A trans-identified male influencer is under police investigation following a brutal attack on a young woman and a baby in Sobral, Brazil.
On December 25, Municipal Police announced that Jhoy Vanderwall was being investigated for causing intentional bodily injury to a woman he suspected of spreading “rumors” about him.
Vanderwall, a social media influencer with more than 14,000 followers on Instagram, was caught on a street security camera committing the violent attack. The CCTV has been released by police, and shows Vanderwall lingering on the curb of a street with three other men. A motorbike begins to drive down the narrow way, and, as it drives past, Vanderwall grabs the female passenger by the hair and rips her off of the bike.
The woman was holding a six-month-old baby as she was pulled from the vehicle and thrown to the pavement. After she hits the ground, Vanderwall is seen beating her repeatedly in the head with a bottle, which flies out of his hand from the force. He then begins to use his fist, still holding the woman’s hair and pummeling her in the head. The attack is quickly stopped by a group of people who rushed to hold Vanderwall back.
It is unknown at this time if the child sustained any injuries. The woman who was attacked had been holding the child during travel, but has not been identified as the mother.
According to Globo, Vanderwall is now under police investigation for causing intentional bodily injury, but many Brazilian netizens are decrying the cited charge as too lenient. Some are concerned a conviction would result in no jail time, and that Vanderwall should have been charged with attempted murder, as well as a crime against the child.
Following the release of the CCTV footage, Brazilian women on Instagram rallied to mass report Vanderwall’s account.
“Report the account. A creature that has the courage to do this without thinking about the baby should have no influence on absolutely anything,” @ketila_lyma wrote, with dozens of users sharing Vanderwall’s Instagram handle.
“If it were the other way around, the LGBT gang would be on top saying it was prejudice,” one user said in response to the video footage uploaded to the Metrópole Instagram account.
Vanderwall’s account was active earlier today, though had been set to ‘private.’ The account appears to have now been taken down or deactivated, possibly due to the efforts of the women who had been mass-reporting it. He also has a relatively idle Twitter account, and some women have already taken to that platform to call him out for his crime.
This is the second incident of a trans-identified male committing a violent act against a woman out of Brazil in less than two weeks.
On December 16, Reduxx reported on disturbing footage taken at of the University of Brasília showing a bearded trans-identified male screaming at a female student who had confronted him while he was using the women’s restroom. Reduxx later conducted an interview with the student, who said she had been physically assaulted by the man after he chased her down to an administrative office.
Brazil is a hotbed of sex-based violence, with femicide rates increasing despite the country’s overall murder rate going down. Women’s rights movements appear to be falling flat in the country, which is now ranked among the most dangerous places in the world to be female.
Though little political progress is being made for sex-based rights, the nation has an extremely low rate of female political representation, and the “most voted for woman” during the 2020 elections was a trans-identified male. Following his election, Erika Hilton began pursuing criminal charges against a domestic violence survivor-advocate for calling him a “man.”
In October, a male won Glamour Brazil’s “Woman of the Year” award, sparking widespread outrage amongst feminists. Dozens of prominent women’s rights advocates were seemingly overlooked in order for the title to go to a transgender social media influencer who had previously claimed women did “not exist.”
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