‘Alerta Pri’: Vitor Belfort’s mother turned personal tragedy into lifesaving mission

Vitor Belfort was wearing a t-shirt that read “Come back, Priscila” when he won the UFC light heavyweight championship in 2004, three weeks after his sister disappeared in Rio de Janeiro. Almost 19 years later, there is still no body found or definite answer on the case, but Belfort’s mother has found a way to turn tragedy into a purpose.

Inspired by United States’ Amber Alert — a system created to spread the word to society about abducted children via SMS text messages — Jovita Belfort began campaigning for a similar program in her native Rio de Janeiro in 2019, trying to help other families in their quest to find missing children and teenagers.

Jovita Belfort was invited to speak at the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro but it took years for it to become a reality. Once it was made into a state law in 2021 under the name of “Alerta Pri,” a tribute to her missing daughter, she thought things were finally going in the right direction.

“I still live a daily grief, a daily pain,” Jovita Belfort told with MMA Fighting. “To me, the best way to deal with it was to turn my pain into a fight so other people don’t go through what I went through. There was nothing like that when Priscila went missing. Nothing. I was in a vacuum, I was going down in a rabbit hole, an endless tunnel.”

Jovita Belfort found help in an NGO (non-governmental organization) in Sao Paulo after her disappearance in 2004, an entity that specialized in helping people deal with the pain of having missing relatives, and realized the police needed an official body specialized in dealing with those situations.

According to data provided by the Rio de Janeiro government, 51,819 people have gone missing in the state over the past decade. “Alerta Pri” only worked for three months in 2021, firing off SMS messages about the disappearance of 30 kids, and according to Belfort, 27 were found. Yet, the system was shut off after phone companies asked the government to pay for the messages to be sent to the population.

“Not many people in Brazil pay attention to missing people so we had to win hearts and minds,” said Belfort, who works for the government today as part of Rio de Janeiro’s Social Development and Human Rights office since 2019. “But the most frustrating part of all this was seeing phone companies stepping away after it was proven a success. We’re outraged. It was such a hit, and now it’s suspended? How many kids could have been found since then? How many families are suffering because of that?”

Belfort said the office is currently battling phone companies in court to have the system be reinstated, and laments that such a tool could have helped find her daughter back in 2004.

“You didn’t have so many cameras around, you didn’t have Facebook or Instagram or any of that,” she said. “The alert is so much faster. The faster you get a photo released, better are your odds at finding them.”

The Priscila Belfort case

Priscila Belfort was last seen on Jan. 9, 2004, after leaving work for lunch. The family never received a ransom note. Three years later, a woman said she was one of 10 people that kidnapped and murdered Priscila over a debt, but no body was ever found.

Vitor Belfort, signed by the UFC at the time, was scheduled to challenge Randy Couture for the 205-pound championship in Las Vegas on Jan. 31, and won via first-round TKO. “The Phenom” was clearly emotional before and after the bout, wearing a shirt that pleaded for his sister to return home.

“It was very hard to watch because he suffered a lot,” Jovita Belfort said. “He also started to get a bit depressed, but [his wife] Joana was essential in helping him not go down. And I also kept telling him that was a way to honor his sister, a way to get her name out.

“But it’s still hurting him, Joana and the kids, my sister. Only those that go through something like this know how much it hurts, not knowing if your relative is eating, if they are being well treated, if they’re dead or alive. So many questions. That’s why I get up every day, to fight for this. It’s my way to be close to her as well and honor her name instead of just suffer. Vitor, my grandkids, my daughter-in-law, they give me that strength.”