Woman locked for 20 years in Brazil house

SAO PAULO: Police in Brazil said they had freed a 45-year-old woman who had been locked in a house for 20 years with no communication with the outside world.

Police in the state of Parana yesterday said that the woman was locked in the home by her partner, a 60-year-old man, in the city of Mariluz, 550 kilometers (340 miles) from the state capital Curitiba.

Following a complaint by social workers, police arrived at the house to find it closed but heard the voice of a woman who appeared to be calling for help, a police statement said.

Police Lieutenant Denis Wellington Viana said the woman told a psychologist later that "she was prohibited from any form of communication" and had to perform household chores.

In the complaint, "the assistant told the police that a person was kept imprisoned for 20 years and was going through health problems, since she was banned from medical supervision," said Viana.

The news came just a week after Brazilian authorities released a mentally disturbed woman imprisoned in her husband's squalid cellar for eight years in another part of Brazil.