Brazil seethes as man jailed for sexual abuse of teenager joins congress

Role for Nelson Nahim, sentenced for submitting 15-year-old to prostitution, is just latest political scandal: ‘Congress will always be capable of getting worse’

Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Fri 5 Jan ‘18 19.24 GMT

Just when it seemed that Brazil’s scandal-plagued political class could not be any less popular, the country is incensed at the revelation that its congress will soon include a man jailed for the sexual exploitation of underage girls.

Nelson Nahim, a politician from Rio de Janeiro state who is affiliated with President Michel Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, was handed a 12-year sentence in 2016 for submitting a 15-year-old girl to prostitution/sexual exploitation, rape and intimidating behaviour.

As a “substitute” lawmaker for a coalition of parties, he will take the seat vacated by Brazil’s new minister of labour, Cristiane Brasil, when congress returns from recess next month, but he officially becomes a deputy when she takes up her new role next week.

Adding fuel to the fire, Brasil herself was in 2016 ordered to make payments to a former driver whom she had employed without proper papers. Brasil is also the daughter of a politician jailed in a previous scandal.

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