An Instagram influencer has been jailed for human trafficking and slavery after two women who lived with her went missing in 2022.
Katiuscia Torres, has been jailed for eight years for the human trafficking and slavery of one of these women following an FBI investigation.
Charges have also been filed against her in relation to the second woman and other women have spoken to the BBC about their experience living with her.
Women were inspired by her rags to riches story – which saw her raised in the Brazilian slums to partying with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio.
A woman called Ana found Torres’ Instagram page in 2017 and was inspired by her story.
She is not one of the women who later went missing in 2022 but she experienced coercion while she lived and worked for her.
‘She was on the cover of magazines. She was seen with famous people such as Leonardo DiCaprio. Everything I saw seemed credible,’ Ana said.
Torres invited Ana to move to her New York apartment in 2019 to work as her assistant.
This involved her being paid £1,540 a month to cook, clean, look after Torres’ pets and do her laundry.
The reality for Ana was far different, who was forced to sleep on a sofa with cat urine and be available for Torres all hours of the day.
Ana would often escape to the gym to get a few hours sleep and she was never paid for her work.
She only managed to escape after she moved in with a new boyfriend after three months but said she felt like she was one of Torres’ ‘first cases of human trafficking’.
Torres was also a famous name on Brazilian TV because she claimed she could make predictions using her spiritual powers.
She reinvented herself as a hypnotist and life coach after her Hollywood friends introduced her to the hallucinogenic drug called ayahuasca, according to her former flatmate Luzer Twersky.
Torres created a wellness website and subscription service that promised its customers ‘love, money and self esteem that you’ve always dreamed of’.
Her one-on-one videos would cost people £115 and would promise to solve ‘any of their problems’.
The other videos on her website offer advice on relationships, business success, and wellness and would use hypnosis, meditation and exercise programmes.
Torres later targeted two other dedicated Instagram followers to come and work for her in her new five-bedroom home she had moved into with her 21-year-old boyfriend Zach in the suburbs of Texas, Austin.
These two women were called Desirrê Freitas, a Brazilian woman living in Germany, and Brazilian Letícia Maia.
These two women’s disappearance would go on to spark the FBI-led search later on.
Another woman, who the BBC have named as Sol, was also recruited by Torres.
Four other women were also persuaded by Torres to live in her house but they pulled out.
Torres posted a picture of herself to her Instagram alongside Desirrê and Letícia and introduced the pair of them as her ‘witch clan’.
Things quickly escalated into a nightmare for Desirrê and Letícia and within weeks, Torres had performed ‘withcraft’ on Desirrê and pressured her into working at a strip club for long hours seven days a week.
The women had to ask for permission to leave their bedrooms – even to go to the toilet – and were forbidden from talking to one another.
Torres then set Desirrê ‘earning quotas’ of £2,345 a day, forced her into prostitution, and wouldn’t allow her back home unless she met her target.
‘I ended up sleeping on the street several times because I couldn’t reach that,’ Desirrê said.
Sol eventually managed to escape the situation from the help of an ex-boyfriend.
But following months of no contact, Desirrê and Letícia’s family launched social media campaigns to try and find them in September 2022.
Ana came across the news and social media campaigns and contacted law enforcement including the FBI because of her suspicions Torres was keeping other girls.
Torres was panicked by the media storm and took Desirrê and Letícia from Texas to Maine, where they said in a social media video they were not being held captive.
But when a police officer FaceTimed Torres, just before it starts she can be heard saying: ‘He will start asking questions. Guys, they are full of tricks. He’s a detective, be very careful. For God’s sake, I’ll kick you out if you say anything. I’ll scream.’
Torres and the two women were eventually persuaded to attend a welfare check in person in Maine.
This was carried out by Detective David Davol who noticed a number of red flags including a distrust of law enforcement, isolation and their reluctance to speak without Torres’ permission.
Torres was deported back to Brazil and arrested in November 2022.
By December 2022, Desirrê and Letícia had returned to Brazil.
The BBC was granted a court order to interview Torres in prison in Rio de Janeiro in April where she denied any women ever living with her or coercing them.
20 women have come forward to the news organisation with stories about how they have been scammed or exploited by Torres.
Many are still receiving psychiatric treatment for the experience they went through.
Torres has appealed her conviction and maintains her innocence but an investigation into allegations from other women in Brazil is ongoing.
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