BRASILIA, Brazil — 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 Thursday.
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.