doctor Fred Nicácio, from ‘BBB 23’, was raised in the church, rejected by his parents for being gay and has had a stutter since he was a child

The most talked about name of the first weeks of “BBB 23”, Fred Nicácio has the word “liberdade” tattooed on his neck. An achievement that cost him dearly: breaking up with his parents, who do not accept his sexual orientation.

The son of a military firefighter, he grew up in a Christian family on the outskirts of Campos dos Goytacazes, in the interior of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and spent his childhood living in a house inside a Ciep in the Guarus neighborhood, along with his parents and two brothers. He lived there until he was 14. His mother is a missionary at the Baptist Church in the city and, like his father, she never quite digested having a gay son.

With the rise of his father, a civil servant, the family moved to the Center. Fred studied his whole life in public school. In childhood, he developed a stutter, starting to talk like his mother, who also stutters.

“He was a child who was too ashamed to speak. First, because he has a stutter, and second, because he was very afraid of rejection”, recalls Lara Assade, doctor and friend who has been his brother’s protector for 32 years.

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Before breaking up with his parents, doctor Fred William Nicácio Souza de Oliveira, 35, did everything they expected of him: he dated women (the last one was a doctor, with whom he had a relationship when he was 25 years old), attended church and he graduated with the financial help of his father, who paid for his Physiotherapy college and a good part of Medicine.

“If I’m still alive today, it’s because my friends saved my life. My parents threw me out of the house for being gay”, vented the doctor in conversation with Marvvila on “BBB 23”.

The trigger for the breakup was due to a sensual shoot (see opposite) that Fred Nicácio did for “Dyo Magazine”, aimed at the gay public, in 2017. The photos in which he appears naked, showing his butt, do not they did well for their Christian family.

Fred, then, had contact only with his younger brother and an aunt. In May 2017, the doctor made a declaration of love on a social network to his mother, with whom he took longer to break up. “Thank you for loving me unconditionally and for never turning your back on me. I love you,” he wrote.

“The trigger was this photo he took, but the reason was the family’s non-acceptance. He tried to rapprochement. His mother spent some time providing religious support, she prayed a lot for him, but ended up choosing her husband. All out of shame for the son. Fred had to bury his parents while he was still alive,” says her husband, 40-year-old dentist Fabio Gelonese.

In the version told by the older brother, the family continued to help the brother financially, who lived alone and studied medicine in the city of Itaperuna, in the Northwest Fluminense region.

“He lived in a nice apartment, had a car, food, gas, telephone, internet. All funded by our family. So, logically, he wasn’t kicked out of the house. At no point did we stop helping him with the issue of his sexual ‘option’. (…) On my father’s part, it was because of the way he was exposed, as a photo essay of him for a ‘LGBT’ nightclub publication appeared on social networks, where my parents were catatonic with the situation and exposure. I also emphasize that before that, due to comments, we had a friendly family conversation and he never came out and denied his sexual ‘option’ several times. This is not because we would condemn it, but to understand the third-party comments that were happening”, said engineer Phillipe Nicácio.

The younger brother, on the other hand, counters, reaffirming that when Fred came out as his sexuality, in 2017, he was kicked out of the house “and all financial help was immediately cut off”. Nic says that Fred “was left to his own devices”. He also claims that the whole family cut off relations with the doctor because of the sensual test, except the mother, who only later moved away from her son. The youngest ends by saying that he helped his brother after what happened. Today, it is Fred who helps Nic financially.

“The break with the family was Fred’s hardest moment. He suffered a lot. It’s that story: you lose your parents in life”, says Lara, the childhood friend.

Fred cut a bend to support himself, but he didn’t settle. He taught as a monitor at the college to earn a little money and, being such a good student, he got a full scholarship at the university, starting to no longer pay the monthly fee. According to her friend, he was able to keep that scholarship because he had the highest CR in college.

At that time, Fred Nicácio was already dating her current husband, owner of a clinic specializing in facial harmonization in Bauru, in the interior of São Paulo, where they live. The two met at Rio Carnival in 2015.

Four years later, they got married on paper, with full communion of goods and a celebration in the duplex penthouse they bought together and where they live, in Jardim Estoril. There, they live an upper-middle-class life, also conquered with the many shifts that Fred gave in hospitals and at SUS, in addition to his salary as one of the hosts of “Queer Eye Brasil”, a Netflix reality.

In the opinion of people close to Fred, he has shown on TV exactly what he is out here: his fun, welcoming and sarcastic side, which divides opinions on the web, with many people loving it and others criticizing it. But one thing is unanimous: he does not leave the mouths of the people.

“I am very proud to see how confident he is today when speaking and taking a stand. Some people see it as arrogance, but coming from where he comes from, his speech, his behavior, feeling cornered and rejected, I see how much he has grown”, analyzes the best friend.

As for the husband, if Fred had the same attitudes he has and was a white person, he would not be misunderstood:

“Brazil is not used to seeing a black person who is financially well off, with high self-esteem, with professional success, which is imposed. It shocks. He is black, gay, officially married, a doctor with dreadlocks, a fighter who just wants to be a reference for people”.