By Stephen Buckley
                  Washington Post Foreign Service

                  BRASILIA, Brasil, July 26—Sergio Andrade is one part furious, one part
                  perplexed. He listens calmly to the charges that he and his most famous
                  client--the beautiful, charismatic Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi--raped,
                  kidnapped, beat, spat on, manipulated and otherwise degraded numerous
                  teenage girls and young women who flocked around them. And he
                  responds with bewildered indignation.

                  He rolls his eyes. He sighs. "For God's sake," he says at one point.

                  Yes, he had sex with some of these teenagers and women, he says.
                  Sometimes he spoke harshly to them, nudged them to rehearse for a show
                  rather than watch television or goof around. Yes, he went off to Rio de
                  Janeiro in the middle of last year, but he swears that he had no idea that
                  Mexican authorities had him on a "wanted" list.

                  "I'm not trying to make myself out to be a white dove," Andrade, 44, said
                  this week, sitting in a small, boxy interview room in a federal prison here in
                  Brazil's capital. "I am a man, but I'm not a monster."

                  Minutes earlier, Trevi--dressed in a gray sweat suit and wearing no
                  makeup, her famous strawberry-blond hair splaying in all directions--had
                  slid out of the room. "It's not that I don't want to stay and listen," said
                  Trevi, 30, "but I know if I'm around, I'm just going to start crying."

                  For now, Trevi's lawyers aren't letting her talk. But Andrade, Trevi's
                  manager, has grown tired of listening, tired of stories of how he and the
                  singer used their mystique and power as one of Latin America's most
                  well-known manager-artist teams to lure teens and young women into a
                  circle of alleged physical deprivation, psychological abuse and sexual
                  slavery.

                  One set of parents accused him of raping their teenage daughter and
                  fathering her child, a son Andrade allegedly placed in an orphanage in
                  Spain. His ex-wife has said that he "has total psychological dominance
                  over people," and alleges that he kidnapped and raped her.

                  Another young woman, who called herself Delia Gonzalez, said last year in
                  a television interview that Andrade "raped me for nine months. . . . He
                  would get mad and spit on me, he would strap me, he would lock me in a
                  room."

                  And there is more, including allegations that he manipulated and abused
                  Trevi, now a fallen feminist heroine, the way he allegedly did all the others.
                  ("Of course not," he says with a pause and a sigh.)

                  Andrade insists that he's never even heard of some of his accusers, such as
                  Gonzalez. But the problem, he admits, is that there's at least a stitch of truth
                  to a lot of the other allegations.

                  How much truth, no one yet knows.

                  The Mexican government hopes to find out by bringing the couple back to
                  their homeland and putting them on trial. But the Brazilian courts are not
                  likely to make an extradition ruling for months, leaving Trevi and Andrade
                  to stew in prison, where, he says, he has stared for hours at the ceiling at
                  night asking, "How the hell did all this happen?"

                  A good question from one of Mexico's legendary record producers, the
                  man who vaulted Trevi to her status as a working-class, feminist icon
                  whose first big hit, "Dr. Psychiatrist," featured bottles being smashed
                  against a wall and lyrics that chastised the doctor for gazing at his teenage
                  patient's shapely legs.

                  She became one of Latin America's most popular singers, known for her
                  blistering onstage energy and antics, her ragged, sexy get-ups, her good
                  works and her good looks.

                  Andrade had met Trevi in 1984, when she was 14. At first, he turned her
                  away. Over the next three or four months, she called or visited him three or
                  four times, needling and wheedling him for an opportunity. Eventually, after
                  "Dr. Psychiatrist" and her first album came out in 1989, she became an
                  industry unto herself, posing for posters and making movies. Her racy
                  calendars sold more than 1 million copies. Her three albums sold more
                  than 5 million. There had even been talk of a Gloria Trevi doll.

                  Throughout the years, according to their accusers, Andrade and Trevi
                  drew many teenage girls and young women into their circle. Some were
                  groupies, and others hungered for Andrade to make them a star--like
                  Trevi.

                  Andrade's accusers say he and Trevi took advantage of their vulnerability.
                  They say he sometimes denied them food and kept them from calling or
                  visiting their parents.

                  Andrade says that at times he did indeed make girls turn off the television,
                  or kept them from going home to visit their parents (who had to give him or
                  American Connections, the entertainment production company he was
                  connected with, written permission to work with the girls).

                  "Sure, there were times when I would tell them, 'Hey we've got a show
                  coming up, stop goofing off,' " he says, adding later, "or I'd say they
                  couldn't go to visit their parents this Saturday because we had a show. Is
                  that what they mean by controlling?"

                  Andrade, a quietly charming man with sad brown eyes and black hair
                  spiked with gray, does not deny having had sex with some of his accusers.
                  He says that at various times, he and Trevi have themselves been lovers.
                  He also suggests that he has had an array of sexual relationships with
                  groupies and prospects, some of whom were still teenagers when he
                  became physically intimate with them.

                  The parents of the girl whose child they accuse Andrade of fathering
                  suggest that he tried to hide the baby in an orphanage in Spain, where
                  Andrade, Trevi and members of her group, Little Painted Mouths, lived for
                  a few months in 1997.

                  Andrade says he did have a sexual relationship with the teenager, from the
                  middle of 1998 to the end of last year. "It was never with violence, it was
                  never me using my authority," he says. "It was a friendship."

                  He seems genuinely puzzled by some of the accusations. He said that when
                  he and Aline Hernandez, his ex-wife, divorced in the early 1990s, she
                  offered no sordid accusations in court. He had met Hernandez when she
                  was 14. They married when she was 16. They divorced when she was 19.

                  "She didn't say anything about rape," he says. "Nothing, nothing, nothing,
                  nothing. She just said she wanted a divorce. She didn't say anything about
                  abuse."

                  And then there is Delia Gonzalez, who said that Andrade forced her to
                  make a pornographic film during a trip to San Diego in the 1990s.

                  "First of all, I've never even spent a night in San Diego," he said, adding
                  that Trevi did a show there once, but they then left town immediately. And
                  "I don't recognize this woman's name. I've never met a person with that
                  name, and I don't know her. I never, never. . . . There's no way."

                  He arrived in Rio de Janeiro for the first time last July, then came and went
                  for the next seven months. After he and Trevi were arrested in January,
                  along with the three members of Painted Little Mouths, residents who lived
                  in their apartment building near Copacabana beach said they had kept a
                  low profile. According to authorities, they had moved to several
                  apartments in Rio's affluent South Zone last year.

                  Trevi, however, did manage to regularly have her hair done at a ritzy salon
                  a few blocks from her apartment. Her regular hairdresser would say that
                  she had some of the most beautiful locks he'd ever seen. Trevi told him she
                  had come to Brazil to do concerts and perhaps make a CD.

                  Andrade says that he never turned himself over to Mexican authorities for
                  questioning because he did not know they were looking for him. It was not
                  until last November, when he saw a brief magazine article about the
                  allegations, that he realized he and Trevi might be in trouble.

                  Three months ago, a Brazilian federal court delayed a decision on
                  extradition, saying it wanted the Mexican government to show more
                  evidence of a case against Andrade and Trevi. The court is still waiting for
                  those documents, and is not expected to rule on the matter for at least
                  another couple of months.

                  Andrade says that enemies of his in the media are responsible for all this,
                  and alleges that his accusers are now writing books and giving interviews
                  for pay--eager to cash in on his hard times.

                  "It's become an industry," he says with a tired shrug.