RANDOLPH, MASS. (WHDH) - Two women are facing charges after police say they assaulted two children and threatened to commit murder during a voodoo ritual inside a home in East Bridgewater.
Peggy Labossiere, 51, and her sister, 40-year-old Rachel Hilaire, were arrested when Randolph police called East Bridgewater police to request a well-being check at a home in the town.
Labossiere and Hilaire are charged with several violent offenses including mayhem, assault and battery on a child and threatening to commit murder.
Police say the two women were practicing voodoo on two children from Randolph inside their apartment in East Bridgewater. The apartment’s landlord, who did not want to be identified, says he was stunned.
“You could have tipped me over with a feather. I was in shock that anybody would do this,” the landlord said.
Police say when they made the well-being check at the apartment, they found a 5-year-old girl with “a large burn across her face” and her 8-year-old brother, who told officers that Labossiere “threatened to cut his head off with a machete.”
Court documents say the children’s mother brought them to the East Bridgewater apartment and stayed there for several days.
Police say the mother told officers that “she is of Hatian descent and believes in voodoo” and that “her children have been behaving badly due to evil spirits.”
Police say Hilaire and the children’s mother held the girl down with her hands and feet tied, while Labossiere allegedly “used a pointy object like a needle to cut her enough so that she bled.”
The landlord says the day after police arrested the women, he evicted them for not paying rent.
Both suspects are being held without bail. The children are in state custody. Their mother is said to be in the hospital and undergoing mental health treatment.
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