The story you’re about to hear is from Eduardo. 

My brother and I are completely different people. My brother is really into sports and hanging out with the bros, and I couldn’t care less about sports, especially team sports. My brother is straight, I’m gay. My brother is super confident, alpha male, and yeah, cool. 

And my brother also lives halfway across the globe and in Brazil and I have been living in Australia for the past six years and despite all those differences we came to surprisingly share the same profession. So we are both fully qualified criminal defense attorneys and my brother is also a professor for criminal law at university and I say it’s surprising because I never really wanted to become a criminal defense attorney. 

It all sort of happened accidentally, really. Because, you know, you accidentally study law for six years, and then you accidentally pass this really hard lawyer’s bar exam, and then all of a sudden you’re practicing, and you’re like, I’m defending these people, okay. So, this is, but for you guys to understand, really, this accident, I really have to take you back. 

So, I was born in Brazil. And I was born in Southern Brazil, and I usually give out this extra bit of information because Southern Brazil is a bit different. So when overseas people are usually traveling through Brazil, and then they, if they eventually get to Southern Brazil, they usually go, wow, everyone is white around here. 

And, and they are because in Southern Brazil, if you navigate a certain level of wealth let’s say, you only see white people and that’s just how Southern Brazil is. And so as you might have gathered, I don’t really fit in that, that group. So for the majority of my life in Southern Brazil, I was the odd one out. 

And so was my brother. And so it was my family really. And just to give you an idea of how, how this dynamic works. So, for example, I was born into a very poor family in Southern Brazil and I, yeah, so I lived in a small town, inland Brazil, that whole thing, and I attended public school and at that public school, I was definitely, definitely amongst the lightest skinned people there and I did really well at that school and so my parents went, well, we might have to try and get you a scholarship and get you into private school so we can better your opportunities right. 

So, we worked really hard and I got that scholarship and I made it into private school. And I remember walking into private school and going, wow, I am top five darkest people here. And this was, and this is just how Southern Brazil is, right? And this was suddenly my new environment because, it wasn’t, it felt like a complete different universe. 

Like this private school. It was just a few kilometers away in a bigger city. So I would travel back and forth, back and forth every day, but it just felt like a complete different universe and a universe in which I didn’t belong. And, but then at the same time, these were formative years, right? So this is from year eight onward. 

So this is when I’m starting to develop my own interests and my own likings. And I was absorbing a lot of this new environment. Which had nothing to do with my life back home. So all of a sudden I was really into theater and arts festivals and I was reading all these books and I wanted to learn French and I wanted to learn English and my friends would go all go on to become lawyers and doctors and engineers and all these new, yeah, interests were starting to create a gap between me and my parents. 

Because it was just a source of a lot of clash, because it was just like, Who are you? Who is this person? And so, yeah, it was just a big contrast between private school life and my life back home. But, if there was one thing that both my private school life and my life back home, my parents could agree on, is that I’m becoming a lawyer. 

That’s it. There’s no room for purpose. This is the plan. You’re doing it. And, at that stage, I was really good at following the plan. So, I continued to excel in private school, got into this really good, university, great law program, amazing, right? So, I’m following the plan. Great. So… And so now that I’m in law school, I suppose I have to figure it out, like what type of lawyer I’ll become. 

But at that stage, I was also starting to be a bit annoyed, or perhaps this underlying anger of like, I feel like people are telling me what to do, and I don’t really get to do what I want to do, you know? And, which takes us then to my first class of criminal law.  

And I remember that this professor was… going on and on about a day in the life of a criminal defense attorney, you know, and I remember just being remotely, like, mildly interested, because one thing that I had also absorbed from private school was a bit of entitlement, perhaps, a bit of a snobbish vibe, and I was like, criminal law, no, I would do international law, I’ll do corporate, I am above this, and this professor just went on and on, blah, blah, blah, and then he went on this of okay, criminal law is not for the weak and criminal, criminal law is for the tough, and criminal law is definitely not for gay people. 

What? Okay, I might have to become a criminal defense attorney just to prove you wrong. And that’s how it went, really. And, it turns out I can be that petty, that’s one thing. And, but also it turned out that… Criminal law is a fascinating subject, which I really connected with, and I really enjoyed, and it was amazing. 

I’m like, wow, okay, never thought this would be the case, but we’re here now, so that’s it. Right, so I suppose I have to… start to get some experience under my belt and yeah, try and get, get, get an internship in the criminal justice system if this is gonna be my path, right? And so I did. My first internship was at a penitentiary unit inside in Brazil and that’s when a lot, it started to change for me. 

So as weeks progressed in this internship, I came to see and realize that I looked like everyone in there except the people working there. So my narratives, my context, where I came from, my skin tone, everything matched the people locked up in there. And that started to really, bring it home for me because, well, first I got to understand my parents plan, right? 

And I got to understand, which they knew, that the big plan of me and my brother becoming criminal defense attorneys, there was also, there was, there was always a secondary plan because, when we were born. The plan that was in place for us was that we had a high chance of ending up in that penitentiary. 

And so my parents, took on, well, took upon themselves this, and created this other plan in which we would walk in the penitentiary through the front door. And we did. And also, one, another thing that I came to realize was that my parents always knew that there was this gap growing between us and it was a risk that they were willing to take if we’re going to go ahead with this big plan that they had, you know, and just getting in touch with all these realizations and this. 

Yeah. And this moment, it also came with realizing that I had a mission and a role to play in there. And that’s what ignited something in me. So I now felt like I had the responsibility and the duty really to advocate for my own community and to join the voice in Brazil that would try and shake the structures. 

That make this a reality, that make my community being over represented in the criminal justice system. And that just, yeah, brought me back, like, just gave me energy and brought me back to life and ignited me to do that work, you know? And… It went really well. It went amazing. Like, I graduated law school, I, yeah, passed my lawyer’s bar exam, I got a job as a criminal defense attorney inside that same penitentiary unit I interned first, and things are going great. 

Well, amazing. Amazing. So… life happens, you know, things change, we all know, and, I met this Australian guy, and we fell in love, and we had our civil union, we decided to move to Australia, and so we did, and this was, yeah, almost six years ago. And, when I got here, I couldn’t practice law anymore because, of course, law is the law of the country and I had to leave that behind, not just my profession, but my calling, my mission, all that. 

And it was something that I, yeah, struggled with because I just, I, because it was something so important to me, so I wanted to get back to that. But it was really hard because sometimes I would try and, okay, I’ll apply for this job for in, that has not a really lawyer job, but it is in the criminal justice system. 

Maybe I’ll try and get in this way, but then I would never get a call back. And so I thought, well, maybe I have to have an Australian qualification. So I would, apply for like a postgrad or a qualifying course here and I would get accepted, but I wouldn’t have the funds to go through with it because of course, migrant story, you know, you roll with the punches and yeah, there wasn’t the funds to go through with it. 

And yeah, it was, it was hard. So like throughout all my journey in Australia, there was always that thing missing, that thing lacking for me. Which then takes us to last year. So last year, a couple of days before lockdown hit, I was, well my relationship came to an end. It wasn’t working anymore. And so I went from that straight into full isolation, living by myself, lockdown. 

So now, not only I didn’t have my purpose, my profession, now I didn’t have my partner, I didn’t have my family, I didn’t have my country, I couldn’t just hop on a plane, on the plane and go back home. So, I felt like everything was falling apart, really, in my life, and I didn’t feel, I just fell into a hole, because I couldn’t just sing to…have the energy to tackle any of these things in my life anymore. 

And I was struggling. I was in a, I was in a really bad, mental health space. And throughout all of that, my brother. Has always been a constant in my life, right? So he, we’ve always video chatted, even before he was cool, even before the pandemic, and he’s always been a constant in my life and throughout this, tough time, he was always there for me. 

And I think it reached a point where he couldn’t see me miserable anymore. And so he came up with this plan, right? So, in one of our video chats, he went, Hey, how about we start this research group? I can tell that we, well, you used to be such a good criminal defense attorney. I realized we’ve been reading the same books. 

So at this time in the pandemic, we realized, we realized we were reading the same light stuff, you know, like mass incarceration, over representation of marginalized communities, you know, just chill, relaxing pandemic stuff. And so he went, you, you were so good before we’re reading the same stuff. Let’s put this together and let’s put some structure around it. 

And we’re going to catch up every so often. And you’re going to have something to look forward to. You’re going to have something to drive you. And it worked, it worked so well. I found myself engaging with that and connecting with that so much. So we started writing these articles, pitching them, like excited to read all this stuff and. 

It’s been such, an amazing journey. So that research project developed into a second research project. So now we’re not just talking to lawyers, we’re talking to social workers, we’re talking to people in the arts and broadening this discussion of social impact and criminal justice system. So it’s been really monumental in my life and it brought me back to life. 

And it also, yeah, gave me the energy to go around and do the work with everything else, you know, and I’m just so grateful for how incredible my brother’s presence has been because he really did pull me out of that hole I was in, and it’s all because he was able to see that spark that was dormant for so long, and he was able to reignite it just like that. Thank you.  

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