Inside depraved raffles where prizes are young girls and perverts play bingo for their virginity

Journalist Matt Roper describes discovering the sick competition involving girls as young as 11 in his new book, Before The Night Comes

When journalist Matt Roper heard shocking claims underage girls in a Brazilian town were being offered as prizes in raffles and games of bingo, it seemed too appalling to be true.

But as he investigated further, he realised to his horror that the rumours were correct - depraved men were eagerly buying numbered tickets in which the winner got a young girl to abuse. Matt describes discovering the grotesque raffle, involving girls as young as 11, in his new book, Before The Night Comes.

The book, which is published tomorrow, tells the story of how the Mirror reporter came across a young girl selling her body by the side of the BR-116 motorway - a chance encounter which led him into a dark work of exploitation and trafficking.

He would later set up a charity, Meninadança, which has rescued hundreds of girls from child prostitution in towns lining the notorious road, known as Brazil’s ‘exploitation highway’.

But despite already hearing many other shocking stories of child sexual exploitation by the time he set up a project for girls in Candido Sales, an impoverished town in Brazil’s Bahia state, finding out that local men were playing games for the chance to abuse a girl was a harrowing low.

As well as the raffles, which took place in the nearby municipality of Encruzilhada, a venue in the town was also organising weekly bingo nights with underage girls put up as prizes and paraded before players before the games began. Several had also taken place offering virgin girls as prizes with tickets sold as significantly higher prices.

“The image of men playing games for the chance to abuse a child, hoping their numbers would be pulled out of the hat, was utterly sickening,” he remembers

“Maybe it was because the town felt so remote, hidden in a forgotten, inhospitable corner of one of Brazil’s poorest states, that people thought the crimes would go undetected.”

After gathering evidence and interviews, Matt decided to put out a public statement about the raffles which was picked up by Brazil’s media, causing widespread revolt around the country in September 2015.

But instead of promising swift action to bring those responsible to justice and protect the girls, the nearest military police authority in Candido Sales issued a statement threatening legal action against any newspaper which reported the claims, “because of the negative repercussion being propagated.”

It was followed by similar threats by the local civil police and prosecution services . “I was furious,” Matt recalls. “The police and public bodies had decided to bury the story and attack those who had brought it to light.

“They were even blaming the girls themselves, claiming that if there had been any rumours it was because they were offering themselves as prizes. By denying any of this had happened and archiving an initial police investigation, they were denying the victims of any hope of justice.”

Undeterred, the charity continued to push back, eventually gaining the support of the country’s Human Rights Secretariat, a government department with privileged access to police records, which launched their own investigation into the raffles.

A week later, the secretariat’s director Admar Fontes reported that they had already found that over 100 men took part from Encruzilhada and surrounding towns. In a statement he said: “A lot of people are involved. We will find them.”

Matt was on a road trip with a friend in Brazil in 2011 when he came across a young girl, 11-year-old Leilah, selling her body at the side of the BR-116 motorway, a meeting which would change his life.

He would find thousands of other young victims of abuse and exploitation in towns along the 2,700-mile highway where, according to government figures, there is a place every 10 miles where it is known children are sold for sex.

After deciding to do something to help them he moved to Brazil and began to set up safe houses along the motorway. The five 'Pink Houses' today work with over 500 girls a day and employ 60 members of staff, including a team of lawyers.

The charity has also put many abusers behind bars, but has also faced hostility, threats, opposition and tragedies.

- Before The Night Comes by Matt Roper, published by Mirror Books, is on sale on Thursday from Amazon and all good book shops. Find out more about the charity at www.meninadanca.org