Story that Lula Tried to Rape Someone Was Just a Joke, Says Another Witness

For another person present at the 1994 meeting in which Lula told the story that he had tried to rape a young political prisoner in jail with him, who was known as "MEP's boy" was just a crude joke not different from other pranks and capers the current Brazilian president was always playing with friends.  

On Friday, November 27, César Benjamin, 55, one of the founders of the Workers Party wrote an article in the daily Folha de S. Paulo, where he is a columnist, recalling the story he had kept a secret all these years, to accuse Lula of attempting to rape someone in jail.

The action would have occurred in 1980, when then union leader Lula was jailed for 30 days by the military dictatorship ruling Brazil. Benjamin mentions is his piece as someone who was also present at the encounter "a Brazilian adman who also worked with us and whose name I forget."

The adman is Silvio Tendler, a filmmaker, who like Benjamin also worked in Lula's presidential campaign in 1994. He recalls very well the episode and has come forward with his version of what happened.

"It was obvious to all of us who heard the story, laughing, that this was one of the many Lula's jokes, nothing more than that, a joke. Every day Lula took the piss out of somebody, he told jokes, invented stories. The victim that day was an American marketing professional.

"Lula invented that story, a joke, to shock the guy…Only a feeble-minded person, a rancorous and resentful guy as Benjamin, would keep in this dramatic and packed-in-rancor way, for 15 years, a joke, an obvious joke…"

Tendler believes that Benjamin has been upset with Lula's success as president and by transforming a joke in drama "he will win the Blonde of the Year trophy."

"Just think about it," says the adman. "You think Lula, right this Lula, smart as he is, in the mid of a presidential campaign, would get in front of a gringo who he hardly knew, a gringo who was going to go back to his country and tell everything he saw, you think Lula is going to get to a gringo who he never saw, in front of witnesses, and he is going to tell that he attempted to rape someone? Yeah, It obvious, plain, that it was a prank, a joke, leg-pulling, without any of all this drama brought now by Benjamin. We laughed and no one took any notice of that."

Read our previous story on this matter: http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/11480/1/