A bikini model shared her shocking story of humiliation after being accused of being trans during an arrest in Morocco.
A Brazilian bikini model has revealed how she was accused of being transgender and forced to prove her gender by showing her genitals to officers after being arrested in Morocco.
Liziane Gutierrez, a social media influencer, claimed that she spent an entire month in jail after recording a policeman in Marrakesh.
Before being taken to a women’s prison, Gutierrez said she was subjected to a humiliating genital inspection to verify that she wasn’t transgender.
Opening up about her harrowing experience, Gutierrez said: “The jail was a nightmare when I first got there. They thought I was a transsexual, so I had to open my legs in front of two women and two men.”
Continuing her story, she added: “I never felt so humiliated in my life,”
She also recounted: “And they were looking up inside me like a doctor or whatever, and I was just crying.”
Once officers confirmed that she was “actually a woman,” they transferred her to a women’s prison.
Gutierrez believes that if she had been transgender, the authorities would have placed her in a men’s prison, a thought she found even more horrifying.
The ordeal started on October 30, when the influencer’s bag was stolen outside her Marrakesh hotel.
Inside were her phone and her husband’s work phone, both containing critical information.
Fortunately, her husband still had his personal phone, and the couple used it to track the stolen devices.
The very next day, one of the phones pinged its location, prompting them to rush to the closest policeman for help.
Describing this moment, she said: “We saw these guys with the police car near the hotel and we went to contact them.”
“And we don’t speak Arabic, we don’t speak French, so I was trying to communicate in English and with Google Translate.”
“They were just ignoring us, so I grabbed the phone and I started to record them, to show to people: if you’re a tourist in Marrakesh and you need police, they’re just going to ignore you.”
“When I did that, they handcuffed me and my husband, and they threw us in a police car and took us to the police station.”
The Brazilian embassy later confirmed her arrest to Leo Dias, a celebrity news outlet in her home country.
Her husband was released after spending just one night in custody.
This happened after he agreed to provide the password to the phone used to record the police officers.
However, for Gutierrez, the ordeal was far from over.
She was soon transferred to a holding cell that she described as “complete hell.”
Sharing more about the conditions, she said: “In the little room, it was supposed to be like no more than 10 girls, and it was 20 girls.”
She added: “There were bugs everywhere, flies everywhere.”
“There was no ventilation, but people were smoking inside that room. Some people stayed there for like a week. How? I have no clue.”
Gutierrez was eventually moved to a larger prison, where she stayed for a month before being released.
Reflecting on her experience, she said it was her worst travel ordeal yet, even more traumatic than her visits to North Korea and war-torn Ukraine.
Gutierrez described her frustrations, saying: “I know that I’m not a person that is easy to deal with. But at that time, I did nothing wrong. I was just trying to get help.”
She continued: “I was in a country that didn’t speak good English, I don’t know nobody there but my husband, so I was just trying to look for help.”
The Moroccan authorities have been approached for a comment on the matter.