18 Months in Prison for Woman Posing as a 12-Year-Old
Brazil was shaken when it was revealed that Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira managed for 14 months to make a kind-hearted couple think she was a little girl who survived abuse, host her in their home, provide her with toys, and throw her a birthday party. She adopted baby talk and used pacifiers until she was exposed. Now she is going to prison for “emotional kidnapping.”
A court in Brazil sentenced Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, a 38-year-old woman who posed as a 12-year-old girl and caused a couple to “adopt” her as parents and care for her for over a year, to 18 months in prison. She was convicted of fraud and what was defined as “emotional kidnapping,” after it was determined that she cynically and intentionally exploited the kindness of her hosts.
The case, which began with the woman's arrest on June 2 of this year and shook Brazil, was exposed thanks to the suspicions of a relative of the couple. The relative, who refused to believe the cover story, conducted a search online and discovered reports from 2023 about an identical pattern of action that Amanda had used in Rio de Janeiro. When police raided the house, the impostor immediately abandoned the child persona she had adopted until then and spoke to them in an adult voice.
Later, during her interrogation, she even admitted that she had been using the same trick for 15 years and had carried out the fraud in several other states in Brazil. The connection between Amanda and her “adopters” began when she appeared at ceremonies at an evangelical church in the city of Joinville in the south of the country. At first, she introduced herself as an 18-year-old young woman named Gabriela looking for work, and the community pastor connected her with the couple, who agreed to host her for a while out of pity.
However, gradually the story became more extreme: Amanda convinced her hosts that she was actually only 12 years old and that she had fled abuse in northern Brazil, claiming that her adult appearance was the result of hormones her abusive father forced her to take. The couple believed every word and raised her as a daughter for 14 months.
Throughout the period, Amanda deepened the deception: she claimed she suffered from severe autism, adopted a baby voice, began drinking from baby bottles and sucking on pacifiers, and even caused them to fund weight-loss medication for her. To improve her condition, the devoted couple arranged a decorated room and children's toys for her, and even threw her a festive 12th birthday party.
At sentencing, the judge rejected the defense's claim that Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira suffers from a mental illness and is not criminally responsible, ruling that she acted with full awareness. Her lawyers, who argued that it was a “survival strategy” of a wounded woman who was only looking for the warmth she had been denied in childhood, said they intend to appeal the sentence. In any case, Amanda's prison conditions will be relatively light, allowing her to go out for studies during the day and return to the detention facility at night.
