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Surgeons try to extract needles from toddler
2-year-old boy's heart punctured by one of 42 needles; stepfather arrested


A 2-year-old boy, found with 42 needles inside his body, arrives to a hospital in Salvador, northeastern Brazil, on Thursday.


Fri., Dec . 18, 2009
BRASILIA, Brazil - Doctors have started emergency surgery to remove four sewing needles from a Brazilian toddler that were allegedly inserted into him by his stepfather during a series of bizarre rituals.

A hospital spokeswoman says surgeons in the northeastern city of Salvador plan to take out four of the dozens of needles inside the boy during the operation. One of them punctured his heart, two are near the heart and another is inside a lung.

Spokeswoman Susy Moreno says doctors will leave the other needles in the boy for now but could perform more operations later.

She said the operation that started Friday afternoon was expected to last at least six hours.

Police say the boy's stepfather confessed to pushing 42 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.

Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, a 30-year-old bricklayer, told detectives the woman would enter into trances and "command him to stick the needles in the boy's body," police inspector Helder Fernandes Santana told The Associated Press by telephone. 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 measuring up to 2 inches (5 centimeters) blessed by a woman who practiced the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble, and convinced Magalhaes that inserting them into the boy would somehow allow them to be together, Santana said.

Police, however, believe Dos Santos was out for revenge on the boy's mother, though they did not say why.

"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.

Magalhaes and dos Santos were both arrested, though no charges have yet been 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.

The two were taken to an undisclosed lockup for their own protection after a mob threw stones at the police station where they were being held. It was not immediately clear whether they had legal representation.

Authorities also detained the woman who blessed the needles so she could be questioned, but Santana said he expects she will be released without charge because she did not know how they were being used.

The boy's mother, a maid, took him to a hospital in the town of Ibotirama on Dec. 10, saying he was complaining of pain.

After X-rays revealed the cause, 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 was later transferred for more advanced evaluation at a much larger hospital in the coastal city of Salvador.

Police and doctors concluded it would have been impossible for the boy to have ingested the needles — which have also been found in a lung, in his left leg and spread throughout his abdomen.

Afro-Brazilian religions practiced in Brazil have no ceremonies, rituals or practices involving harm to people, said Nelson Inocencio, director of African-Brazilian studies at the University of Brasilia.

He worried that the incident could hurt the image of the religions, of which Candomble is the most popular, and concentrated most in Bahia state.

"What happened to this boy without a doubt could feed into the prejudice against Afro-Brazilian traditions," he said.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Yeah I just saw this on CNN and I was like WTF.

lazycrockett said:

yes ~svn seven

I never cease to be amazed at how people can do things like this to children.

Saw this on the news and I felt sick to my stomach I feel like I want to cry. People beat kids, but sticking needles in them so they can suffer every second.

How could she not know? She should have noticed something while giving him a bath or dressing him/undressing him.

poor little baby

I read about this a few days ago(was it only yesterday? my sense of time is all screwy). really SHOCKING .

poor thing
[Edited 12/18/09 15:40pm]

What a prick!

I hope the boy's okay.

heybaby said:

well..if he pushed them in far enough as it indicates..there might have been only little poke spots..if they were spread out it might have looked like bug bites or something..
at least she took him to the hospital when he complained of pain..
not many people would pay that kind of attention to a 2 year old saying that something was hurting..
sad as it is to say..
and it may have been that while she was dressing him that she moved something that hurt and he said something then.. poor baby
(for the first month of my life i had an undetected broken collar bone..
and my mom said i never cried even when she would move it..)

I think I am going to be sick

ZombieKitten said:

Me too

Religion + humans = trouble.

uPtoWnNY said:

agreed

humans (period) = trouble

From MSNBC:

"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.

The two were taken to an undisclosed lockup for their own protection after a mob threw stones at the police station where they were being held. It was not immediately clear whether they had legal representation.

Authorities also detained the woman who blessed the needles so she could be questioned, but Santana has said he expects she will be released without charge because she did not know how they were being used.

The boy’s mother, a maid, took him to a hospital in the town of Ibotirama on Dec. 10, saying he was complaining of pain."

/////


I think they should suffer with needles also. It's only right. They deserve whatever they get.

Shameful..... Shame on them. Shame on their souls.

So the lover was allegedly in trances. But what was dad's excuse?!? Either he was mentally impaired or had some murderous intent, or that girlfriend was extraordinarily... "gifted." (And I don't mean in communing with Afro-Brazilian deities.)
[Edited 12/18/09 21:51pm]

That poor baby.

it took three hours to remove those four they deemed 'life-threatening'
and he's in stable condition..
with more surgery to come..


forgot an 'e'
[Edited 12/19/09 11:19am]

Oh my gosh, what a fucking prick.


That little boy's doctor is hot, though.