is valid or that it is archived.
If the opinion accepts the merits of the complaint, then a period of five days is opened for the presentation of closing arguments by the defendant’s defense and the process goes to the Ethics Council within five working days. If approved, the complaint goes to the Board of Directors to include it on the Agenda. Voting in plenary is open and decided by two-thirds of the councilors, that is, 34 votes, in case of cassation or absolute majority in case of suspension.
Gabriel Monteiro has said that he is being persecuted and that the images used as evidence against him, released in the press, were manipulated. “I will wait for justice. But how long will my innocence be proven? In three, four, ten years? As long as this lasts, I’ll have this weight on my shoulders. But even so, I will continue to do my job”, said the councilor, in a video published this month on his social networks.
