Sect Leader Arrested After Penis Choppings
Thursday March 4 9:14 AM ET
dailynews.yahoo.com
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Police in northeastern Brazil have arrested the leader of a religious sect after the penises of
three of his followers were chopped off, apparently in an initiation ceremony, authorities said Wednesday.
Donato Brandao, the 28-year-old spiritual head of the sect Mundial, was detained over the weekend in the Maranhao state
capital of Sao Luis on charges of ordering a violent assault against his teen-age adopted son and two men in their 20s.
The severings were rapidly performed with a kitchen cleaver by three men who simulated an attack during an initiation
ceremony last Friday on a beach in Sao Luis, state prosecutors were quoted in local media reports as saying.
A nurse associated with Mundial, which stands for Modern Normal Unit of Development for Latin America, cauterized the
wounds, but the missing organs had been tossed into bushes and could not be reattached.
The two older victims told police they had known about the ceremony and had willingly submitted, believing it would purify
them. But investigators think Brandao ordered the attack on his 17-year-old son, who had left home in December, without the
boy's knowledge.
Other sect members said Brandao had promised a permanent removal of any temptation to have heterosexual relations.
''He said that all the angels were chaste and they had to follow the same road,'' Joaquim Nabuco Cunha, the No. 2 official of
Mundial, told local news agency Folha.
Brandao denied any wrongdoing in two newspaper interviews and said that although he was shocked by the accusations, he
welcomed the publicity for the sect, which has 12 members.
''Our intention was to open up to the world, and I believe this is only helping (the sect) to grow more,'' he said told one
paper.
Police said they found a penis enlarger and ecstasy pills when they raided the house that served as the sect's headquarters.
As part of the initiation process, Mundial members have to pledge their fidelity to Brandao, known as ''Father,'' and sign
written confessions of all their life experiences, including sexual |
