Panmela Castro: Brazil's gra〃ti queen, delivering justice through the nozzle of a paint can By Thomas Page, CNN
Updated 1023 GMT (1823 HKT) March 5, 2017
(CNN) — "I was a victim, but that was a very long time ago." Panmela Castro casts her mind back to the day she was beaten. Like her mother, like her aunts, like many of her friends, the Rio de Janeiro native had become a statistic within an epidemic of violence against women. Castro remembers going to the police, but there was no law to back her up -- at the time, domestic abuse was not a crime in Brazil. The incident was a private matter Castro was told, and no charges were filed. She says psychological attacks had started shortly after she moved in with her partner. At the time she did not identify it as a form of abuse, but Castro claims the single violent incident was the final straw. She walked away, an act of defiance against Brazil's cultural landscape, where countless women su㴂er in silence.