Surgeons remove needles from boy

Surgeons today successfully removed four sewing needles from the lung and near the heart of a Brazilian toddler, allegedly plunged into him by his stepfather during a month-long series of bizarre rituals.

The surgery lasted nearly five hours and the 2-year-old boy was in stable condition after the procedure, said Susy Moreno, a spokeswoman for the hospital in the northeastern city of Salvador where the boy was in intensive care.

"He's OK, the surgery was a success, he's doing fine," she said in a telephone interview.

Dozens more needles measuring up to 5cm in length remain inside the boy's body, but the four removed were considered the most life-threatening.

Doctors will evaluate the boy's recovery before deciding when to perform at least two more surgeries to remove more needles, she said.

Police say the boy's stepfather, 30-year-old bricklayer Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, confessed to pushing supposedly "blessed" sewing needles deep into the child because his lover told him to while in trances.

The rituals were performed over a period of a month to try to keep the couple together, the stepfather told police. Authorities suspect the woman was trying to take revenge on the wife of her lover by having the man hurt her son.

Magalhaes told detectives the woman would enter into trances and give him commands to insert the needles, police inspector Helder Fernandes Santana said. The stepfather told police the rituals happened every few days for a full month, with him inserting several needles during each session.

The lover, Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos, paid to have the needles blessed by a woman who practised the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble, Santana said.

Authorities initially estimated the boy had as many as 50 needles were inside the boy. After batteries of tests were performed, doctors now believe there are closer to 30 needles inside, but they don't know for sure.

"They haven't focused on how many there are because they are concentrating on the most dangerous ones," Moreno said.

The boy was also suffering from an infection from one needle, but received antibiotics and was in stable condition and breathing on his own before going into surgery, she said.

Magalhaes and dos Santos were both arrested, though no charges were filed.

Dos Santos is not believed to be a member of any religious or occult group, and authorities believe she came up with the idea of the rituals on her own, Santana said.