For five years, he has been cowardly persecuted.
In a Rio de Janeiro courtroom, the trial over the death of Henry Borel — a four-year-old boy who died in March 2021 bearing the marks of violence — entered its seventh day, with the grandfather of the accused taking the stand to defend a son he raised with pride. Coronel Jairo's tearful testimony, met with equal tears from his grandson on the defense team, placed the weight of family loyalty against the gravity of a child's death. As competing versions of truth accumulate through twenty-four scheduled witnesses, the trial asks what justice owes to the most vulnerable — and how love, whether genuine or performed, can obscure what happened behind closed doors.
- A four-year-old boy arrived at a Rio hospital in cardiac arrest with multiple internal injuries in March 2021, and five years later, a courtroom is still trying to reconstruct what destroyed him.
- The defense opened its witness phase with Coronel Jairo, Jairinho's father, who wept alongside his grandson and declared his son has been 'cowardly persecuted' for five years.
- Three ex-partners and a young woman who wore a cast after an alleged assault have testified to a pattern of violence, accounts the grandfather dismissed as 'clearly induced versions.'
- The family's nanny testified for four hours about suspicious episodes she witnessed and revealed she was instructed to delete messages after Henry's death — a disclosure that cast a shadow over the entire household.
- With 24 witnesses scheduled and charges including torture, homicide, and procedural fraud, the trial is slowly assembling a portrait of what life — and death — looked like inside that apartment.
No sétimo dia do julgamento pelo assassinato de Henry Borel, o Coronel Jairo — pai do réu Jairinho — tomou o banco das testemunhas para defender o filho que criou. Descreveu-o com orgulho: saxofonista na banda da escola, estudante de medicina que terminou em segundo lugar na turma, um homem de caráter inabalável. "Ele é meu orgulho, minha vaidade", disse o coronel. "Há cinco anos ele é covardemente perseguido." Quando seu neto Luís Fernando — também membro da defesa — lhe perguntou sobre o vínculo que sempre os uniu, os dois homens se abraçaram e choraram diante de um tribunal em silêncio.
O coronel descreveu a manhã de 8 de março de 2021, quando chegou ao Hospital Barra D'Or e encontrou Monique Medeiros em estado de choque. Disse que segurou a mãozinha de Henry, rezou por quarenta minutos e pediu a Deus que trouxesse a criança de volta. A morte foi declarada naquele momento.
A estratégia da defesa, que emergiu ao longo do depoimento, foi desacreditar sistematicamente as mulheres que relataram violência. Três ex-companheiras de Jairinho e a filha adulta de uma delas descreveram agressões físicas em testemunhos anteriores — uma delas usou gesso após ser atingida no braço; outra relatou que seu filho revelou anos depois que Jairinho havia colocado pano e papel em sua boca enquanto pisava em seu estômago. O coronel rejeitou tudo com desdém: "São versões claramente induzidas", afirmou. "Se Jairinho tivesse pisado no estômago daquela criança, ela teria morrido."
Antes do coronel, a babá da família, Thayná de Oliveira Ferreira, havia testemunhado por quatro horas. Ela descreveu episódios que considerou suspeitos envolvendo Jairinho e Henry, e revelou que, após a morte do menino, foi instruída a apagar mensagens e minimizar relatos sobre o que acontecia na casa — um depoimento que lançou sombra sobre toda a dinâmica doméstica.
Henry Borel tinha quatro anos quando chegou ao hospital em parada cardiorrespiratória, com múltiplas lesões internas. Jairinho e Monique Medeiros respondem por homicídio duplamente qualificado, tortura, coação e fraude processual. Com 24 testemunhas previstas, o julgamento segue acumulando versões contraditórias sobre o que aconteceu dentro daquele apartamento no oeste do Rio de Janeiro.
The courtroom fell silent when Luís Fernando, Jairinho's son and a member of his defense team, began to cry during his grandfather's testimony. It was the seventh day of the trial into the death of Henry Borel, a four-year-old boy who died in March 2021, and Coronel Jairo—Jairinho's father—had taken the stand to defend his son's character. The old man spoke with conviction about the boy he raised, describing him as someone of unwavering moral fiber, a saxophonist in his school band, a medical student who finished second in his class. "He is my pride, my vanity," the coronel said. "For five years now, he has been cowardly persecuted. It is a cruelty what they are doing to him."
When his grandson asked him about the bond that had always held them together, the coronel's voice wavered. Luís Fernando embraced his grandfather, and both men wept while the entire courtroom held its breath. "Cowards are doing this to my son," the coronel declared afterward, his voice breaking with emotion.
The testimony lasted more than two hours, beginning at 3:40 in the afternoon. Coronel Jairo was the eighteenth witness to be called in the trial, and the first to testify on behalf of the defense. When the presiding judge, Elizabeth Machado Louro, asked him about the morning Henry died—March 8, 2021—he described arriving at Barra D'Or Hospital and finding Monique Medeiros, Henry's mother and Jairinho's partner, in a state of shock. He said he embraced her, kissed her, held the boy's small hand, and spent forty minutes there praying, asking God to bring the child back. "I held his little hand to my heart and began to pray," he recounted. "I stayed about forty minutes, dedicating myself to prayer and supporting Monique. His death was declared at that moment."
The defense strategy that emerged through the coronel's testimony was to systematically discredit the women who had come forward with allegations of violence. Three ex-partners of Jairinho and the adult daughter of one of them had testified earlier in the trial, describing physical assaults. Kaylane Pereira, now an adult, said she had worn a cast after being struck on the arm. Déborah Mello Saraiva, mother of a boy named Enzo, recounted that her son had revealed years later that Jairinho had placed cloth and paper in his mouth while stepping on his stomach. A third woman, Natasha de Oliveira Machado, had also reported abuse. The coronel dismissed these accounts with contempt. "My outrage is that these stories are bad. They are clearly induced versions," he said. "If Jairinho had stepped on that child's stomach, the child would have died." He then pivoted to his own observations of Jairinho with Henry: "All the time Jairinho was playing with him and kissing his head."
Just before the coronel took the stand, the court had heard from Thayná de Oliveira Ferreira, the family's nanny, in testimony that stretched over four hours. She described episodes she found suspicious involving Jairinho and Henry, and she revealed that after the boy's death, she had been instructed to delete messages and downplay any accounts about the household. Her testimony had been among the most anticipated of the trial.
Henry Borel was four years old when he arrived at the hospital in cardiac and respiratory arrest on that March morning, his small body bearing multiple internal injuries. Jairinho and Monique Medeiros face charges of aggravated homicide, torture, coercion during legal proceedings, procedural fraud, and document falsification. According to the public prosecutor's office, the boy was subjected to violence inside the apartment where he lived with his mother and her partner in the western zone of Rio de Janeiro. Twenty-four witnesses are scheduled to testify across the course of the trial, and the proceedings continue to unfold with each day bringing new layers of testimony, emotion, and contested versions of what happened behind closed doors.
Citas Notables
He is my pride, my vanity. For five years now, he has been cowardly persecuted.— Coronel Jairo, Jairinho's father, during testimony
My outrage is that these stories are bad. They are clearly induced versions.— Coronel Jairo, responding to allegations from ex-partners
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
What struck you most about that moment in the courtroom when the grandfather and grandson embraced?
The silence. In a room full of lawyers and judges and journalists, everyone stopped. It wasn't performed—it was real grief meeting real defense. The grandfather was saying: this is my son, I know him, you are wrong about him. And his grandson was saying: I believe you. That's a powerful thing to witness, even if you're skeptical of what's being defended.
Do you think the grandfather's testimony actually changes anything, or is it just emotional theater?
It's both, probably. Legally, it's character testimony—it doesn't address the physical evidence or what the nanny saw. But juries are made of people, and people respond to a father defending his son. The question is whether the jury can hold two things at once: that Coronel Jairo genuinely loves his son and believes in him, and that his son may still have harmed a child.
The defense kept attacking the women's stories as "induced." What does that word do in a courtroom?
It plants doubt. It suggests the women were coached, that their memories are contaminated. But it also requires the jury to believe that multiple women, across different time periods, all invented the same kinds of injuries—broken bones, suffocation—independently. That's a harder sell than it sounds.
What about the nanny's testimony? She seemed to be the one with actual proximity to what happened.
She's the one who was there every day. She saw the patterns, if there were patterns. And then she says she was told to erase evidence. That's not character testimony—that's obstruction. That's a different kind of weight.
Do you think the grandfather knew what he was walking into when he took the stand?
I think he knew he was defending his son. Whether he knew the full picture of what happened in that apartment—that's the question no one can answer but him.