Kriti Mehrotra
With Prime Video’s ‘Abandoned: The Woman in the Decaying House’ delving deep into how a federal US case from the late 1990s is connected to a woman in Brazil today, we get a docuseries that is simply gripping. After all, it shines a light upon the life of Margarida Maria Vicente de Azevedo Bonetti, an international fugitive accused of abusing her help in the US for nearly two decades. This latter individual actually refers to a fellow Brazilian woman named Hilda Rosa dos Santos, a woman who had been working for her family since the early 1960s.
Hilda dos Santos Didn’t Have Many Opportunities Growing Up
It was around the early 1940s when Hilda Rosa dos Santos was born into a poor family in Anápolis, Brazil, around 600 miles away from São Paulo, as one of 12 children. She never really knew her biological father growing up, and nor did she have any stable parental figures around because her mother actually “scattered” and left her children because she couldn’t afford to raise them. As a result, she was uneducated and ultimately “given” as a servant at a relatively young age to a family that allegedly operated a brothel inside the metropolitan city.
According to Hilda’s own accounts, she learned to do hard domestic labor and livestock tending through this experience, all the while also reportedly learning to stay quiet about abuse. She was allegedly beaten regularly during this period, and because there was nowhere she could really escape, she ended up becoming very passive and simply bided her time. Hilda was eventually able to move forward in life, as she began working for the renowned de Azevendo family in the affluent neighborhood of Higienópolis in the early 1960s, when she was probably around 19.
Hilda doesn’t know her precise age, but she does know that when she was hired as the de Azevendos’ domestic help, they had 3 daughters, with Margarida being 9 years old. Over the next two decades, she helped raise the children, did all kinds of housework, and essentially became a trusted fixture of their lives, which is why she was “gifted” again. As per records, when Margarida, her husband Renê Bonetti (married 1972), and their young son Arthur had to move to the US for the patriarch’s work as an engineer, the former’s family “gifted” them Hilda to take along as help.
Hilda dos Santos Was Allegedly Abused for Almost 2 Decades
According to reports, Margarida had an engineering degree, yet was a proud socialite, so Hilda was given to help ease the adjustment and continue working in the manner she had been for years. The only difference, Hilda believed, would be the new environment, but that was not the case. While she worked at the family’s new $250,000 home every day in suburban Montgomery Village, just outside Gaithersburg, Maryland, she was never once paid for her efforts. She cleaned, cooked, helped raise Arthur, shoveled snow, raked leaves, walked dogs, washed cars, and did any additional tasks required by her “employers,” but they not only didn’t pay her for anything, but also started allegedly abusing her.
The Bonettis reportedly claimed to Hilda that they were putting the money she earned into a bank account, but they never did so and also refused to give her any money directly. It turns out the de Azevendos had promised to give her salary, but they stopped after 4 years, although it didn’t make much difference because the Bonettis were already not paying her. As if that’s not enough, while they gave her a new dress as well as new shoes and had her baptized not long after settling in Maryland, they soon also began mistreating her in ways no one can even imagine. Hilda was allegedly forced to live in a chilly basement with no toilet or shower; instead, all she had was a large hole in the floor covered by plywood and a metal tub with no faucet. If she wanted to bathe, she had to haul water downstairs.
Moreover, Hilda reportedly had a cot with a thin mattress that she herself made from materials she picked up from a nearby wooded area, and the house fridge was kept locked, so she had no access. The worst aspect, though, was that she was allegedly physically and medically abused by the woman she helped raise and her husband. As per her statements, Margarida often slapped her, punched her, grabbed her hair out in clumps, or beat her with different items, but there were also times she threw burning food at her. Hilda allegedly also told officials she was rarely taken to the doctors, resulting in a glass cut on her leg going so bad that it had a smell and her being forced to live with a tumor for years.
Hilda dos Santos Continues to Reside in the US
It was in early 1998, 19 years since the Brazilian nationals had arrived in the US, that Hilda managed to escape with the help of a neighbor she had befriended, and they immediately rushed her to a hospital. That’s when she was finally treated for all her injuries over the years, and it turned out that while the tumor in her stomach was fortunately not cancerous, it was so bad it was protruding outside – it was 12 cms big. With all this, the friend also contacted the FBI, just for Hilda to initially be very timid because she was scared of the Bonettis – she felt as if she was betraying them, despite her allegedly not having any rights and being the victim inside their household.
It was in spring 1999 when Margarida and Renê were ultimately charged with three counts of immigration felony related to harboring an undocumented person and one count of causing her “serious bodily injury.” By this point, the former had managed to flee and return to Brazil despite asserting that Hilda was one of her closest “friends” and that all allegations were a lie, so only Renê stood trial in February 2000. In court, it was stated that the family had taken Hilda’s passport and visa not long after their arrival before letting them expire, which ensured she could leave in any way, shape, or form.
Hilda testified against her alleged abusers in court, resulting in Renê being sentenced to 6½ years in prison. He was reportedly also ordered to pay her $110,000 in restitution, despite Margarida’s efforts from Brazil to dissolve all their assets in the US to avoid this situation. Since then, from what we can tell, Hilda Rosa dos Santos has been doing her best to live a normal life in the US. She has never returned to Brazil, meaning the US is now her home. Hilda seemingly doesn’t have a family, but she does have several well-wishers who have been helping her over the years, especially with her being unable to speak English while also being unable to read/write Portuguese.
Read More: Margarida Bonetti: Where is the International Fugitive Now?
