EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a story about twin brothers Lucas and Rafael Ponzetto, who will be attending Texas A&M University-Texarkana. This article was originally published by the Dallas Morning News.
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Lucas Ponzetto limped a mile through the streets of São Paulo, fearing for his safety.
He felt desperate knowing he had no one who could care for him.
“Please help me. Help us. We need help,” he recalled crying to child protective services agents as he stumbled into their building with a torn ACL. “My mom, I can’t count on her, and my dad can do literally anything at any time.”
That was five months before Lucas and his twin brother, Rafael, now 18, moved to Rockwall in August 2022 to live with their aunt and uncle. There, they found sanctuary and a community within the Rockwall-Heath boys’ soccer program.
“I remembered one day I went to the bathroom in my home after a discussion with my father,” Rafael said. “I said, ‘God, if you can listen to me, take me out of here.’”
The brothers say they faced years of physical and emotional abuse before a judge in Brazil took away their father’s custodial rights, according to court documents reviewed by The Dallas Morning News. The judge said the boys’ father is facing child abuse charges and their mother is facing charges of neglect, but neither has been indicted. Both parents declined to respond to Texas court proceedings that appointed the twins’ aunt and uncle as their conservators.
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‘Red flags everywhere’
Rose Della Monica could tell something was wrong when she spoke with her sister, the boys’ mother, in July 2021. She said her sister mentioned her husband’s family threatening to call child protective services on him, but she was standing by her husband, though the brothers say she’s a victim of their father’s abuse as well.
“It was like, why didn’t she tell me that before? Why is she defending the father?” Della Monica said. “There were red flags everywhere.”
Della Monica and her husband, Andre, proposed bringing the boys to America to finish high school. After two months, their father relented and allowed Lucas and Rafael to make the trip in October 2021.
It didn’t take long for them to be noticed at Rockwall-Heath High School.
“One of the coaches came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I almost got killed by a soccer ball today in PE,’” boys soccer coach Phil Duhon said. “‘We have these twins that just moved in from Brazil.’ And I was like, ‘Well yeah, I need to know about these guys.’”
The twins were switched into the athletic period, and Lucas made varsity as a junior. He started to adapt to life in Rockwall and on the team, which welcomed him with open arms. He played in just one scrimmage his junior year before tearing his ACL in a club practice.
“It was this different feeling that I could live life without making mistakes,” Lucas said. “Back in Brazil, it could be the slightest mistake, and I would suffer really hard consequences.”
‘I hate him, and I hate that I hate him.’
Della Monica could see the pain on their faces in their first few weeks in Rockwall. They couldn’t look her in the eyes, and she could tell they were hiding something.
Lucas and Rafael said their parents told them to stay silent about their home life, which led Rafael to attempt suicide at 15.
“They said my uncle and aunt would never look at us the same way if we tell them,” Rafael said.
But after about a month, he went on a walk with Della Monica and told her everything.
“Rafael told me, ‘I don’t like my father. I hate him, and I hate that I hate him. But he’s bad,’” Della Monica recalled.
Lucas took a little longer to open up. One day, he accidentally shattered the glass on their shower door and sat in the bathroom for 10 minutes, shaking and speechless.
“I was hugging him and saying, ‘Lucas, it’s fine. It’s all good. What’s going on?’ And he was like, ‘If that happened in my home, I would be beaten,’” Della Monica said.
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‘They just disappeared’
Lucas and Rafael’s time in Rockwall was short-lived. They said their father realized they had informed the Della Monicas about the abuse and demanded they return to Brazil.
“I didn’t even really get a chance to say goodbye,” said Duhon, the coach. “They had just disappeared.”
The twins had grown close to Christal Woods, their English teacher, and confided in her about the abuse.
“When they told me they were going back to Brazil, I cried with them,” Woods said. “I told them, ‘I don’t know why God would let you go back. But I promise you, you will be back here.’”
The twins moved in with their mother, who had separated from their father while they were gone. But they said she struggled with mental health issues that made it hard for her to care for them and provide a stable home.
“She got emotionally dependent on the father,” Della Monica said. “It is like a drug. It is like an addiction. She got addicted to the violence and to live like that. It is very sad to watch because I know my sister.”
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‘It was just like a prison’
Lucas and Rafael chose to go to a shelter for their safety, where they lived with 13 other kids, some of whom were victims of abuse or addicted to drugs.
“It was just like a prison,” Rafael said. “We couldn’t leave. We had time to sleep, time to eat. They literally had a book to write down everything we did wrong. We tried to behave, and whenever we did something wrong, we got super nervous because they would write it, and the judge would look at it.”
They feared any wrong move would get them sent back to their parents, and they longed to return to Rockwall.
“I suffered a lot because it wasn’t guaranteed that I’d be back here,” Lucas said. “It wasn’t guaranteed that I’d play soccer again.”
Rafael started to question his faith.
“Every single day I prayed, saying, ‘God, you showed me everything. You gave me everything I wanted. You gave me a family. You gave me friends, and I was happy. And you took me out of that place.’”
During what Lucas and Rafael said were the darkest five months of their lives, the Della Monicas were working behind the scenes. By August 2022, a judge ruled they could return to the United States to live with their aunt and uncle.
The Della Monicas became legally responsible for the boys in March, when an American family court judge signed their conservatorship order.
“Through all the stuff that they’ve gone through, they’re not mad or bitter,” said Woods, their teacher. “They just want to be happy, and they want to be here, and they deserve to be here.”
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‘They made me feel at home’
Heath’s varsity soccer team got its first district win the first night Lucas was eligible to play. He became a significant contributor, with one goal and four assists in 10 games.
“He’s been a vital member of the team since,” Duhon said. “He’s a great player for us.”
The team calls him Ronaldo, not only because he bears a physical resemblance to the soccer star, but also because of his play. He said he never takes a night on the field for granted because he remembers what life was like without it.
“Playing for school is something special to me,” Lucas said. “It’s special for me to play soccer with them. Technically, I never had the opportunity to do that in Brazil for my school. All the team, they welcomed me, and they made me feel at home.”
The final step for Lucas and Rafael will be obtaining their green cards, which could take years. Until then, the twins are unable to work, drive or receive federal student aid. They were accepted to college at Texas A&M University-Texarkana but will have to rely on private scholarships to attend.
Through the pain and uncertainty they endured, Lucas and Rafael say the one constant was each other.
“At home, living with my father, we were not that close,” Rafael said. “We used to fight. Then when we moved here, we started to get closer. I think the moment we decided was when we went back to Brazil. I was like, ‘Bro, we’re gonna do this together. It’s you and me against the world.’”