Councilman Gabriel Monteiro (PL) had his mandate revoked by the Rio de Janeiro City Council. The session was held this Thursday (18) and lasted six and a half hours. The final score was 48 votes in favor of the impeachment and 2 votes against. A minimum of 34 votes was required, out of a total of 50 parliamentarians present. 
Monteiro was tried for breach of parliamentary decorum for three reasons: acting with a minor in a shopping mall, assaulting a homeless person invited to stage a robbery in Lapa and videotaping sexual intercourse with a minor, which later had the images leaked on the internet.
During the work of the Ethics Committee, there were also complaints by advisors of the councilor for sexual harassment and rape, but these crimes, as they were not part of the initial complaint, were not included in the final report. Councilman Chico Alencar (Psol), rapporteur of the process for breach of decorum by Gabriel Monteiro in the Council of Ethics of the Chamber, read part of the report approved by the council, asking for the removal of the mandate. Alencar said videos were edited to abuse vulnerable people. “The filming of sexual intercourse with a minor, at the time 15 years old, shocks everyone. The video is unpublishable, with physical assault on the woman. This is filmed. This is unpublishable”, said the rapporteur. Councilor’s conduct of filming sex scenes with minors is a crime. It is in the Child and Adolescent Statute. It is a crime to photograph, film, sex scenes involving children and adolescents. You store video, photography, with an explicit sex scene is a crime. videos have astounding dialogues.”
Monteiro’s defense maintained that the staging with the teenager at the mall was consented to by the girl’s mother, that the recording with the homeless person was a social experiment and that he would have been aggressive, and that the councilor did not know that the girl with whom was related was a minor.
Lawyer Sandro Figueredo also argued that Monteiro was being the victim of a conspiracy by the so-called trailer mafia, a company that he allegedly denounced.
Almost all of the councilors who occupied the rostrum criticized Monteiro, famous on his YouTube channel for inspections of hospitals, shelters and public schools, in addition to alleged actions against criminals, for having been against the principles that should guide parliamentary conduct.
Monteiro was the last to speak. He said he was wrong for not learning from his older colleagues and that he was too young. Monteiro said that he had not committed crimes in the facts narrated and asked not to be thrown into the lions’ den. “I am not condemned to anything, I know that taking a stand against my position here is very painful because the persecution that will come upon you will be very great. But worse is handing over the head of one of your peers, even without a conviction,” said Monteiro.
Parallel to the cassation process, Monteiro’s alleged crimes are running in criminal justice. The councilor must run for federal deputy, when these crimes will migrate, if he is elected, to a higher instance, by the special forum for prerogative of function. With that, it could still take a few years before he loses his mandate, if convicted.
* Contributed by Douglas Correa
Matter updated at 11:28 pm to add statements from the rapporteur of the cassation process, councilor Chico Alencar, and councilman Gabriel Monteiro.
