Click photo to enlarge
A 2-year-old boy, found with 42 needles inside his body,
arrives to a hospital in Salvador, northeastern Brazil. (AP
Photo/Arestides Baptista, AG A TARDE, Agencia O Globo)
The stepfather of a 2-year-old boy found with 42 needles
in his body confessed to jabbing them into the toddler during
weeks of rituals with a woman he claimed received instructions
through trances, Brazilian police said today.
Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, a 30-year-old bricklayer, told
detectives that the woman who went into a trance would
"command him to stick the needles in the boy's body," police
inspector Helder Fernandes Santana said in a telephone
interview with The Associated Press.
The two held repeated sessions over several weeks, and
perhaps longer, in which they inserted the needles in the
child, Santana said.
"According to his confession, he acted under influence of the
woman, but it was he who stuck the needles in the boy's
body," the inspector said. The stepfather, the woman who went
into trances and another woman at some of the rituals have
been arrested, though no charges have yet been filed.
Magalhaes initially denied involvement when he was first
questioned by authorities on Monday, but confessed after
police detained him on Wednesday, Santana said.
An enraged crowd of more than 100 people surrounded and
hurled rocks at the police station in the small northeastern
city of Ibotirama where the suspects were held. Santana said
they broke out a window of his own car because they wrongly
believed the suspects were in it.
Extra police were called in to restore order and protect the
suspects, who were then taken to an undisclosed lockup for
their own protection.
Click photo to enlarge
In this frame taken from a TV Globo video, a person points
at a X-ray of a 2-year-old boy showing needles inside his
body in a hospital in Ibotirama, northern Brazi.
The child, meanwhile, was airlifted to the heart unit of
a major hospital in northeastern Brazil Thursday because two of
the needles are close to his heart, but it was not immediately
clear when doctors might be able to remove them.
Surgeons at a hospital in the town of Barreiras in Bahia
state, where the boy had been hospitalized since Sunday had
decided not to try to remove any needles immediately for fear
they could cause more damage.
Doctors located 42 needles in the boy, who was in stable
condition after a 390km flight to the hospital in the coastal
city of Salvador that has a special heart unit.
Hospital spokeswoman Susy Moreno said that an evaluation of
how to treat or operate on the boy probably would not be
finished until Friday. He was in an intensive care unit but
was conscious.
The boy's mother, a maid, took him to a hospital in Ibotirama
on Dec. 10, saying he was complaining of pain. Three days
later, after X-rays revealed many of the needles, doctors
moved him to the larger hospital in the nearby city of
Barreiras.
The mother told police she didn't know how the needles got
inside her son, whose name was not released because of his
age.
The boy's father, Gessivaldo Alves, told a Brazilian
newspaper that he visited the home where the boy was living
and found unspecified items that could be used for black
magic.
Santana said police are investigating to determine what sort
of religious sect the stepfather and the women belonged to.
One of the doctors who treated the child, Luiz Cesar
Soltoski, said he believed that the needles were stuck into
the child's body one by one. Police have also concluded it
would have been impossible for the boy to have ingested the
needles - which have been also been found in a lung, his left
leg and different parts of the thorax.
