In a country where at times it seems that the entire political class has been implicated in one corruption scandal or another, Brazilian readers have grown used to headlines about the arrest of yet another politician or captain of industry.
But a glossy magazine for and about “influential people” has provoked incredulity with an article in its latest edition, titled: “What to tell the children when the parents are taken away by the Federal Police.”
The headline in Poder – or Power – quickly went viral in a country that has been shuddering for nearly three years under a gigantic corruption investigation into payoffs for politicians, executives and middlemen from overstuffed contracts at state-run oil company Petrobras.
Among the hundreds of rich and powerful arrested in the investigation, called Operation Car Wash, are the former speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, and Marcelo Odebrecht, the former CEO of one of Brazil’s most powerful companies. Both are still in jail.
In its December issue, Poder asked a psychiatrist for advice on dealing with children whose parents had been arrested.
The article prompted outrage and hilarity on social networks.
Poder publisher Joyce Pascowitch welcomed the exposure for her niche title that produces just 30,000 copies. “For us it was excellent!” she told the Guardian. In a sign of how widely the scandal has infected Brazilian society, a distant relative of hers, Milton Pascowitch, was one of the middlemen jailed who is collaborating with the investigation and now wears an ankle monitor.
Fabio Dutra, one of the magazine’s editors, said officers from the Federal Policer – Brazil’s FBI – have also been circulating the article on WhatsApp groups.
The idea for the piece was suggested by one of Poder’s contributors whose children study in an expensive private school where other students’ parents have been jailed in the investigation. One boy gained 10kg in a month and became depressed, Dutra said. Others found their parties boycotted by angry parents.
“It was a mix of irony, because there are figures you never thought would be vulnerable or jailed, with sadness,” he said. “We have been criticised by some – how can you talk about the families of the jailed – but for us it was a new thing. Brazil is living this.”
In the Poder interview, psychiatrist Lee Fu-I gave advice on what reaction to expect from children whose parents have been jailed and how to deal with the fallout on the family.
Children could suffer post-traumatic stress or depression that their father’s jailing represented (most of those jailed have been men). They might become rebellious, sad or isolated from friends, have trouble sleeping, lose interest in activities and sit playing video games, Fu-I said. It might be best to cancel parties or take a trip instead, she added.
“It is important to try and make the child understand the information received, listen to them with patience, without showing judgment, censorship or correction,” she said. “This will help them in the value judgement (my father was wronged/my father was persecuted/my father deserved it because he did not behave properly).”
Not even money helps. “The loss is the same for everyone,” she said.
