After Brazil daycare centre attack, community and country ask how to keep children safe

A man with a hatchet burst into a daycare centre in Brazil, killing four children

Candle lit outside the Cantinho do Bom Pastor daycare centre where four children were killed in an attack on Wednesday, in Blumenau in Brazil. AP

Parents in this small city in southern Brazil are struggling with how to explain to their children that a man slaughtered four of their friends, while Brazilians across the country are wondering what should be done to stem an apparently systemic rise of violence in schools.

Dozens of mourners gathered at the daycare centre in Blumenau as evening fell on Wednesday to pray, to lay flowers for the victims — aged between 5 and 7 — and to cry. At least four other children were wounded in the attack that shook the nation and put pressure on the government to find solutions.

Carlos Kroetz and other parents arrived to collect their children’s backpacks left behind at the centre during Wednesday morning’s mayhem.

“My daughter thinks a thief came in and ran away without harming anyone,” Mr Kroetz told The Associated Press while holding his 6-year-old’s Minnie Mouse bag.

“She knew kids who died. We still have to figure out a way to tell her. For now, she is afraid of going to the bathroom by herself, because she thinks the thief will be there.”

Franciele Chequeto said one of the girls killed was a friend of her son Gabriel, 7.

“He wasn’t understanding,” Mr Chequeto said. “I sat down and told him that he no longer will be able to see some of his little friends.”

Authorities have yet to give a motive for the attack by a man with a hatchet.

Simone Aparecida Camargo, a teacher at the daycare, said she locked dozens of children in a bathroom after she heard a colleague screaming about a man who had broken into the daycare centre, potentially averting an even greater tragedy.

“We didn’t think there was a massacre happening out there,” said Ms Camargo, who has worked at the daycare centre for five years.

“We see this abroad and never thought it could happen here.”

The attack came as school attacks in Brazil have happened with ever greater frequency in recent years.

The federal government was scrambling to formulate a strategy to combat the problem, as security analysts hoped the killing might prove the watershed moment that yields productive — and overdue — actions nationwide. The attack took place in a city of 366,000 people in Santa Catarina state.

Justice Minister Flavio Dino met representatives from student associations. To shore up school safety 150 million reais ($30 million) would be directed towards the cause from the nation’s public security fund, Mr Dino told reporters in Brasilia.

He said this would heighten policing and an expand a Brasilia-based team for the monitoring of deep-web communities on internet, where hate speech and violence can be glorified.

Education Minister Camilo Santana announced the creation of a group to address school violence. Mr Santana will lead the group, which is scheduled to meet for the first time on Thursday.

“There are no words to console the families. Anyone who has lost a relative knows that there are no words,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday at the start of a ministerial meeting. Ministers present at the meeting observed a minute of silence.

From 2000 to 2022, there were 16 attacks or violent episodes in schools in Brazil, four of which in the second half of last year, according to a report by a team of researchers led by Daniel Cara, an education professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

The 12 researchers, including psychologists, social scientists, public school educators, journalists and activists delivered their report to Lula’s incoming government in December.

Last week, a student in Sao Paulo fatally stabbed a teacher and wounded several others. In similar attack on a day care in May 2021 in Brazil's Santa Catarina state, an assailant used a dagger to kill three children under two and two adults.

There is no single factor to explain the rise of such attacks, but a common denominator is what Mr Cara calls “a crisis of perspective” regarding economic problems and the likelihood that each assailant endured situations of frustration and violence, including bullying and harassment.

Often, the killers are young people who engage in misogynistic or racist speech, employ neo-Nazi and fascist symbols and enter online communities where violence is lauded, Mr Cara said.

Young people who are suffering find shelter in these online communities, according to Cleo Garcia, a member of the GEPEM research group investigating bullying and violence in schools, and which is linked to three prominent universities.

Social media, particularly during last year’s polarising presidential race between Mr Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, generated a cacophony of threats against different groups.

Ms Garcia added that the problem should be treated as one of social vulnerability, not only security.

“These events were considered rare, as were extreme climate events, but climate events already have their protocols to be monitored and addressed. This is what we need,” Ms Garcia said.

Ms Camargo said she believes unrestricted access to phones and the internet is to blame, and said she was sceptical of the push by authorities to boost the number and frequency of patrols around schools.

“How long can we have police near schools? A week? They need to look deeper,” she said.

“In the United States, this is already considered an epidemic and we hope it doesn’t reach that point here.”

There are multiple causes driving the increase in school attacks in Brazil – from inequality to illiteracy, lack of parenting and exposure to violence -- and some are not national but rather regional or even local, according to Robert Muggah, co-founder of Igarape Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based think tank focused on security.

The danger is policymakers attempting to fight this issue with a focus only on guns and their availability, he added.

Mr Lula’s predecessor, Mr Bolsonaro, loosened gun control and actively promoted their use by citizens nationwide, claiming it was the best means to fight crime, even as public security experts said this was untrue.

On the first day of Mr Lula’s government, January 1, he revoked decrees issued by Mr Bolsonaro related to firearm access and has ordered all gun owners to register their weapons with the Federal Police by May 3.