A trans-identified male professional skateboarder in Brazil has retained a lawyer after being accused of emotionally and physically abusing at least three women. The alleged victims are calling on the Brazilian Skateboarding Confederation to remove Luiza Marchiori, previously known as Luiz Neto, from the sport.
Marchiori, 30, first came out as transgender in 2023 in an announcement that shocked many pro-skateboarding fans as he had been competing as a man for almost two decades. In the men’s category, Marchiori had secured two Brazilian championship titles. Following the announcement, Marchiori was praised as Brazil’s first transgender pro-skateboarder.
In an interview he gave to UOL, he claimed to have begun hormone replacement therapy in late 2022 after struggling with his gender identity in private for years. The majority of the interview is dedicated to Marchiori insisting he had become “weakened” by estrogen.
“My endocrinologist had warned me that I would lose strength, but I didn’t believe it,” he said. “People say that the trans woman has much more strength than the cis woman, and I thought so too.” Marchiori continues by referring to a skateboarding challenge he had competed in after beginning cross-sex hormones where he performed poorly. “It was only there that I understood … that my body was changing. It’s my body becoming a woman’s body.”
After transitioning, Marchiori also came out as “pansexual.” He had been in a relationship with a woman prior to declaring a transgender identity, and claimed the relationship went from a heterosexual union to a homosexual one.
“It was difficult at first, because she was a girl who was not attracted to other women, she was a heterosexual woman. And with that came the insecurity on my part. She liked me with a male body and was not attracted to my female body. But with the passage of time, when things changed … I think she started to look at me in a different way, with different eyes,” he said.
The UOL article notes that Marchiori would be cleared to compete professionally with female skateboarders in April of 2024.
While it is uncertain when Marchiori officially began competing with females, he was present at the Itacoatiara Pro in June, where he took home a women’s award. Most of Marchiori’s competitors were young girls, and he reportedly displaced a 10 year old girl out of receiving an award.
One father took to Instagram after the competition to express shock and outrage at Marchiori’s presence in the category.
“I’m a parent of an athlete and my daughter raced the Itacoatiara Pro weekend, and to my surprise, she was competing against Lu Neto,” Guilherme Alano, the owner of Precast Skateparks, wrote. “Watching my 12-year-old daughter race with an athlete who had competed for over 20 years as a man was kind of strange. Even if he takes hormones, his [muscle] memory as an athlete will not be erased.”
The same month that Marchiori began competing with women, allegations began to surface that he had abused his former partners.
On June 17, Garcia Rodrigues, a male pro-skateboarder, released a video in support of the victims, articulating that he was aware of the evidence against Marchiori, and accusing him of trying to cover up his past wrongdoing. In the video, Rodrigues played an audio recording from one of the alleged victims in which she was confronting Marchiori about the abuse she had suffered by him.
“He never respected the opinion of women or showed regret for something he did. He just wanted to take up space by imposition, and threatened each one of them,” Rodrigues wrote in the caption of the video. “I hope that the entities representing female skateboarding and Brazilian skateboarding will fully support the victims and that justice will be done!”
In the comments of Rodrigues’ video, some of Marchiori’s alleged victims posted their statements against him.
One woman, Gabbri Beiro, confirmed that she was one of the accusers.
“I’m Luiz Neto’s ex-girlfriend and I suffered physical and psychological aggression [from him]. Not only me, I have a WhatsApp group with several ex-girlfriends of his who have also suffered assaults. He was jealous of my dog, my dad, my brothers… I could not have friends. He threatened to smash my phone in my face, and wanted me to throw all of my clothes out and dress like a man.”
Beiro continues by asserting that “Luiz doesn’t deserve respect and he belongs in jail.” She adds that she had been gathering evidence from his other victims, including photos of physical injuries, and had taken it all to the police.
Another one of Marchiori’s alleged victims similarly spoke out through Rodrigues, and called upon the Brazilian Skateboarding Confederation to investigate Marchiori.
“They won’t shut us up. We are victims, not guilty. [He] victimizes [himself], and says we didn’t ‘accept’ [him] because [he’s] trans, but that’s not what it is,” wrote Isabella Menezes, a female pro-skateboarder. “It’s about him being a toxic person to everyone who has suffered abuse and harassment at his hand. We’re not doing anything wrong, just putting out everything we have kept for a long time. Justice should be done and the Brazilian Skateboarding Confederation should take a stand.”
A third accuser, influencer Beatriz Miguel, added her voice to the chorus of allegations, recounting abuses similar to those Beiro had articulated.
“I dated Luiz for almost two years. I went to live with him at the end of 2019. He began to gossip about my friends, saying that they were a bad influence [on me] because they drank. Sometimes he would send messages to my exes to ask what I had done with them in detail, because I was not allowed to do it anymore [with him]. I could no longer watch the movies and shows that I watched before. I couldn’t eat sushi because I had eaten sushi with my ex … I had to sleep in the bed in a way that I didn’t sleep with others, and if he woke up and I was in another position, he would get mad at me and tell me to lay on the edge of the bed,” Miguel wrote, adding that Marchiori had systematically isolated her from everyone in her life.
“By the end, I had lost contact with everyone. He deleted my social media, changed my number, took my phone and locked it with a password. I could only use it sometimes to answer calls from my parents.”
Miguel details that Marchiori had taken a particular control over his wardrobe, and, like with Beiro, had forced her to dress in masculine clothes.
“He threw my wardrobe away, I could only wear his clothes and underwear. He wouldn’t let me shave, only if I asked him sometimes. I couldn’t wear makeup. I couldn’t talk a lot with his friends. And he assaulted me, left me all purple. Once, when we fought, I tried to escape, but he caught me and locked me in a room. He started stepping on [my chest], depriving me of air. He choked me and many other things. Two years and a lot of psychological and physical abuse,” Miguel concluded.
Beyond the victims who came forward, Rodrigues’ post attracted thousands of ‘likes’ and hundreds of comments, most of which expressed outrage at the revelations. Many also noted that Brazil’s strict gender identity protections, which prohibits speech such as ‘misgendering,’ made it difficult to criticize, condemn, or expose Marchiori properly.
In 2019, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court ruled that discrimination against ‘LGBTQ Community’ constituted a penal offense, and fell under existing race-based protections as a form of “social racism.” Since then, multiple women have been criminally investigated for referring to trans-identified males as “men.”
Rodrigues followed up his June 17 video with another the next day, in which he labeled Marchiori a “psychopath.” He called for justice for the victims, and encouraged others to take a stand against violence against women.
On June 19, just 24 hours after the release of Rodrigues’ second video, Marchiori posted a statement from his lawyer to Instagram.
“Luiza is the victim of transphobia. There is no evidence capable of incriminating Luiza and whoever is accusing must prove it and if they do not prove it, they are liable for the crimes of slander, defamation and transphobic insult,” the statement read, referring to the 2019 law criminalizing transphobia. It continued that legal action was being pursued against Rodrigues, Beiro, and Menezes, along with anyone else who had alleged Marchiori was an abuser.
Less than a week later, the victims retained their own lawyer and a press notice was published on their Instagram accounts. The statement, from the Bruna Brigoni law firm, contains the shocking accusation that some of Marchioni’s victims had been minors at the time of his abuse.
In the caption of the post Rodrigues made of the press release, he wrote: “The victims all have one thing in common: RIGHTS!”
The investigation into the allegations against Marchioni are ongoing.
