Part Two: John of God: Oprah's Favorite Ghost-Channeling Rapist Surgeon

rest of this motherfucker? Well, before we do that, I just came across something on Twitter. Um, it's a book that's being sold. It's like a it's like a part of the Joe Biden grift, because like every politician has a griff now. And this is a coloring book called a Hot Cup of Joe and it has a cartoon of sexy Joe Biden on it. Um. Yeah, a piping hot coloring book with America's sexiest moderate Joe Biden. Uh. Yeah, it's awful. It is abuse. Yeah that's ah well, that's

fucking horrendous. It's almost worth buying so you can have it for whatever happens with the election, just to have this fucking horrible thing. Yeah, I don't want to give this person money, but I do want to see inside

this terrible, terrible criminal coloring book. Um. The sexy seventies something politicians thing is one of the weirdest aspects of modern politics that like you have these two old and clearly not in the best of health men, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who both of whose supporters have to depict them as like muscle bound, like like like like hunks,

Like guys, they're dying men. Stop it, Like you don't, like, even if you think they're the right person to be president, you don't have to pretend that they're Like you don't have to get thirsty about them. What is wrong with you people? They both they're diapers, Like, let's talk about

that situation. They're not out here like bench pressing. Yeah, yeah, they're not doing windsprints, Like Joe's abs don't exist because he's an old sick man, and yeah, that's okay, that's fine idea, but like whatever, like just stop it, stop it. All of the flush on his face is melting day

by day. It's what happens here as you die? Like, which is they're they're dying, yeah, like the like, yeah, this is not on them because they're like pretty normally aged men for their ages, like people, what you stop making they don't have to make them sexy? What is wrong with you? If I could just do a tiny pull and just point out that Sophie's idea of a sexy man is Popeye, we can just live in that

for a second. I dare you to find a better example of uncut eroticism than Robin Williams as Popeye and Popeye movie that absolutely exists. Look it up. It's fucking something else. Insanity. Yeah, people made that. People made that and no one stopped them, Isn't Is that Robert Altman? I think so? Yeah, I think it's Robert Altman. You keep talking, I'm gonna look it up. No, I'm not yourself. Never mind. It's great, So we're all back from it.

Is Robert Altman. Yeah, all right, let's let's it's time to get back into this episode. Talk about John of God some more. I just had to that hit my world like a fucking carpet bomb, and I had to I just had to talk about it so your world, Like like a cruise missile at your wedding. Yeah, like like one of Ray Theon's fine products hitting a wedding. Which you know, if you've ever thought not enough weddings have missiles hit them, then you're the kind of customer

Raytheon is looking for. All right, we really should start the episode now. So no human being has ever embodied the phrase the road to hell is paved with good intentions better than Oprah Winfrey. Like many of you, she was a regular background figure in my childhood. My mom would have her on when she was working from home while we did chores, etcetera. Like she was just on in the background all the time. And compared to the other background figures of my childhood guys like Rush Limbaugh

and Michael Savage, she was pretty benign. At least she seemed that way. Um. I don't know if I would describe her as a monster, but her career has been a masterclass and how to enable monsters. When Free was a longtime friend of Harvey Weinstein, she regularly hosted Tony Robbins, another se ex pest and self help guru. She is largely responsible for making Doctor Phil and Doctor oz into household names, and both of those men have gone on

to do incalculable harm to society. And of course she is the reason John of God at his clinic were put in front of the faces of millions upon millions of guluble, desperate Westerners. After that Oh Magazine article was published in two thousand ten, she dedicated a special episode to John of God, inviting the author of that article and a doctor onto her show. They were both total converts, but how they and Oprah presented John to their audience

is really interesting to me. And I want you to click that first link and play it to that thirty eight minutes Andrew, because you went't expecting to find what well, I went to just gather evidence to see what's true. Susan. When you were there, did he I heard that he actually invite medical doctors from around the world to come up and witness him do these things. Is that correct? Yes? And they always are sort of very careful not to

ever themselves against the medical the mainstream medical profession. They you know, they're very much like they're not He's never gonna do a heart transplant up there. It's like he's going to do whatever he can do with his ability to heal, and then you might have to go to your doctor for the rest. Yeah, okay, and that's that's good. Yeah. What do you think of that, Andrew, what do you

think of that framing? Um? Incredible? Incredible. I mean, the one thing watching the clip is that, um, um, what is sorry? What is what is the journalists? The quote journal was a strong word for Susan. The one thing watching that is that Susan looks almost exactly as I thought you would, Yes, exactly the type of white woman that would promote this ship. Yes. Yeah, And whatever picture you I guarantee you a hundred percent of you, whatever

picture you have in your head of Susan Casey is accurate. Um, because there's only one wild It's awesome, isn't it? Yeah? Um yeah it's And then also like this this thing where he's like he's not gonna do a heart transplant, but it's like you might have to go to your regular doctor for that is like yeah, just like key like sweeping under the rug. It's like, well, of course

you will need real medical care. Also, what's really cool about that is that it is very clearly and obviously an answer of uh, Susan and this other doctor who will talk about a minute whitewashing John of God. So like they know that if they're going to be on Oprah Show and talk to like a mainstream audience, they have to put in a They can't just be all like especially because if this is two thousen and we we we aren't where we are now now you could

just say doctors are bullshit. This guy is the only real healer in the world. You can get away with that. Back then you had to be like, oh no, you still regular doctors are still good, great for things. He's just helping with other stuff and like that was necessary to get people on board. Um. But John of God's Cult produced propaganda two. And this is why I say that Susan Casey and this doctor are like intentionally whitewashing him, because for this episode of Oprah Show, they use clips

from a documentary that John of God's Cult produced. UM. And in the actual documentary, UM, there is no time wasted telling people that they need to consult their doctors.

So I'm gonna play next, Have you played next? Eclip from that actual the documentary produced by the cult that shows kind of how internally they talked about his healing powers, and it's very different from how Oprah did physical healings that cannot be explained away factors in He said to me in reply to my question, can you help me to become healthy again? And he replied, you are already healed. Holy sh it. Yeah. Uh so yeah, you see like and that there's no talk about like, oh yeah, you

gotta uh you gotta fucking um yeah. No, he just heals your ship. Yeah. So the doctor guy that Oprah has on there is is a fellow named Jeffrey Rehdiger, and he's really interesting to me because he is a very real medical professional and was actually or is actually a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. Uh. He researches spontaneous healing, which is like when people go into remission or whatever. And there's no clear explanation why which

is a thing that happens. People get better from things. We don't understand why that that's the thing that happens. Um. And he is clearly there to inject both credibility and skepticism into the discussions about John of God, kind of

like Dr Oz was earlier. For example, Oprah at one point plays a video of one of John of God's brain surgeries where he's like shoving stuff up people's nose um, and Dr Rheteger is really up front and clear about the fact that this brain surgery through the no stuff is sleight of hand, that he's not actually performing surgery, that he's that there's there's a ton of space in

the naval cavity and nothing inexplicable is going on. So he does make he doesn't state that to the audience, but he does that while he buys into the fact that scientifically inexplicable healing occurs at John of God's center. So I'm gonna play another clip from that Oprah episode so you can kind of see how this skeptic talks about this healing. Dr Jeffrey Rehdiger travel to Brazil also

to see John of God's work firsthand. Explain if you can the medical risks of surgery without anesthesia or proper sterilization. It doesn't look like he's like sterilizing the knife for the probe or well. Yeah, as a physician, I have to say, you don't try these kinds of things at home and or with your loved ones. Uh. And you know this guy says a second grade education. Um yeah, I and I do have to say that these are things that I don't understand. So I can't fully endorse

things that are beyond my understanding. Um, but I've seen them happen. I've generally without annesty, Shaw, you see enormous pain. I take care of people every day in pain from surgery, uh and other events. The risk of infection is typically great and something that we have to take seriously. So that's followed up with these people who have gone through these procedures. Maybe infections came later. Well, I think every situation that spiritual healing is different. So did you catch

what went on there? This is really interesting to me. So Dr Reddiger notes that the psychic surgeries, which like use real knives and actually cut people, He notes that that's dangerous, like he tells people not to do it at home, But he also says he's not aware of anyone getting infections. And then when Oprah points out that he could have they could have gotten infected later, he doesn't respond to that. You'll notice he doesn't say that that's possible even He just sort of says that like

a bunch of things getting that's really Yeah, that's amazing. Um, but it's the kind of thing because it's been acknowledged, even though he doesn't then go on to state that like, actually, yes, we we have no data that these people to suggest these people aren't getting infected. We're not performing any follow ups. I didn't take any attempts to actually determine whether or

not people got infected. Letter he doesn't say that. He gives a non response so that the show can move on and the audience can move forward content that John of God, that these are real, serious skeptical people, and that that makes John of God even more real because this this medical professional has betted him with the requisite amount of skepticism even though none of that was actually done. It's amazing, like this is a master class and how

to white and like it's laundering bullshit. Yeah yeah, it's even like the way that like they can claim they've addressed the infection risk by saying because they brought it up. It's fucking revolting. That's crazy. Yeah, it's awesome. Um. I want to play one more clip from this episode because we just gotta believe and this is what medicine and psychiatry need to examine, is I believe the powers of belief, the powers of the mind are far more powerful than

we have even begun to explore. I believe that's an unexplored wilderness in terms of research. So you said that since you made that trip as the skeptic and then you were there in the presence and then had the whole bleeding experience yourself, that it turns your life upside down? How how so well, if you can say, there's something to the effect that I believe this in my head, but I don't believe it in my heart. I don't

get it is too much. And then a little incision manifests on this skin over the area of your heart. That means none of this is what we think it is. It's something I don't know what that means. And there's I'm sure religions can layer on many different interpretation. Yourself a religious person. Because of this, I am actually more interested in the development and cultivation of a spiritual life.

All right, yep, So that's interesting. One of Reddiger's claims is that like while he's watching John of God performed these surgeries, he spontaneously started bleeding from a whole, which is like kind of like a stigmata thing. He's introduced as a skepticum who traveled to John of God's center in order to take samples and medically vet whether or

not this man was a serious healer. And he says later in that interview quote, some people I spoke with were able to remember the events going around them completely, and some people seem to inter a sort of altered state during these surgeries. When I was assisting in one of these surgeries, John of God cut this woman's corny is. She didn't flinch, she didn't try to pull away from him. I can't explain that I heard some people use the term spiritual anesthesia. I have no way to understand that.

It's interesting that he says that, because like there's actually a lot of reasons why someone wouldn't feel, uh, they're eye getting scraped. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It's like it's like perfectly explicable and like lending essentially the name of your institution and by claiming to be baffled to give

it like credence is like God truly pathetic. It's also like even accepting his words at face value until the end, it's like, Okay, yes, the brain can do a lot, Yes, psychology is more powerful probably in terms of physiological stuff than you know we give it credit for. And then pivoting too, I want to have a spiritual life is like just an abdication of curiosity. Yep, it's just like what do you Yeah this, I mean, it's it is

remarkable that some of these people don't feel pain. Probably it's documented in other media, you know, other types of formats of this kind of ship and sure worth exploring. But being like, yeah, I want to see what I want to learned more about these spirits is like incredible. He's he's such a piece of ship. And yeah, obviously, like I've scraped my cornea before when I was out

hashing in the woods, and uh, it didn't hurt. It hurt afterwards, like because just like it fucked up my ability, like my eye was taking in too much lighter, so like it it was like kind of blinded me. It was very much debilitating afterwards. But the actual getting scraped by a branch and the eye it didn't cause pain, which is part of why it took me a while to realize what had happened. Um, yeah, I don't know.

It's like there's also a lot of data on how um altered mind altering states like people have in these religious moments can impact perception of pain. Worship is definitively a mind altering state. John of God requires his patients to go through an elaborate series of meditations before and after treatment. UM and I actually found a scholarly study of his his surgeries conducted by doctors from a Brazilian

medical school. They note the surgeries were always performed by John of Godden, occurred in a large, non sterilized and open room with dozens of spectators, most of whom were other patients and their relatives or friends. During each of these surgical sessions, approximately five patients usually remained standing will side by side in front of one of the room's wall. Rarely, patients were submitted to the surgeries while they were seated

in a chair. Visible surgeries were performed in a few minutes in a very grandiose in theatrical way, invoking strong emotional involvement and even perplexity among the audience. Incisions were performed with either sterilized scalpels or kitchen knives, and surgeries were performed in rapid succession. The cleanliness of the instruments, contrasted to reports of other media mystic surgeries performed by

dirty or even rusty implements. So you notice the stories about this guy that incredible sources state always say that he's just using like random kitchen knives, sometimes even that they're dirty. Um, when actual scientists studied, like they know his knives are always sterilized, and he's not cutting open people deeply and removing organs. He is scraping their skin in their eyes. The fact that they don't get a lot of them don't get infections isn't weird. Have you

ever gotten a scrape that didn't get infected? You've probably gotten a lot because your body is reasonably good at not dying from random scrapes. Um, otherwise there wouldn't be people. Uh, Like,

it's it's very frustrating. Another frustrating thing is that this study goes on to note that like they don't know, like they couldn't find any evidence of infections among John's patients, But they also note that they didn't actually get to follow up with any of these people further than a day or two on because like, the a lot of them, like we're traveling in from elsewhere, so like the paper is a proper scientific paper, and it concludes that, like

we need to do more research and track these patients for longer term to determine whether or not anyone's getting infected, which is what you say if you're an actual scientist. Dr Reddiger, on the other hand, just gets on OPRA and announces that this is all inexplicable, like science can't explain this. It's like, yes, it can. You just didn't try, Like you didn't even try, and I hate I find science doesn't work when you don't do it. That's a

remarkable conclusion. Yeah, thank you, doctor. I found a good critical right up of Dr Reddiger's performance on the blog Science Based Medicine. I'm gonna quote from that now. Unfortunately, the camera angles used made it impossible for me to judge whether John was doing what he claimed, and the only close upshot that was presented, it was clear to me that the knife never touched the woman's eye, and when John actually appeared to be doing something, the camera

never focused on the woman's eye. How convenient, it was almost as though OPRAH producers were making a conscious effort not to show a camera angle that would allow viewers to judge whether the procedure actually being done was what John of God claimed. Personally, I'd have loved to see an ophthamologist or even just a surgeon rather than a psychiatrist, because Dr Rehdeger is a psychiatrist allowed to have a

close up view of John's activities. Rehdeger is also shown in a video clip apparently bleeding from the chest, apparently after having viewed John do his corny is scraping bit. He expresses fear and is concerned that the bleeding doesn't stop as soon as he thinks it should, pointing out

that he doesn't have a bleeding disorder. So again, Dr Reddeger is a psychiatrist, which makes him a legitimate medical professional, but does not make him particularly competent to rule on whether or not someone's reaction to a light surgical cut is inexplicable, because that is not what psychiatrist specialize it. Yeah, but it's also just being like the arrogant so being able to say, I can't explain it, so it is therefore I won't explain it, won't find out how to

explain it, so it's therefore inexplicable. Yeah, it's super great, Um, yeah. And it's also noted in that article that Dr Rehdiger isn't just a psychiatrist. He's a psychiatrist who has built an entire brand off of embracing spontaneous healing. At the time this came out, he headed up the Initiative for Psychological and Spiritual Development, and on his old website he

wrote this explaining what the institute did. Quote, we live in a culture that has advanced enough that we can send the person with a medical problem to the medical doctor, a person with an emotional problem to the psychologist, a person with a spiritual problem to the priest, minister or rabbi.

Yet the Initiative for Psychological and Spiritual Development is founded upon the belief that beneath all and behind all the masks and appearances that we present to the world, there is something more, and whatever healing potential exists comes from this place, which is right, beautiful, beautiful nonsense. So Dr Reddeger's initiative appears to be defunct. Now I don't think it exists anymore. I can't find evidence of that, but

I didn't look super hard, so maybe I'm wrong. He does have a book out, however, called Cured with an exclamation point, and it's about people going into spontaneous remission. I don't know enough about Rehdecker to declare him an absolute grifter, but I do know that he was once a ghost on coast to coast AM, which is like Alex Jones for people who are a little bit less racist than Alex Jones. Um, so I'm gonna I'm gonna

say it's probably fair to call him a griffin. You don't go on coast to coast f M if you're like a a M, if you're like a credible person. Well, it's also like like the you know, not acknowledging that spontaneous remission is a severe outlier event and like, yeah, it's possible, but like putting your treatment faith in that is insane. Yes, yeah, and yeah, but it's a great grift. It's a thing. People want to read about it. People love reading books about magical healing and ship Yeah. So yeah.

Dr Ddeger is part of the grand tradition in the medical field of credential medical professionals who provide cover for miracles slinging con men, and of course Dr Oz would be another example of this type of person. Another example is provided in Susan Casey's OH Magazine article about John of God and this is her again attempting to do some real journalistic research to talk about how it's not weird to believe that this guy could be caring cancer quote.

The belief in the effectiveness of prayer is as old as civilization. The results are tough to pin down. Bernard Grad, PhD, a Canadian biologist from McGill University, worked with a spiritual healer named Oscar Estebani conducting controlled studies in the late nineteen fifties and sixties using mice that had been uniformly wounded. Estebani would place his hands upon the wire covers of certain cages, willing those animals to heal. The results were dramatic.

In one experiment, the wounds on s to Bonnie's treated mice were very significantly smaller after two weeks than those of mice that had been left to heal on their own. The team also discovered that plant seeds exposed to energy healing grew at a faster rate. There was a force here, they agreed, and it appeared to be doing something beneficial. What that force was, however, no one could say for sure. Now, these studies happened. There are a real thing that happened.

You can read them. Bernard Grad did carry out those studies, and if you look them up, you'll find conclusions that are pretty similar to what Susan Casey writes in her bad article. What you won't find is any clear follow up to the study. In fact, basically the only writing about this research you will find comes from either woo woo bullshit practitioners or other medical griffsman trying to convince

people that energy healing is real. This makes it difficult to refute because there really aren't direct refutations of Dr Grad's work. What we do have, however, is almost a century of additional research into quote unquote energy healing um. Because again this stuff was done in the fifties and sixties, Like, it wasn't a big study, it was conducted a long

time ago. Uh, there's you can't say that it was conducted, like, we can't prove to a point of certainty that these people were actually conducting it well or or abiding by all the rules they said they were. And there's another seventy years of other studies into this that show very different results. So again she picks out this one study from seventy years ago that says what she wants it

to say. She ignores, for example, the fact that in Psychiatrists with a Lancet evaluated multiple studies, several hundred of them that showed links between religious faith, faith healing, and energy healing and health benefits. Here's how Science Magazine reported

on their findings. Quote. Typically, they say, these studies ignore other factors that may improve health, such as abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, and even the scientifically sound practices they contend were inconsistent and jon't justify bringing religion into medical practice. Richard Sloan of Columbia University and his colleagues reviewed every article containing religion and physical health they could find in Medline,

an online service that indexes medical studies. Many of them, he says, focused on such groups as Roman Catholic priests or Benedictine monks, which forbids certain risky behaviors. Others looked at more general populations of church goers and found lower disease rates, but failed to take into account that only people who were in fairly good health can go to church. When these confounding factors were taken into account, either by the original researchers in a follow up study or by

Sloan's group, The alleged benefits usually disappeared. Overall, Sloan says, the evidence is very unconventioning and weak, much weaker, for example, than the link between marital status and health. So again you can point out there's a couple of individual studies that like I haven't been refuted, that suggests a benefit between energy healing and health, and then there's hundreds of studies that show no connection at all. And if you only pay attention to the studies that say what you want,

it sounds great. If you look at the mass body of research, it doesn't look so good. But Susan Casey doesn't do that. Um, yeah, so that's cool. Um. Following that two thousand ten episode of The Oprah Show, Oprah herself visited John of God in two thousand twelve. She described the encounter as blissful uh, and in her wake, thousands upon thousands of other seekers made the call to

travel down Brazil Way for some psychic healing. By two fourteen, John's Humble center had transformed into a straight up commercial empire. Those passion flower pills alone grew into a ten million dollar a year business. Celebrities visited, including Paul Simon, the Princess of Japan, and Bill Clinton. Maybe probably, we don't exactly know. There's a bunch of celebrities who are rumored to have gone, Um, I'm gonna guess probably that Bill

Clinton seems like the kind of guy who try this. Yeah, but something especially like all the other ship it's like, yeah, the funk knows what's happening there. Yeah, yeah, but something else also cropped up over the years allegations of sexual misconduct by John of God. Objective observers noted that he seemed to have a strange, non medical fixation with women's breasts, performing surgery aimed at treating heart conditions and other ailments

by groping them and cutting around their nipples. So that's good. Oh god, it's always like the most obvious ship, and yet there's still gonna be years of like of where they're like, I don't know, he just you know, he was just interested in heart surgery. Like yeah, it's it's always so transparent. When the ship finally, like when the mask starts to slip, I feel like, yep, yep, it is. But you know what mask never slips, the mask of capitalism, and that means it's time for us to take our

mask off and put some products and services on. Yeah. Hell yeah, we're back. Okay, so um yeah we left off. You know, John of God has gotten this huge boost from Oprah and her Grift community. People are flooding in from all around the world. But also some stories start to come out. Allegations all vague at this point, no individual names attached, but that he's he's sexually harassing and

assaulting people. The allegations were enough that in two thousand fourteen, a real newspaper, the Sydney Morning Hair, sent a real journalist, Tim Elliott, to look into the matter. Tim's article provided the first comprehensive look at John of God's operation by someone who wasn't clearly two steps away from joining his cult, like Susan Casey. The Center provided him with a white ex pat handler to introduce him to John of God's world. Since Tim was a man, his handler was a man,

Diego Coppola. Here's Tim's article quote. Coppola was born in Peru, but it'spent most of his life in California, where he worked as a computer engineer after visiting the CASA in two thousand one just to check it out. He married a Brazilian and moved to Abadiana. These days, he manages the CASA's fifty strong staff, a multinational team of volunteers.

You take care of logistics, channeling the constant flow of visitors, and most importantly, forming an impenetral buffer around Medium Joao, sheltering him from the ceaseless demands of a ravening public. Everybody wants a piece of Medium, Joel, says Coppola. Before I arrived, Coppola had promised me an interview with Joel, although he now lets me know that this is far from guaranteed. He is not like you and me. Coppola tells him. He lives in another realm. Timetables don't mean

much to him. What matters to him is doing the work, taking care of the healing. So that's good. Yeah, yeah, I mean like that. The handler for this sort of situation is always like, it's so fucking sinister. It's so crazy to me that people get sucked into this ship. It just seems like on the face, like get the funk out of there. Yeah. Yeah, Now, the reality is that John of God spent most of his time living

in luxury on her ranch compound nearby. He only worked about half the week, and later revelations would suggests that he spent much of his downtime sexually abusing women, although he also spent a lot of his work hours sexually abusing women too, so who knows. Tim Elliott spoke to an Australian seeker, a woman named Sarah Layton from Melbourne. She's very emblematic of the success cases for John of God,

and I'm going to quote from him again. This is her fourth trip to the cost Us since two thousand eleven, during which time she has sought treatment for her liver, kidney, and heart, as well as female problems. She also had lots of psychic surgeries, which is when the entities operate on patients remotely. You wake up after one of these surgeries and you can actually feel the stitches in your your stomach. She tells me, real stitches, no psychic stitches.

She says. What has helped her most though, is the emotional healing. She's had a hard life after being sexually abused as a child. She was tortured. Before coming here, she had attempted suicide four times. She estimated she has spent fifty dollars all up in air fair donations. I always donate to the Costa because John of God doesn't charge anything, and medications such as healing herbs, which are

sold at the costas pharmacy. I used my inheritance twenty dollars from my grandmother to pay for a lot of it. But it's worth it. My heart is healed, which western medicine wasn't able to do, and my gynecological problems have stopped. So there's a lot going on there. Um. Yeah, First off, you see, like everyone claims he doesn't take money, and then this woman's like, but I spent fifty dollars here, which is like, I mean, I guess to that end,

that's not that different than any religion. But no, yeah, or then actually getting medical treatment in the legal way if you don't have health and sure, or if you do, I have health insurance and a lot of cases yeah yeah, yeah, but like you'll notice that like, and this is truth. A lot of the most dedicated case studies who will come out and talk about this guy's healing is their actual medical complaints are really vague and there's there's nothing

in that that you can track pathologically. She like, she vaguely says gynecological problems, but also says like it's really my heart and like my emotional problems that he healed. Um and Susan Casey, the O magazine author, was in the same boat. She was grieving, not physically ill. And I've read a lot of stories about women who received healing from John of God, and an overwhelming number of

them came in with emotional pain. And these people do seem to have gotten real relief at the center, but there's nothing magic about what provided them with the relief. I'm gonna quote now from a woman who wrote a story about like her own treatment by John of God. This is what she described it as. Quote. Meeting in the medium was a solemn process. Hundreds of people in white flock to the Costa every morning. Someone wheelchairs, other frail from chemo, and an orderly line. We waited to

go before him so he could prescribe our cares. Mine was as follows. Five trips to the local sacred waterfall, four months without sex, alcohol or black pepper, four months of blessed herbal capsules. A translator quickly scribbled these directions on a small piece of paper. For three hours a day, I sat in meditation in the current room, helping to conduct energy for healings. It felt special, purposeful. I napped, hiked,

and stood under that freezing holy waterfall. I prayed in front of the Castas Triangle, a big wooden wall hanging

whose three sides represented faith, love, and charity. And then I went home and like, Yeah, if you're fucked up and grieving and like in a lot of pain, and you go to a distant location that's like set up to be solemn and relaxing and chill, and you detach from the internet and you stop getting wasted all the time, and you spend a bunch of time hiking in nature and hanging out at waterfalls, that will help with your green Yeah, of course it went like and having caught

someone confidently say this is helping you will get better, Like that's a lot of what people need in those moments, as like someone to to really confidently tell them like this will pass and you will feel better. All of that stuff helps. Um, there's nothing magical about it, it just is. It's good to go. Like when you're really fucked up, in the head. Uh, it's good to stop getting wasted and to spend a lot of time hiking

like that. There's nothing controversial or inexplicable about that. Um. Yeah. So in other words, a lot of the miraculous powers attributed to John of God are really just examples of the fact that life in his center is on balance healthier than the lives a lot of people left behind That Sarah, woman Tim Elliott interviewed, even told him she's expected the same thing. She said, quote, you're in the fifth dimension here, whereas in Australia it's the third dimension.

In Australia, people don't understand spirituality. It's either work or going out and getting drunk. I find I have to escape that. And like, yeah, if your life, if you were if you were like depressed and getting wasted every night, and like that makes your body feel worse, it's bad for your health. And you go to a place and guys like stop doing that for four months, hike, meditate. Yeah that's gonna help. I mean honestly, just like I could prescribe, just don't be in Australia. Come on, yeah,

get out of Australia is a general rule. Get out of Australia. We all know people get up to yeah. But of course John of Gotten his adherents couldn't just claim that the man had provided people with a relaxing retreat because claiming that this is magical and it also contreat cancer and stuff, that's where the real money's at. So when Tim did his interviews, his patients referred to

John of God as a spiritual X ray machine. And in the very dumb biography John of God, Heather Cummings claimed that John was able to see each of his patients as a hologram, which is why all staff, patients and visiting journalists were asked to wear white. He says

it made them easier to read. It also coincidentally opened up a huge market in town for white clothing, of which John of God got a cut um awesome, smart yeah yeah, And and the uniform like starts to take away your identity and makes you more easy to manipulate and that's ship yep. As business expanded in the wake of OPRAH show, John and his followers created new treatments. They opened up a series of crystal beds. Patients paid sixty dollars an hour for the right to lie round

a bunch of rocks. They also opened up a gift shop. Tim Elliott writes that it sold quote books, CDs, DVDs, tote bags, t shirts, coffee mugs, and crystals. All crystals have been blessed by the Entity, reads a sign on the wall. There are John of God Pendance postcards and travel pillows, even glow in the dark John of God wall stickers. I really like imagining like the fucking like Entity sweatshop where the guy just has to like or the spirit just has to leash like just a you know,

for forty gross of crystals or else they can't go home. Yeah. Yeah, the entities are like, yeah, they're they're they're working long hours to make sure all those fucking crystals are wholly enough. Yeah. Both the gift shop and cafe also do a brisk trade and water that has been blessed by the entity. People at the Costa treat the blessed water like nitroglycerin. Don't drink it all at once, Janna Sue Jones says one afternoon when she sees me swigging from a bottle,

you'll be up all night. Sarah Layton tells me she regularly buys tin leader jugs of the stuff to take home in her luggage. It's just water, yeah, I mean a lot of religions have fancy water. Now, the heart of the whole grift is the pharmacy. Though when I first started reading about it, I assumed it just stalked a variety of herbal remedies that he was giving people. But it turns out that the reality was even dumber than that and more brilliant at the same time. Here's

tim quote. I had assumed that the pharmacy would stock a range of different herbs to treat a variety of different conditions, but note there is only one herb for sale here pass the floor, the flower of the passion fruit plant. When I asked Coppola about this, he explains that it's not what's in the capsules that counts, but rather the spiritual prescription that John of God writes for each patient. The intentionality of that prescription is transferred to

the capsules at the time of purchase. He says, that's fucking brilliant. That's a great grift right there. Yeah, I mean, that's like the homeopathy grift, you know. It's that you can put magic in whatever. Yeah, And if you have a line on passion fruit flowers, which does sound good. Yeah, and again, all of the people who see John actually just being seen by him and showing up and being in that line is free. But they all get prescriptions for these herbs, and you know, some by fifty dollars,

some by ten dollars worth. But the average, Tim knows, the average purchases about twenty dollars, which would account for forty dollars a day and herb sales alone. Jesus, so great grift, a fucking plus grift. John of God like very smart. So. Abadianya is a small town. Um. It is not located in a nice part of Brasil. Before John of God, it's biggest industry was a series of brick factories. By the mid auts, John was by far the largest business in the area, and this gave him power.

The way Tim describes it, John of God's financial leverage turned Abadianya into his own personal fiefdom. Quote. The biggest industry by far is medium jow. There are no less than seventy two posadas or hotels here, all catering to Cassa pilgrims, most of whom come on two week tours and arranged for booking agents. These tours cost many thousands of dollars and must be approved by Joo, or rather

the entity. There are rumors that he also demands a percentage from the tour operators, but Coppola denies this medium. Joal owns farms. In some minds, he doesn't need more money, not even making forty grand a day for merb sales. He doesn't. He also is definitely getting that kick back. Yeah, my my friends in the pot industry got another wrong business. Just convince people that any random plant cures everything and starts selling that ship. Like that's the fucking money. You

don't even need real plans. They could just be putting grass in those bills and people wouldn't notice yeah or nothing, Yeah or nothing, just sawdust. It's brilliant. So it soon becomes apparent just how much the town has been molded in the Joual the entities. Image photos of him are everywhere on street polls. In the posadas and cafes, a whole industry has sprung up around the sale of white clothes for visitors who forget to bring their own. He

is the brand here. When visitor told me the locals are now worried about how long he's going to live. The entity oversees everything here, from new businesses which must be Entity approved, to new construction. One Australian COSA staff member told me that before building a house here, she ran the plans past the Entity. Now. Tim did eventually get to conduct an interview with John of God, but only after he made it through a gauntlet of fawning

former patients. The center made him interview all of John's regulars, men and women who claim he healed them. The goal of this was obviously to instill a sense of awe in him, so that by the time he got to talk to John of God, he was in a mentally receptive place. But Tim is a good journalist and this did not work on him. In fact, he says that by the end of the whole routine he suffered from

miracle fatigue. Quote one more person tells me about their amazing recovery, I'll kill him like I'm a fan of Tim very good. When they sat down to talk, Tim became probably the first reporter to directly ask John of God about the sexual abuse allegations against him. John's response, I thought you came to talk about me, not other p That's fucking awesome. I mean, I guess if you're going to pass the buck, yeah, not Jesus Christ. Yeah.

At this point, John tried to break off the interview to go nap, but Tim asked him about another allegation. Local reporters had alleged that he diverted donations meant to build a soup kitchen and used them to renovate his house. John responded with a rant that he wasn't a thief. The person making the allegations was a thief, So like, very incredible guy here. Then the interview ended and for a while that was about all anyone had on the

allegations against John of God. The Montreal Gazette had a big laugh in two thousand and fifteen when John of God had an endoscopy which revealed a tumor and he had to undergo major surgery and chemotherapy to have it removed. When asked if this was hypocritical, John of God responded, what barbera cuts his own hair and went right back to fleecing thousands of people per year, which is just great, Like, all cure your cancer, But if I get cancer, I'm

going to get some fucking chemo. Yeah that's I mean, look, he had an answer and the right answer ready to go. I guess yeah, that is the right answer. You know what will cure your cancer. We are f d A backed to say that all all cancers are cured by whatever product and or service comes up next. So again, the f d A completely backs and supports this. And if they have a problem, they can come after me. Come on, you fucking FDA cowards. Bring it on, Bring

it on anyway, here's healing. We're back, uh, And I am just waiting for the f d A to to to try and take me on. Let's do it, and come on, they'll take they'll take this cancer from your cold dead hands. Yeah yeah, fuck. I don't know. I don't know who knows what's happening anymore. In September of two thous eighteen, a very brave Brazilian activist Sabrina Bittencourt went public with allegations from dozens of women against John of God. The blowback against her was immediate and severe.

John was well connected in the Brazilian government as well as extremely popular. An avalanche of death threats forced Sabrina to flee her home country for Spain, one of John's victims was hounded into suicide by her own family, who are all adherents of the medium and members of the cult. The story did not disappear, though, because as the weeks went by, dozens and then hundreds of new women came forward with their own stories of sexual abuse and rape

at the hands of John of God. By the time the three hundred allegation hit, the chief lawman and Goyas was forced to issue a preventative incarceration request against John of God. Initially, John expressed a desire to work with law enforcement and comply with the investigation. From a local news story, quote, I am grateful to God for still being here. I still a brother and God. I want to comply with Brazilian law. I am in its hands. Joel Didos is still alive, he told his followers when

he left. Only ten minutes later, he told reporters that he was innocent of all accusations. The psychics appearance cause a visible uproar in the center. Some followers greeted him with applause, while others complained about the presence of reporters.

Respect my father, one of the volunteers asked, now, I included that quote about that John of God coupemember saying respect my father, Uh, which is really because I think it's really interesting, and it's interesting because John's actual daughter

accused him of sexual assault. Um. In January of two thousand nineteen, after three hundred other allegations go public, John of God's own daughter goes to the Brazilian magazine JA to announce, quote, under the pretense of mystical treatments, he abused and raped me between the ages of ten and fourteen. Oh God. She claims the abuse from John of God

only stopped after one of his employees impregnated her. In response to this, John of God beat his own daughter so badly that she suffered a miscarriage, she told via my father is a monster. True. Now, Eventually more than six hundred women came forward to level accusations against John of God, like it is hard to overstand that. I'm sure it's thousands, Like it's six hundred women came forward in a climate so dangerous, were like at least one

of his victims was hounded to suicide. I suspect he is guilty of thousands of acts of sexual assault, but we know six hundred women leveled accusations. Rather than report to the police as he said he would, John of God went on the run withdrawing nine million dollars in cash in an attempt to flee the country, but he was unsuccessful in this and eventually had to turn himself in. Raids on his compound found millions of dollars in cash,

as well as a large number of illegal firearms. Police who interrogated him started to report bizarre incidents, including their computer spontaneously typing the letters O O a bunch of times, the printer printing spontaneously, and a mini fridge exploding. These reports are almost certainly untrue. They come from tabloid sources, but there is a lot of evidence that sympathetic Brazilian police certainly wanted citizens to believe this was all going on.

You know, we started this episode talking about like the police tend to be on these guys sides because they believe the bullshit. Yeah. Less than a month after making initial allegations, Sabrina Bittencourt released a bizarre six minute long video accusing John of Gott to having run a twenty

year long human trafficking operation. She alleged that the colt Leader's spiritual hospital was nothing but a cover for a baby smuggling empire that sold infants to parents in the US, Australia, and Europe for up to fifty thou dollars a piece. Bittencourt alleged that John had established a network of isolated farms and minds, and that he would bribe poor girls aged fourteen to eighteen to move there and spend the next decade continuously pregnant. Once born, the babies were sold

on the black market. After ten years, the birth mothers were executed to prevent any witnesses. Sabrina wrote quote or stated quote, hundreds of girls were enslaved over the years, lived on farms and goyas served as wombs to get pregnant for their babies to be sold. These girls were murdered after ten years of giving birth. We've got a

number of testimonies. We've received reports from the adopted there's of their children that were sold for between twenty and fifty thousand in Europe, USA and Australia, as well as testimony from ex workers and local people who are tired of being complicited with John of God's Gang. Now, those are some wild ass allegations, and unfortunately, I don't know if any of this really happened. Sabrina was absolutely right

about John of God's career of sexual abuse. Hundreds of women came for including his own daughter, like and they're they're like, there's so much testimony, it's very clear what happened. But the baby smuggling stuff, there's not hard evidence of this. An investigation is ongoing into it. Um and Sabrina Bittencourt like she got hounded out of her home and delusied in death threats and suffered a mental breakdown. She came

out with these allegations days before committing suicide. Um, she was a sexual abuse survivor herself, clearly traumatized by that

as well as the ocean of death rates. And this doesn't mean that her allegations weren't accurate, because there's actually a long history in Brazil that includes to the present day of like religion, like particularly Christian cults that have like farming communes, abducting people basically and forcing them into slavery to like grow plants and ship like stuff happens in Brazil. It's a big country and there's a lot

of areas that are beyond the rule of law. This is not impossible, but it's really hard to know exactly what's going on, and you won't find any credible publications that have gone into the matter in detail, because really all we have are the allegations and the fact that they're being investigated, and unfortunately, it is unlikely we will ever know the truth because if Bitten Courts allegations are accurate, it is highly unlikely that the Boson Yarrow administration would

allow the truth to get out because JayR. Boson Yarrow has connections to John of God and a lot of members of his political party were backers of John of God. And if John of God was operating a massive, multimillion dollar baby smuggling empire, he absolutely did it with the consent and help of powerful men in Brazil. And the truth is just not gonna get out. So this is not a satisfying ending um in that case, because I can't tell you what happened with his whole a be

smuggling business. Pretty clearly raped a whole lot of people and it was a monster um. But there's just a lot that's unclear about this story that will be up in the air for years hopefully good investigations will kind of come to a more concrete conclusion about some of this stuff in the future. Um. I will say, though, while our story doesn't end in the most satisfying way possible, it does end with something that kind of resembles justice.

In December two, nineteen, a judge and Goyas sentence John of God to nineteen years and four months in prison for the rapes of four different women. His lawyers are appealing, but John is incarcerated today and at age seventy seven, he is very likely to die in prison. So that's something Yeah, some thing I guess resembling justice. Yeah, if

you like squint, Yeah, it's okay. So Robert, as someone who spends a lot of time looking at men like this, is there ever a case where it's like it just feels like these like the patterns of this ship is always the same. And I guess it's maybe self selecting because it's the ship we hear about is is, But why did it always feels like it feels follows like such a similar blueprint. It's like, you know, like every

cult feels the same. Yeah, I mean because they because they all operate on the same principle, like every cult feels the same in the way that every oil and gas company works broadly the same way because the same sort of tactics, the same sort of promises UM attract and work on the same sort of people, and the same kinds of folks are able to successfully carry out these griphs because being able to do the work that these kind of people do, like John of God isn't

all that different from um, a guy like out On Hubbard, Like they all have more more more alike than different or all that different from Sarah Paula White Kane, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor. They're all they just pick different kind of ways to do the same thing. Um, and some of them are more successful than others, and they're all differently successful. But it is it's always the same grift and it just leaves a huge amount of human shrapnel

in its wake, which sucks. Yeah, Jesus Christ, this is man, Yeah man, this one's a rough story. Yeah yeah. And like I just I wish we knew more about the baby farming stuff that just doesn't seem to be solid information. And also, just like Sabrina Bittencourt, by the time she came up with those allegations, was like pretty broken, like like broken in the sense that like human, an ocean

of hate from other people had like shattered her psyche. Um, Yeah, which is also tragic and um, you know what she did was very brave and she brought down this guy, but it cost her own life, which is really fucked up. Yeah, it's sucking horrible. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, another successful episode behind the best. We really nailed it today, just grim ship. How often does it end in anything resembling justice? Can? Yeah? Not not all that often. You know, most of them

don't wind up in prison. Yeah, I guess everyone dies. But still yeah, about fifteen percent of the time something that like resembles justice happens to these guys. Yeah, about of the time. I'll say, I feel like that's higher. It's probably maybe. Maybe. Look, if you, if you the fan, want to go through and run the numbers, please do Um, I hate I hate numbers and don't trust them. Don't do someone do run the stats, run the stats on the bastards. Yeah, let us know, run the stats or

just listen to run the jewels. It's only one, only one, and you can't do both. Yeah. No, absolutely, that's the key, and you have anything you want to plug after that? Really just uplifting comment. God, I guess. I mean, look, this is probably the only podcast that I can comfortably say that, yo, is this racist. When we take some of the worst of you know, just situations and shipping

the news people's like questions on racism, it's horrible. Often not horrible, horrible, but I can definitively say we're less depressing than this. So check it out. Yep. We you can find us on mind the Bastards dot com, where we will have the sources for this article or this episode. You can find me on Twitter and I write okay, and I have a podcast called The Women's Ward. Check it out, The Women's Worries, uplifting and not it's hopeful. Yeah,

I'm horrible in this bullshit. So yep, damn man, Yeah, thanks for having me. This is I mean, I can't I can't say it was fun, but it was certainly something. Yep, it was certainly something. So yep, we're done. I'm gonna stop. Yeah,