Lapdances and Dead Ends: When the Robe Turns Rogue
In the upside-down theatre of Brazilian justice, the most surreal scenes don’t happen in courtrooms—they play out on the streets.
Case in point: a retired judge with a naked woman on his lap behind the wheel of a pickup truck. It sounds like a scene out of a sleazy telenovela, but it’s not fiction. It’s the reality that ended Thaís Bonatti de Andrade’s life.
July 24, 2025. Araçatuba, São Paulo. A judge—Fernando Augusto Fontes Rodrigues Júnior, 61—slips into his car after what appears to be a night of drinks and decadence. Next to him: a 25-year-old woman, fully nude, climbs onto his lap. Eyewitnesses see her facing him, the vehicle in gear. Moments later, the car veers into the wrong lane and crushes a cyclist—Thaís—on her way to work. She fights for two days in the ICU. Dies. Another woman erased, just like that.
Sex, Power, and a Deadly U-Turn
Forget the salacious headlines. This isn’t about a scandal. This is about power and how it excuses itself—even when it kills.
Rodrigues didn’t just kill someone. He killed her while breaking traffic laws, driving intoxicated, and getting straddled by a half-his-age passenger. That’s not just negligence. That’s state-sponsored rot on full display.
He didn’t spend a night behind bars. He posted R$40,000 bail (pocket change for a man with a R$130,000/month public pension) and walked free. His punishment? A suspended driver’s license and no bars for a while. How... poetic.
Meanwhile, Thaís’s family mourns in silence, her death buried under layers of legalese and segredo de justiça—Brazil’s favorite phrase when someone powerful screws up.
The Law Is a Costume Party
Let’s stop pretending the robe is sacred. In Brazil, that black cloth is increasingly just a costume worn by men who think they’re untouchable. Judges like Rodrigues operate in an ecosystem that defends itself before it defends the public. When the killer is one of their own, everyone suddenly speaks softly. The police tread lightly. The courts stall. The CNJ disappears.
How many mothers have been locked up for stealing food, for holding a small bag of weed, for trying to survive? Now count how many judges have been sentenced for killing someone while drunk behind the wheel, mid-lapdance.
Exactly.
Justice for Sale
Brazil isn’t lacking in laws. It’s lacking in application. Especially when it comes to men with robes and retirement packages. The people who are supposed to uphold justice too often become its most flamboyant violators—because they know they can get away with it.
Rodrigues killed someone, and yet he’s still cashing public money. Still free. Still protected. Thaís, on the other hand, is dead. Her bicycle wrecked. Her body broken. Her name already fading from the news cycle.
And if no one raises hell, this will fade like all the other cases where power sits on people’s necks—and then casually steps off like nothing happened.
This isn’t just a car crash. It’s a crime wrapped in a farce, shielded by a robe. And if Brazil lets this one slide, the message is clear: the law is a game. And the judges wrote the cheat codes.
