What began as an investigation into a jiu-jitsu coach has unraveled into one of the most disturbing cases in combat sports history, exposing a web of abuse, law enforcement corruption, and institutional protection spanning more than a decade.
Melqui Galvao, a civil police investigator from Manaus, Brazil, gained recognition for founding a social project that offered free jiu-jitsu training to children from impoverished communities in the Amazon.
The program produced world champions and was celebrated as proof that the martial art could transform lives. What investigators now allege is that it served as a vehicle for the systematic s3xual abuse of the very children it claimed to help.
Nine women have filed police reports. The youngest to make a public statement was only 12 years old when the abuse began.
One former student described how the arrangement was framed: “He came to me and said it wasn’t free, that I would have to pay, and I paid in the worst possible way.” She later added, “I’m making this video for my sister. He abused my sister, too. He r*ped her, too. Just like he did to me.”
Galvao’s position as a serving police officer was central to the control he allegedly maintained.
One woman says he told her when she was 12, “If you report me, I’ll know, because I’m a police officer.”
She stayed silent for 14 years.
In February 2026, a 17-year-old athlete traveling with Galvao in Rome woke to find his hand beneath her shirt. In an audio recording provided by her family, Galvao addressed the incident directly.
He said, “I touched her stomach. I touched it quickly. I thought she was sleeping for about 3 seconds, maybe at most. I deeply regret that. I deeply regret having done that.”
He then attempted to negotiate her silence while placing responsibility on the young woman herself.
Arrested on April 28, 2026, Galvao was transferred 2,000 kilometers south to a São Paulo prison after investigators alleged his brother Enoque had obtained a cell phone for him within days of his initial detention. He allegedly used it to pressure witnesses, directing one to “say that him and [one of the v*ctims] made everything up.”
He also told the same witness, “We need something intimate to show the judge she’s not an innocent girl.”
A second phone was seized on June 25 from his cell in a different facility. A court ordered his continued detention on grounds of witness interference. His brother Enoque, also a civil police officer, has since been arrested on charges involving two girls from the same project.
The case carries a further shadow. In 2007, Galvao’s first wife lost her life outside her home and in front of her daughter, one year after she had walked into a police station with a handwritten note documenting threats he had made against her. No one has ever been charged in connection with her death.
Galvao’s first hearing is scheduled for October 20, 2026.
