14 the officer of Casa de Reposo Guararapes for an explanation. The officer stated that the injuries had resulted from Ximenes-Lopes’ attempt to escape from the premises. The witness believed this. On October 4, 1999, the witness’s mother visited Damião Ximenes-Lopes and found that he was agonizing. She asked for help to doctor Francisco Ivo de Vasconcelos because she thought her son was going to die due to his health condition. The doctor, however, did not act in response to her requests. Ximenes-Lopes died that same day. His body had torture signs; his fists were torn and bruised, and his hands were also hurt, with fingernail marks, and part of his nose had been beaten. The cause of his death was described by the doctors as “death by natural causes, cardiac arrest,” with no further indications. Then, the body of Damião Ximenes-Lopes was taken to the city of Fortaleza for an autopsy, which concluded that he had had a “death for undetermined causes.” His family did not believe such expert analysis since it considered that there had been some sort of manipulation and omission of the truth. As a result of her brother’s case, this witness found many people who had suffered bad treatment or whose next of kin had been beaten at Casa de Reposo Guararapes, but the families and victims did not want to report the events because they were afraid of having to confront the police and the hospital. The witness indicated that among the many relatives of Damião Ximenes-Lopes, his mother and his father, as well as the witness herself and his brother Cosme Ximenes-Lopes, were affectionately the closest to him. The witness suffered greatly, and she and her family struggled to seek justice. The witness, who by the time the events took place had a newborn daughter, stopped producing breast milk due to the emotional impact sustained and could not breastfeed the baby anymore. She suffered from depression for three years and lost any motivation to work. She lost her job at the Municipality Hall twenty-six days after her brother’s death. She had nightmares related to her brother’s death. She demanded justice for her dead brother, and she sworn that her soul would not rest until justice was done. Cosme Ximenes-Lopes felt really identified with Damião Ximenes-Lopes because he was his twin brother. They were really close and when he died, Cosme XimenesLopes was in shock: he needed medical assistance, suffered from depression, and stopped working. The witness had to help provide for her brother’s family for some time while he recuperated. The witness’s father, who was separated from the alleged victim’s mother, never broke the family ties with his son Damião XimenesLopes and grieved over his death. He said that it “[was] not easy to lose a [son that was still so] young.” He had a desire for revenge for a long time. The mother of Damião Ximenes-Lopes still bears the consequences of the death of her son. Her life was completely ruined; to this day, she suffers from depression and claims that she wants to die. She lost the will to live, she had nervous gastritis and, as a result, a duodenal ulcer that was difficult to treat because she developed a huge fear to hospitals. She appears to suffer from a certain “life defense psychosis”she refuses to touch any living thing, such as animals or insects, because she does not want to kill them. Everything reminds her of the death of her son Damião XimenesLopes. On the day the witness’s brother died, the family reported the death at the Police Station of the Seventh Region in Sobral (hereinafter, “the Regional Police Station of Sobral”), but since no investigation was commenced, they filed a complaint with the