Joana Mascarenhas, a 36-year-old Portuguese ‘influencer’, will have to compensate her four-year-old daughter with one thousand euros, as part of the sentence imposed on her by a Lisbon criminal court for a crime of domestic violence, consisting of submerging the girl in cold water to combat her tantrums. The sentence also imposes a two-year sentence. of prison, which will be suspended given that the woman has no criminal record, and the obligation to carry out a social reintegration plan. His defense lawyer has announced that they will appeal the ruling.
The case came to court after the opening of an investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office, following the commotion caused by the disclosure in July 2023 of a video of Mascarenhas where he boasted about the effectiveness of the method he used to stop the minor’s tantrums. In it, uploaded to her Instagram, the influencer said the following: “We were in the pool, she sat on the floor crying and saying that she couldn’t walk, she cried and cried, she screamed and I thought I had two options: let her get tired of crying and discover that she wasn’t getting anything or, if I got tired of listening to her, put her in the pool, she hates cold water. She was still in her school uniform and cried for another fifteen minutes. I didn’t say anything to her or threaten her, I grabbed her and submerged her in the pool up to here (in the video she points to her neck). That unfocused her, her brain went to another matter: now she was cold. By changing the focus of the tantrum, which she was trying to win, she realized that she might always lose. She has not had tantrums in the pool for more than three weeks. “He knows that if there is a tantrum, he goes to the water.”
Joana Mascarenhas shared a controversial tactic to deal with the beers of her three-year-old family: submerging the children in cold water.
Joana claims that pouring water into cold water is the most effective way to calm down. pic.twitter.com/YAmCBusy4D
— Mundo Vivo (@mundo__vivo) July 14, 2023
In the same video he recounts another moment, which occurred during the early hours of the morning at the family home, in a building in the center of Lisbon. After several episodes of night terrors in which the girl became very agitated, the influencer concluded that the little girl developed “as a tactic” to wake up at night crying loudly. “From a certain point on, she no longer had night terrors, she only woke up and threw tantrums because she wanted us to go be with her or because she said she was alone (…) we let her if she wakes up at night she can come to our bed, but she got into the habit of asking us to go get her because she was afraid. Day in and day out, we knew it was a tactic because she is not afraid of the dark and we left the door open for her to enter (…) I thought she was creating a queen and that we had to nip that in the bud.”
Mascarenhas remembered what happened in the pool and decided to repeat it one morning to combat the girl’s screams. Dressed in her pajamas, she put her in the bathtub and wet her with cold water. “It was a super remedy. I took off her wet clothes, wrapped her in a towel, put her to bed, and she slept for about three hours. It was wonderful, she relaxed and realized that she can’t have tantrums in the pool or at home because she could lose,” the mother boasts in the video.
The court that has now sentenced the mother considers that her reaction violated the “physical and emotional integrity” of the little girl. “Although she is not currently afraid or suspicious of water, that does not mean that this behavior, given the girl’s tender age, cannot have an impact on her emotional development,” the judge maintains. “The accused knew that she was physically and mentally bothering her daughter, subjecting her to undignified treatment, likely to frighten her, cause cold, thermal shock, discomfort and anguish,” the ruling adds.
