A Brazilian court has sentenced a 37-year-old woman who spent 15 years pretending to be a child and living with families who took her in, Fox News reported.
Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira was arrested on June 2 in the city of Joinville, in the state of Santa Catarina. She had first turned up at a local church claiming she had fled another state to escape abusive parents.
Church members were moved by the story told by the girl, who called herself Gabriele. A family from the congregation took her in and treated her as their own daughter.
How she explained her adult appearance
To account for looking like an adult, Gabriele claimed she had autism and other conditions, and said she had been forced to take hormones as a child. She drank from a baby bottle and spoke in a high-pitched voice to keep up the act.
Oliveira lived with the family for more than a year before one of their relatives exposed her. The investigation that followed found she had been deceiving people across seven Brazilian states for 15 years, moving between families who fed, clothed and provided medical care for her, believing she was a child.
She had been caught and arrested before, but had previously managed to avoid serious punishment.
Court verdict and appeal
Oliveira's lawyers argued she had spent 20 years in a vulnerable position and had invented the scheme to escape living on the streets. She pleaded guilty. On Thursday, August 20, a court sentenced her to a year and a half in prison. Her lawyers plan to appeal the ruling.
Similar case in the United States
A similar case was reported earlier in the United States, where a woman from New York was arrested after posing as a 16-year-old student and enrolling in high school. She reportedly did so to obtain free school equipment and subway rides.
