Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we
Speaker 1: talk about terrible people. And this is part two of
Speaker 1: our series on John of God. Bastard is also Oprah
Speaker 1: Umr and Susan Casey, the author of that terrible article.
Speaker 1: So pull up a fine Chilean red. Get ready to
Speaker 1: hear some more. Um, I have to this is this
Speaker 1: is off topic, but I want to tell something. I
Speaker 1: just ran across to my guest Andrew T before we
Speaker 1: roll in the epode, Andrew, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1: What's up? J O G Ready to hear about the
Speaker 1: rest of this motherfucker? Well, before we do that, I
Speaker 1: just came across something on Twitter. Um, it's a book
Speaker 1: that's being sold. It's like a it's like a part
Speaker 1: of the Joe Biden grift, because like every politician has
Speaker 1: a griff now. And this is a coloring book called
Speaker 1: a Hot Cup of Joe and it has a cartoon
Speaker 1: of sexy Joe Biden on it. Um. Yeah, a piping
Speaker 1: hot coloring book with America's sexiest moderate Joe Biden. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awful. It is abuse. Yeah that's ah well, that's
Speaker 1: fucking horrendous. It's almost worth buying so you can have
Speaker 1: it for whatever happens with the election, just to have
Speaker 1: this fucking horrible thing. Yeah, I don't want to give
Speaker 1: this person money, but I do want to see inside
Speaker 1: this terrible, terrible criminal coloring book. Um. The sexy seventies
Speaker 1: something politicians thing is one of the weirdest aspects of
Speaker 1: modern politics that like you have these two old and
Speaker 1: clearly not in the best of health men, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump, who both of whose supporters have to
Speaker 1: depict them as like muscle bound, like like like like hunks,
Speaker 1: Like guys, they're dying men. Stop it, Like you don't, like,
Speaker 1: even if you think they're the right person to be president,
Speaker 1: you don't have to pretend that they're Like you don't
Speaker 1: have to get thirsty about them. What is wrong with
Speaker 1: you people? They both they're diapers, Like, let's talk about
Speaker 1: that situation. They're not out here like bench pressing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not doing windsprints, Like Joe's abs don't exist because
Speaker 1: he's an old sick man, and yeah, that's okay, that's
Speaker 1: fine idea, but like whatever, like just stop it, stop it.
Speaker 1: All of the flush on his face is melting day
Speaker 1: by day. It's what happens here as you die? Like,
Speaker 1: which is they're they're dying, yeah, like the like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not on them because they're like pretty normally
Speaker 1: aged men for their ages, like people, what you stop
Speaker 1: making they don't have to make them sexy? What is
Speaker 1: wrong with you? If I could just do a tiny
Speaker 1: pull and just point out that Sophie's idea of a
Speaker 1: sexy man is Popeye, we can just live in that
Speaker 1: for a second. I dare you to find a better
Speaker 1: example of uncut eroticism than Robin Williams as Popeye and
Speaker 1: Popeye movie that absolutely exists. Look it up. It's fucking
Speaker 1: something else. Insanity. Yeah, people made that. People made that
Speaker 1: and no one stopped them, Isn't Is that Robert Altman?
Speaker 1: I think so? Yeah, I think it's Robert Altman. You
Speaker 1: keep talking, I'm gonna look it up. No, I'm not yourself.
Speaker 1: Never mind. It's great, So we're all back from it.
Speaker 1: Is Robert Altman. Yeah, all right, let's let's it's time
Speaker 1: to get back into this episode. Talk about John of
Speaker 1: God some more. I just had to that hit my
Speaker 1: world like a fucking carpet bomb, and I had to
Speaker 1: I just had to talk about it so your world,
Speaker 1: Like like a cruise missile at your wedding. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: like one of Ray Theon's fine products hitting a wedding.
Speaker 1: Which you know, if you've ever thought not enough weddings
Speaker 1: have missiles hit them, then you're the kind of customer
Speaker 1: Raytheon is looking for. All right, we really should start
Speaker 1: the episode now. So no human being has ever embodied
Speaker 1: the phrase the road to hell is paved with good
Speaker 1: intentions better than Oprah Winfrey. Like many of you, she
Speaker 1: was a regular background figure in my childhood. My mom
Speaker 1: would have her on when she was working from home
Speaker 1: while we did chores, etcetera. Like she was just on
Speaker 1: in the background all the time. And compared to the
Speaker 1: other background figures of my childhood guys like Rush Limbaugh
Speaker 1: and Michael Savage, she was pretty benign. At least she
Speaker 1: seemed that way. Um. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: describe her as a monster, but her career has been
Speaker 1: a masterclass and how to enable monsters. When Free was
Speaker 1: a longtime friend of Harvey Weinstein, she regularly hosted Tony Robbins,
Speaker 1: another se ex pest and self help guru. She is
Speaker 1: largely responsible for making Doctor Phil and Doctor oz into
Speaker 1: household names, and both of those men have gone on
Speaker 1: to do incalculable harm to society. And of course she
Speaker 1: is the reason John of God at his clinic were
Speaker 1: put in front of the faces of millions upon millions
Speaker 1: of guluble, desperate Westerners. After that Oh Magazine article was
Speaker 1: published in two thousand ten, she dedicated a special episode
Speaker 1: to John of God, inviting the author of that article
Speaker 1: and a doctor onto her show. They were both total converts,
Speaker 1: but how they and Oprah presented John to their audience
Speaker 1: is really interesting to me. And I want you to
Speaker 1: click that first link and play it to that thirty
Speaker 1: eight minutes Andrew, because you went't expecting to find what well,
Speaker 1: I went to just gather evidence to see what's true. Susan.
Speaker 1: When you were there, did he I heard that he
Speaker 1: actually invite medical doctors from around the world to come
Speaker 1: up and witness him do these things. Is that correct? Yes?
Speaker 1: And they always are sort of very careful not to
Speaker 1: ever themselves against the medical the mainstream medical profession. They
Speaker 1: you know, they're very much like they're not He's never
Speaker 1: gonna do a heart transplant up there. It's like he's
Speaker 1: going to do whatever he can do with his ability
Speaker 1: to heal, and then you might have to go to
Speaker 1: your doctor for the rest. Yeah, okay, and that's that's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What do you think of that, Andrew, what do you
Speaker 1: think of that framing? Um? Incredible? Incredible. I mean, the
Speaker 1: one thing watching the clip is that, um, um, what
Speaker 1: is sorry? What is what is the journalists? The quote
Speaker 1: journal was a strong word for Susan. The one thing
Speaker 1: watching that is that Susan looks almost exactly as I
Speaker 1: thought you would, Yes, exactly the type of white woman
Speaker 1: that would promote this ship. Yes. Yeah, And whatever picture
Speaker 1: you I guarantee you a hundred percent of you, whatever
Speaker 1: picture you have in your head of Susan Casey is accurate. Um,
Speaker 1: because there's only one wild It's awesome, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Um yeah it's And then also like this this thing
Speaker 1: where he's like he's not gonna do a heart transplant,
Speaker 1: but it's like you might have to go to your
Speaker 1: regular doctor for that is like yeah, just like key
Speaker 1: like sweeping under the rug. It's like, well, of course
Speaker 1: you will need real medical care. Also, what's really cool
Speaker 1: about that is that it is very clearly and obviously
Speaker 1: an answer of uh, Susan and this other doctor who
Speaker 1: will talk about a minute whitewashing John of God. So
Speaker 1: like they know that if they're going to be on
Speaker 1: Oprah Show and talk to like a mainstream audience, they
Speaker 1: have to put in a They can't just be all
Speaker 1: like especially because if this is two thousen and we
Speaker 1: we we aren't where we are now now you could
Speaker 1: just say doctors are bullshit. This guy is the only
Speaker 1: real healer in the world. You can get away with that.
Speaker 1: Back then you had to be like, oh no, you
Speaker 1: still regular doctors are still good, great for things. He's
Speaker 1: just helping with other stuff and like that was necessary
Speaker 1: to get people on board. Um. But John of God's
Speaker 1: Cult produced propaganda two. And this is why I say
Speaker 1: that Susan Casey and this doctor are like intentionally whitewashing him,
Speaker 1: because for this episode of Oprah Show, they use clips
Speaker 1: from a documentary that John of God's Cult produced. UM.
Speaker 1: And in the actual documentary, UM, there is no time
Speaker 1: wasted telling people that they need to consult their doctors.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna play next, Have you played next? Eclip
Speaker 1: from that actual the documentary produced by the cult that
Speaker 1: shows kind of how internally they talked about his healing powers,
Speaker 1: and it's very different from how Oprah did physical healings
Speaker 1: that cannot be explained away factors in He said to
Speaker 1: me in reply to my question, can you help me
Speaker 1: to become healthy again? And he replied, you are already healed.
Speaker 1: Holy sh it. Yeah. Uh so yeah, you see like
Speaker 1: and that there's no talk about like, oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta uh you gotta fucking um yeah. No, he just
Speaker 1: heals your ship. Yeah. So the doctor guy that Oprah
Speaker 1: has on there is is a fellow named Jeffrey Rehdiger,
Speaker 1: and he's really interesting to me because he is a
Speaker 1: very real medical professional and was actually or is actually
Speaker 1: a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. Uh. He
Speaker 1: researches spontaneous healing, which is like when people go into
Speaker 1: remission or whatever. And there's no clear explanation why which
Speaker 1: is a thing that happens. People get better from things.
Speaker 1: We don't understand why that that's the thing that happens. Um.
Speaker 1: And he is clearly there to inject both credibility and
Speaker 1: skepticism into the discussions about John of God, kind of
Speaker 1: like Dr Oz was earlier. For example, Oprah at one
Speaker 1: point plays a video of one of John of God's
Speaker 1: brain surgeries where he's like shoving stuff up people's nose um,
Speaker 1: and Dr Rheteger is really up front and clear about
Speaker 1: the fact that this brain surgery through the no stuff
Speaker 1: is sleight of hand, that he's not actually performing surgery,
Speaker 1: that he's that there's there's a ton of space in
Speaker 1: the naval cavity and nothing inexplicable is going on. So
Speaker 1: he does make he doesn't state that to the audience,
Speaker 1: but he does that while he buys into the fact
Speaker 1: that scientifically inexplicable healing occurs at John of God's center.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna play another clip from that Oprah episode
Speaker 1: so you can kind of see how this skeptic talks
Speaker 1: about this healing. Dr Jeffrey Rehdiger travel to Brazil also
Speaker 1: to see John of God's work firsthand. Explain if you
Speaker 1: can the medical risks of surgery without anesthesia or proper sterilization.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like he's like sterilizing the knife for
Speaker 1: the probe or well. Yeah, as a physician, I have
Speaker 1: to say, you don't try these kinds of things at
Speaker 1: home and or with your loved ones. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: know this guy says a second grade education. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I and I do have to say that these are
Speaker 1: things that I don't understand. So I can't fully endorse
Speaker 1: things that are beyond my understanding. Um, but I've seen
Speaker 1: them happen. I've generally without annesty, Shaw, you see enormous pain.
Speaker 1: I take care of people every day in pain from surgery,
Speaker 1: uh and other events. The risk of infection is typically
Speaker 1: great and something that we have to take seriously. So
Speaker 1: that's followed up with these people who have gone through
Speaker 1: these procedures. Maybe infections came later. Well, I think every
Speaker 1: situation that spiritual healing is different. So did you catch
Speaker 1: what went on there? This is really interesting to me.
Speaker 1: So Dr Reddiger notes that the psychic surgeries, which like
Speaker 1: use real knives and actually cut people, He notes that
Speaker 1: that's dangerous, like he tells people not to do it
Speaker 1: at home, But he also says he's not aware of
Speaker 1: anyone getting infections. And then when Oprah points out that
Speaker 1: he could have they could have gotten infected later, he
Speaker 1: doesn't respond to that. You'll notice he doesn't say that
Speaker 1: that's possible even He just sort of says that like
Speaker 1: a bunch of things getting that's really Yeah, that's amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's the kind of thing because it's been acknowledged,
Speaker 1: even though he doesn't then go on to state that like, actually, yes,
Speaker 1: we we have no data that these people to suggest
Speaker 1: these people aren't getting infected. We're not performing any follow ups.
Speaker 1: I didn't take any attempts to actually determine whether or
Speaker 1: not people got infected. Letter he doesn't say that. He
Speaker 1: gives a non response so that the show can move
Speaker 1: on and the audience can move forward content that John
Speaker 1: of God, that these are real, serious skeptical people, and
Speaker 1: that that makes John of God even more real because
Speaker 1: this this medical professional has betted him with the requisite
Speaker 1: amount of skepticism even though none of that was actually done.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, like this is a master class and how
Speaker 1: to white and like it's laundering bullshit. Yeah yeah, it's
Speaker 1: even like the way that like they can claim they've
Speaker 1: addressed the infection risk by saying because they brought it up.
Speaker 1: It's fucking revolting. That's crazy. Yeah, it's awesome. Um. I
Speaker 1: want to play one more clip from this episode because
Speaker 1: we just gotta believe and this is what medicine and
Speaker 1: psychiatry need to examine, is I believe the powers of belief,
Speaker 1: the powers of the mind are far more powerful than
Speaker 1: we have even begun to explore. I believe that's an
Speaker 1: unexplored wilderness in terms of research. So you said that
Speaker 1: since you made that trip as the skeptic and then
Speaker 1: you were there in the presence and then had the
Speaker 1: whole bleeding experience yourself, that it turns your life upside down?
Speaker 1: How how so well, if you can say, there's something
Speaker 1: to the effect that I believe this in my head,
Speaker 1: but I don't believe it in my heart. I don't
Speaker 1: get it is too much. And then a little incision
Speaker 1: manifests on this skin over the area of your heart.
Speaker 1: That means none of this is what we think it is.
Speaker 1: It's something I don't know what that means. And there's
Speaker 1: I'm sure religions can layer on many different interpretation. Yourself
Speaker 1: a religious person. Because of this, I am actually more
Speaker 1: interested in the development and cultivation of a spiritual life.
Speaker 1: All right, yep, So that's interesting. One of Reddiger's claims
Speaker 1: is that like while he's watching John of God performed
Speaker 1: these surgeries, he spontaneously started bleeding from a whole, which
Speaker 1: is like kind of like a stigmata thing. He's introduced
Speaker 1: as a skepticum who traveled to John of God's center
Speaker 1: in order to take samples and medically vet whether or
Speaker 1: not this man was a serious healer. And he says
Speaker 1: later in that interview quote, some people I spoke with
Speaker 1: were able to remember the events going around them completely,
Speaker 1: and some people seem to inter a sort of altered
Speaker 1: state during these surgeries. When I was assisting in one
Speaker 1: of these surgeries, John of God cut this woman's corny is.
Speaker 1: She didn't flinch, she didn't try to pull away from him.
Speaker 1: I can't explain that I heard some people use the
Speaker 1: term spiritual anesthesia. I have no way to understand that.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that he says that, because like there's actually
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons why someone wouldn't feel, uh, they're
Speaker 1: eye getting scraped. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like perfectly explicable and like lending essentially the name of
Speaker 1: your institution and by claiming to be baffled to give
Speaker 1: it like credence is like God truly pathetic. It's also
Speaker 1: like even accepting his words at face value until the end,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, yes, the brain can do a lot, Yes,
Speaker 1: psychology is more powerful probably in terms of physiological stuff
Speaker 1: than you know we give it credit for. And then
Speaker 1: pivoting too, I want to have a spiritual life is
Speaker 1: like just an abdication of curiosity. Yep, it's just like
Speaker 1: what do you Yeah this, I mean, it's it is
Speaker 1: remarkable that some of these people don't feel pain. Probably
Speaker 1: it's documented in other media, you know, other types of
Speaker 1: formats of this kind of ship and sure worth exploring.
Speaker 1: But being like, yeah, I want to see what I
Speaker 1: want to learned more about these spirits is like incredible.
Speaker 1: He's he's such a piece of ship. And yeah, obviously,
Speaker 1: like I've scraped my cornea before when I was out
Speaker 1: hashing in the woods, and uh, it didn't hurt. It
Speaker 1: hurt afterwards, like because just like it fucked up my ability,
Speaker 1: like my eye was taking in too much lighter, so
Speaker 1: like it it was like kind of blinded me. It
Speaker 1: was very much debilitating afterwards. But the actual getting scraped
Speaker 1: by a branch and the eye it didn't cause pain,
Speaker 1: which is part of why it took me a while
Speaker 1: to realize what had happened. Um, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like there's also a lot of data on how
Speaker 1: um altered mind altering states like people have in these
Speaker 1: religious moments can impact perception of pain. Worship is definitively
Speaker 1: a mind altering state. John of God requires his patients
Speaker 1: to go through an elaborate series of meditations before and
Speaker 1: after treatment. UM and I actually found a scholarly study
Speaker 1: of his his surgeries conducted by doctors from a Brazilian
Speaker 1: medical school. They note the surgeries were always performed by
Speaker 1: John of Godden, occurred in a large, non sterilized and
Speaker 1: open room with dozens of spectators, most of whom were
Speaker 1: other patients and their relatives or friends. During each of
Speaker 1: these surgical sessions, approximately five patients usually remained standing will
Speaker 1: side by side in front of one of the room's wall. Rarely,
Speaker 1: patients were submitted to the surgeries while they were seated
Speaker 1: in a chair. Visible surgeries were performed in a few
Speaker 1: minutes in a very grandiose in theatrical way, invoking strong
Speaker 1: emotional involvement and even perplexity among the audience. Incisions were
Speaker 1: performed with either sterilized scalpels or kitchen knives, and surgeries
Speaker 1: were performed in rapid succession. The cleanliness of the instruments,
Speaker 1: contrasted to reports of other media mystic surgeries performed by
Speaker 1: dirty or even rusty implements. So you notice the stories
Speaker 1: about this guy that incredible sources state always say that
Speaker 1: he's just using like random kitchen knives, sometimes even that
Speaker 1: they're dirty. Um, when actual scientists studied, like they know
Speaker 1: his knives are always sterilized, and he's not cutting open
Speaker 1: people deeply and removing organs. He is scraping their skin
Speaker 1: in their eyes. The fact that they don't get a
Speaker 1: lot of them don't get infections isn't weird. Have you
Speaker 1: ever gotten a scrape that didn't get infected? You've probably
Speaker 1: gotten a lot because your body is reasonably good at
Speaker 1: not dying from random scrapes. Um, otherwise there wouldn't be people. Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: it's it's very frustrating. Another frustrating thing is that this
Speaker 1: study goes on to note that like they don't know,
Speaker 1: like they couldn't find any evidence of infections among John's patients,
Speaker 1: But they also note that they didn't actually get to
Speaker 1: follow up with any of these people further than a
Speaker 1: day or two on because like, the a lot of them,
Speaker 1: like we're traveling in from elsewhere, so like the paper
Speaker 1: is a proper scientific paper, and it concludes that, like
Speaker 1: we need to do more research and track these patients
Speaker 1: for longer term to determine whether or not anyone's getting infected,
Speaker 1: which is what you say if you're an actual scientist.
Speaker 1: Dr Reddiger, on the other hand, just gets on OPRA
Speaker 1: and announces that this is all inexplicable, like science can't
Speaker 1: explain this. It's like, yes, it can. You just didn't try,
Speaker 1: Like you didn't even try, and I hate I find
Speaker 1: science doesn't work when you don't do it. That's a
Speaker 1: remarkable conclusion. Yeah, thank you, doctor. I found a good
Speaker 1: critical right up of Dr Reddiger's performance on the blog
Speaker 1: Science Based Medicine. I'm gonna quote from that now. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the camera angles used made it impossible for me to
Speaker 1: judge whether John was doing what he claimed, and the
Speaker 1: only close upshot that was presented, it was clear to
Speaker 1: me that the knife never touched the woman's eye, and
Speaker 1: when John actually appeared to be doing something, the camera
Speaker 1: never focused on the woman's eye. How convenient, it was
Speaker 1: almost as though OPRAH producers were making a conscious effort
Speaker 1: not to show a camera angle that would allow viewers
Speaker 1: to judge whether the procedure actually being done was what
Speaker 1: John of God claimed. Personally, I'd have loved to see
Speaker 1: an ophthamologist or even just a surgeon rather than a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: because Dr Rehdeger is a psychiatrist allowed to have a
Speaker 1: close up view of John's activities. Rehdeger is also shown
Speaker 1: in a video clip apparently bleeding from the chest, apparently
Speaker 1: after having viewed John do his corny is scraping bit.
Speaker 1: He expresses fear and is concerned that the bleeding doesn't
Speaker 1: stop as soon as he thinks it should, pointing out
Speaker 1: that he doesn't have a bleeding disorder. So again, Dr
Speaker 1: Reddeger is a psychiatrist, which makes him a legitimate medical professional,
Speaker 1: but does not make him particularly competent to rule on
Speaker 1: whether or not someone's reaction to a light surgical cut
Speaker 1: is inexplicable, because that is not what psychiatrist specialize it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also just being like the arrogant so being
Speaker 1: able to say, I can't explain it, so it is
Speaker 1: therefore I won't explain it, won't find out how to
Speaker 1: explain it, so it's therefore inexplicable. Yeah, it's super great, Um, yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's also noted in that article that Dr Rehdiger
Speaker 1: isn't just a psychiatrist. He's a psychiatrist who has built
Speaker 1: an entire brand off of embracing spontaneous healing. At the
Speaker 1: time this came out, he headed up the Initiative for
Speaker 1: Psychological and Spiritual Development, and on his old website he
Speaker 1: wrote this explaining what the institute did. Quote, we live
Speaker 1: in a culture that has advanced enough that we can
Speaker 1: send the person with a medical problem to the medical doctor,
Speaker 1: a person with an emotional problem to the psychologist, a
Speaker 1: person with a spiritual problem to the priest, minister or rabbi.
Speaker 1: Yet the Initiative for Psychological and Spiritual Development is founded
Speaker 1: upon the belief that beneath all and behind all the
Speaker 1: masks and appearances that we present to the world, there
Speaker 1: is something more, and whatever healing potential exists comes from
Speaker 1: this place, which is right, beautiful, beautiful nonsense. So Dr
Speaker 1: Reddeger's initiative appears to be defunct. Now I don't think
Speaker 1: it exists anymore. I can't find evidence of that, but
Speaker 1: I didn't look super hard, so maybe I'm wrong. He
Speaker 1: does have a book out, however, called Cured with an
Speaker 1: exclamation point, and it's about people going into spontaneous remission.
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about Rehdecker to declare him an
Speaker 1: absolute grifter, but I do know that he was once
Speaker 1: a ghost on coast to coast AM, which is like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones for people who are a little bit less
Speaker 1: racist than Alex Jones. Um, so I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say it's probably fair to call him a griffin. You
Speaker 1: don't go on coast to coast f M if you're
Speaker 1: like a a M, if you're like a credible person. Well,
Speaker 1: it's also like like the you know, not acknowledging that
Speaker 1: spontaneous remission is a severe outlier event and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's possible, but like putting your treatment faith in that
Speaker 1: is insane. Yes, yeah, and yeah, but it's a great grift.
Speaker 1: It's a thing. People want to read about it. People
Speaker 1: love reading books about magical healing and ship Yeah. So yeah.
Speaker 1: Dr Ddeger is part of the grand tradition in the
Speaker 1: medical field of credential medical professionals who provide cover for
Speaker 1: miracles slinging con men, and of course Dr Oz would
Speaker 1: be another example of this type of person. Another example
Speaker 1: is provided in Susan Casey's OH Magazine article about John
Speaker 1: of God and this is her again attempting to do
Speaker 1: some real journalistic research to talk about how it's not
Speaker 1: weird to believe that this guy could be caring cancer quote.
Speaker 1: The belief in the effectiveness of prayer is as old
Speaker 1: as civilization. The results are tough to pin down. Bernard Grad, PhD,
Speaker 1: a Canadian biologist from McGill University, worked with a spiritual
Speaker 1: healer named Oscar Estebani conducting controlled studies in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties using mice that had been uniformly wounded.
Speaker 1: Estebani would place his hands upon the wire covers of
Speaker 1: certain cages, willing those animals to heal. The results were dramatic.
Speaker 1: In one experiment, the wounds on s to Bonnie's treated
Speaker 1: mice were very significantly smaller after two weeks than those
Speaker 1: of mice that had been left to heal on their own.
Speaker 1: The team also discovered that plant seeds exposed to energy
Speaker 1: healing grew at a faster rate. There was a force here,
Speaker 1: they agreed, and it appeared to be doing something beneficial.
Speaker 1: What that force was, however, no one could say for sure. Now,
Speaker 1: these studies happened. There are a real thing that happened.
Speaker 1: You can read them. Bernard Grad did carry out those studies,
Speaker 1: and if you look them up, you'll find conclusions that
Speaker 1: are pretty similar to what Susan Casey writes in her
Speaker 1: bad article. What you won't find is any clear follow
Speaker 1: up to the study. In fact, basically the only writing
Speaker 1: about this research you will find comes from either woo
Speaker 1: woo bullshit practitioners or other medical griffsman trying to convince
Speaker 1: people that energy healing is real. This makes it difficult
Speaker 1: to refute because there really aren't direct refutations of Dr
Speaker 1: Grad's work. What we do have, however, is almost a
Speaker 1: century of additional research into quote unquote energy healing um.
Speaker 1: Because again this stuff was done in the fifties and sixties, Like,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a big study, it was conducted a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Uh, there's you can't say that it was conducted, like,
Speaker 1: we can't prove to a point of certainty that these
Speaker 1: people were actually conducting it well or or abiding by
Speaker 1: all the rules they said they were. And there's another
Speaker 1: seventy years of other studies into this that show very
Speaker 1: different results. So again she picks out this one study
Speaker 1: from seventy years ago that says what she wants it
Speaker 1: to say. She ignores, for example, the fact that in
Speaker 1: Psychiatrists with a Lancet evaluated multiple studies, several hundred of
Speaker 1: them that showed links between religious faith, faith healing, and
Speaker 1: energy healing and health benefits. Here's how Science Magazine reported
Speaker 1: on their findings. Quote. Typically, they say, these studies ignore
Speaker 1: other factors that may improve health, such as abstinence from
Speaker 1: tobacco and alcohol, and even the scientifically sound practices they
Speaker 1: contend were inconsistent and jon't justify bringing religion into medical practice.
Speaker 1: Richard Sloan of Columbia University and his colleagues reviewed every
Speaker 1: article containing religion and physical health they could find in Medline,
Speaker 1: an online service that indexes medical studies. Many of them,
Speaker 1: he says, focused on such groups as Roman Catholic priests
Speaker 1: or Benedictine monks, which forbids certain risky behaviors. Others looked
Speaker 1: at more general populations of church goers and found lower
Speaker 1: disease rates, but failed to take into account that only
Speaker 1: people who were in fairly good health can go to church.
Speaker 1: When these confounding factors were taken into account, either by
Speaker 1: the original researchers in a follow up study or by
Speaker 1: Sloan's group, The alleged benefits usually disappeared. Overall, Sloan says,
Speaker 1: the evidence is very unconventioning and weak, much weaker, for example,
Speaker 1: than the link between marital status and health. So again
Speaker 1: you can point out there's a couple of individual studies
Speaker 1: that like I haven't been refuted, that suggests a benefit
Speaker 1: between energy healing and health, and then there's hundreds of
Speaker 1: studies that show no connection at all. And if you
Speaker 1: only pay attention to the studies that say what you want,
Speaker 1: it sounds great. If you look at the mass body
Speaker 1: of research, it doesn't look so good. But Susan Casey
Speaker 1: doesn't do that. Um, yeah, so that's cool. Um. Following
Speaker 1: that two thousand ten episode of The Oprah Show, Oprah
Speaker 1: herself visited John of God in two thousand twelve. She
Speaker 1: described the encounter as blissful uh, and in her wake,
Speaker 1: thousands upon thousands of other seekers made the call to
Speaker 1: travel down Brazil Way for some psychic healing. By two fourteen,
Speaker 1: John's Humble center had transformed into a straight up commercial empire.
Speaker 1: Those passion flower pills alone grew into a ten million
Speaker 1: dollar a year business. Celebrities visited, including Paul Simon, the
Speaker 1: Princess of Japan, and Bill Clinton. Maybe probably, we don't
Speaker 1: exactly know. There's a bunch of celebrities who are rumored
Speaker 1: to have gone, Um, I'm gonna guess probably that Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton seems like the kind of guy who try this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but something especially like all the other ship it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the funk knows what's happening there. Yeah, yeah, but something
Speaker 1: else also cropped up over the years allegations of sexual
Speaker 1: misconduct by John of God. Objective observers noted that he
Speaker 1: seemed to have a strange, non medical fixation with women's breasts,
Speaker 1: performing surgery aimed at treating heart conditions and other ailments
Speaker 1: by groping them and cutting around their nipples. So that's good.
Speaker 1: Oh god, it's always like the most obvious ship, and
Speaker 1: yet there's still gonna be years of like of where
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't know, he just you know, he
Speaker 1: was just interested in heart surgery. Like yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: always so transparent. When the ship finally, like when the
Speaker 1: mask starts to slip, I feel like, yep, yep, it is.
Speaker 1: But you know what mask never slips, the mask of capitalism,
Speaker 1: and that means it's time for us to take our
Speaker 1: mask off and put some products and services on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, we're back. Okay, so um yeah we left off.
Speaker 1: You know, John of God has gotten this huge boost
Speaker 1: from Oprah and her Grift community. People are flooding in
Speaker 1: from all around the world. But also some stories start
Speaker 1: to come out. Allegations all vague at this point, no
Speaker 1: individual names attached, but that he's he's sexually harassing and
Speaker 1: assaulting people. The allegations were enough that in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: a real newspaper, the Sydney Morning Hair, sent a real journalist,
Speaker 1: Tim Elliott, to look into the matter. Tim's article provided
Speaker 1: the first comprehensive look at John of God's operation by
Speaker 1: someone who wasn't clearly two steps away from joining his cult,
Speaker 1: like Susan Casey. The Center provided him with a white
Speaker 1: ex pat handler to introduce him to John of God's world.
Speaker 1: Since Tim was a man, his handler was a man,
Speaker 1: Diego Coppola. Here's Tim's article quote. Coppola was born in Peru,
Speaker 1: but it'spent most of his life in California, where he
Speaker 1: worked as a computer engineer after visiting the CASA in
Speaker 1: two thousand one just to check it out. He married
Speaker 1: a Brazilian and moved to Abadiana. These days, he manages
Speaker 1: the CASA's fifty strong staff, a multinational team of volunteers.
Speaker 1: You take care of logistics, channeling the constant flow of visitors,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, forming an impenetral buffer around Medium Joao,
Speaker 1: sheltering him from the ceaseless demands of a ravening public.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants a piece of Medium, Joel, says Coppola. Before
Speaker 1: I arrived, Coppola had promised me an interview with Joel,
Speaker 1: although he now lets me know that this is far
Speaker 1: from guaranteed. He is not like you and me. Coppola
Speaker 1: tells him. He lives in another realm. Timetables don't mean
Speaker 1: much to him. What matters to him is doing the work,
Speaker 1: taking care of the healing. So that's good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like that. The handler for this sort of
Speaker 1: situation is always like, it's so fucking sinister. It's so
Speaker 1: crazy to me that people get sucked into this ship.
Speaker 1: It just seems like on the face, like get the
Speaker 1: funk out of there. Yeah. Yeah, Now, the reality is
Speaker 1: that John of God spent most of his time living
Speaker 1: in luxury on her ranch compound nearby. He only worked
Speaker 1: about half the week, and later revelations would suggests that
Speaker 1: he spent much of his downtime sexually abusing women, although
Speaker 1: he also spent a lot of his work hours sexually
Speaker 1: abusing women too, so who knows. Tim Elliott spoke to
Speaker 1: an Australian seeker, a woman named Sarah Layton from Melbourne.
Speaker 1: She's very emblematic of the success cases for John of God,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from him again. This is
Speaker 1: her fourth trip to the cost Us since two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: during which time she has sought treatment for her liver, kidney,
Speaker 1: and heart, as well as female problems. She also had
Speaker 1: lots of psychic surgeries, which is when the entities operate
Speaker 1: on patients remotely. You wake up after one of these
Speaker 1: surgeries and you can actually feel the stitches in your
Speaker 1: your stomach. She tells me, real stitches, no psychic stitches.
Speaker 1: She says. What has helped her most though, is the
Speaker 1: emotional healing. She's had a hard life after being sexually
Speaker 1: abused as a child. She was tortured. Before coming here,
Speaker 1: she had attempted suicide four times. She estimated she has
Speaker 1: spent fifty dollars all up in air fair donations. I
Speaker 1: always donate to the Costa because John of God doesn't
Speaker 1: charge anything, and medications such as healing herbs, which are
Speaker 1: sold at the costas pharmacy. I used my inheritance twenty
Speaker 1: dollars from my grandmother to pay for a lot of it.
Speaker 1: But it's worth it. My heart is healed, which western
Speaker 1: medicine wasn't able to do, and my gynecological problems have stopped.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot going on there. Um. Yeah, First off,
Speaker 1: you see, like everyone claims he doesn't take money, and
Speaker 1: then this woman's like, but I spent fifty dollars here,
Speaker 1: which is like, I mean, I guess to that end,
Speaker 1: that's not that different than any religion. But no, yeah,
Speaker 1: or then actually getting medical treatment in the legal way
Speaker 1: if you don't have health and sure, or if you do,
Speaker 1: I have health insurance and a lot of cases yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like you'll notice that like, and this is truth.
Speaker 1: A lot of the most dedicated case studies who will
Speaker 1: come out and talk about this guy's healing is their
Speaker 1: actual medical complaints are really vague and there's there's nothing
Speaker 1: in that that you can track pathologically. She like, she
Speaker 1: vaguely says gynecological problems, but also says like it's really
Speaker 1: my heart and like my emotional problems that he healed.
Speaker 1: Um and Susan Casey, the O magazine author, was in
Speaker 1: the same boat. She was grieving, not physically ill. And
Speaker 1: I've read a lot of stories about women who received
Speaker 1: healing from John of God, and an overwhelming number of
Speaker 1: them came in with emotional pain. And these people do
Speaker 1: seem to have gotten real relief at the center, but
Speaker 1: there's nothing magic about what provided them with the relief.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from a woman who wrote a
Speaker 1: story about like her own treatment by John of God.
Speaker 1: This is what she described it as. Quote. Meeting in
Speaker 1: the medium was a solemn process. Hundreds of people in
Speaker 1: white flock to the Costa every morning. Someone wheelchairs, other
Speaker 1: frail from chemo, and an orderly line. We waited to
Speaker 1: go before him so he could prescribe our cares. Mine
Speaker 1: was as follows. Five trips to the local sacred waterfall,
Speaker 1: four months without sex, alcohol or black pepper, four months
Speaker 1: of blessed herbal capsules. A translator quickly scribbled these directions
Speaker 1: on a small piece of paper. For three hours a day,
Speaker 1: I sat in meditation in the current room, helping to
Speaker 1: conduct energy for healings. It felt special, purposeful. I napped, hiked,
Speaker 1: and stood under that freezing holy waterfall. I prayed in
Speaker 1: front of the Castas Triangle, a big wooden wall hanging
Speaker 1: whose three sides represented faith, love, and charity. And then
Speaker 1: I went home and like, Yeah, if you're fucked up
Speaker 1: and grieving and like in a lot of pain, and
Speaker 1: you go to a distant location that's like set up
Speaker 1: to be solemn and relaxing and chill, and you detach
Speaker 1: from the internet and you stop getting wasted all the time,
Speaker 1: and you spend a bunch of time hiking in nature
Speaker 1: and hanging out at waterfalls, that will help with your
Speaker 1: green Yeah, of course it went like and having caught
Speaker 1: someone confidently say this is helping you will get better,
Speaker 1: Like that's a lot of what people need in those moments,
Speaker 1: as like someone to to really confidently tell them like
Speaker 1: this will pass and you will feel better. All of
Speaker 1: that stuff helps. Um, there's nothing magical about it, it
Speaker 1: just is. It's good to go. Like when you're really
Speaker 1: fucked up, in the head. Uh, it's good to stop
Speaker 1: getting wasted and to spend a lot of time hiking
Speaker 1: like that. There's nothing controversial or inexplicable about that. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in other words, a lot of the miraculous powers
Speaker 1: attributed to John of God are really just examples of
Speaker 1: the fact that life in his center is on balance
Speaker 1: healthier than the lives a lot of people left behind
Speaker 1: That Sarah, woman Tim Elliott interviewed, even told him she's
Speaker 1: expected the same thing. She said, quote, you're in the
Speaker 1: fifth dimension here, whereas in Australia it's the third dimension.
Speaker 1: In Australia, people don't understand spirituality. It's either work or
Speaker 1: going out and getting drunk. I find I have to
Speaker 1: escape that. And like, yeah, if your life, if you
Speaker 1: were if you were like depressed and getting wasted every night,
Speaker 1: and like that makes your body feel worse, it's bad
Speaker 1: for your health. And you go to a place and
Speaker 1: guys like stop doing that for four months, hike, meditate.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's gonna help. I mean honestly, just like I
Speaker 1: could prescribe, just don't be in Australia. Come on, yeah,
Speaker 1: get out of Australia is a general rule. Get out
Speaker 1: of Australia. We all know people get up to yeah.
Speaker 1: But of course John of Gotten his adherents couldn't just
Speaker 1: claim that the man had provided people with a relaxing
Speaker 1: retreat because claiming that this is magical and it also
Speaker 1: contreat cancer and stuff, that's where the real money's at.
Speaker 1: So when Tim did his interviews, his patients referred to
Speaker 1: John of God as a spiritual X ray machine. And
Speaker 1: in the very dumb biography John of God, Heather Cummings
Speaker 1: claimed that John was able to see each of his
Speaker 1: patients as a hologram, which is why all staff, patients
Speaker 1: and visiting journalists were asked to wear white. He says
Speaker 1: it made them easier to read. It also coincidentally opened
Speaker 1: up a huge market in town for white clothing, of
Speaker 1: which John of God got a cut um awesome, smart
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And and the uniform like starts to take
Speaker 1: away your identity and makes you more easy to manipulate
Speaker 1: and that's ship yep. As business expanded in the wake
Speaker 1: of OPRAH show, John and his followers created new treatments.
Speaker 1: They opened up a series of crystal beds. Patients paid
Speaker 1: sixty dollars an hour for the right to lie round
Speaker 1: a bunch of rocks. They also opened up a gift shop.
Speaker 1: Tim Elliott writes that it sold quote books, CDs, DVDs,
Speaker 1: tote bags, t shirts, coffee mugs, and crystals. All crystals
Speaker 1: have been blessed by the Entity, reads a sign on
Speaker 1: the wall. There are John of God Pendance postcards and
Speaker 1: travel pillows, even glow in the dark John of God
Speaker 1: wall stickers. I really like imagining like the fucking like
Speaker 1: Entity sweatshop where the guy just has to like or
Speaker 1: the spirit just has to leash like just a you know,
Speaker 1: for forty gross of crystals or else they can't go home. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the entities are like, yeah, they're they're they're working long
Speaker 1: hours to make sure all those fucking crystals are wholly enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Both the gift shop and cafe also do a brisk
Speaker 1: trade and water that has been blessed by the entity.
Speaker 1: People at the Costa treat the blessed water like nitroglycerin.
Speaker 1: Don't drink it all at once, Janna Sue Jones says
Speaker 1: one afternoon when she sees me swigging from a bottle,
Speaker 1: you'll be up all night. Sarah Layton tells me she
Speaker 1: regularly buys tin leader jugs of the stuff to take
Speaker 1: home in her luggage. It's just water, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of religions have fancy water. Now, the heart
Speaker 1: of the whole grift is the pharmacy. Though when I
Speaker 1: first started reading about it, I assumed it just stalked
Speaker 1: a variety of herbal remedies that he was giving people.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that the reality was even dumber
Speaker 1: than that and more brilliant at the same time. Here's
Speaker 1: tim quote. I had assumed that the pharmacy would stock
Speaker 1: a range of different herbs to treat a variety of
Speaker 1: different conditions, but note there is only one herb for
Speaker 1: sale here pass the floor, the flower of the passion
Speaker 1: fruit plant. When I asked Coppola about this, he explains
Speaker 1: that it's not what's in the capsules that counts, but
Speaker 1: rather the spiritual prescription that John of God writes for
Speaker 1: each patient. The intentionality of that prescription is transferred to
Speaker 1: the capsules at the time of purchase. He says, that's
Speaker 1: fucking brilliant. That's a great grift right there. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like the homeopathy grift, you know. It's that you
Speaker 1: can put magic in whatever. Yeah, And if you have
Speaker 1: a line on passion fruit flowers, which does sound good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, all of the people who see John actually
Speaker 1: just being seen by him and showing up and being
Speaker 1: in that line is free. But they all get prescriptions
Speaker 1: for these herbs, and you know, some by fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: some by ten dollars worth. But the average, Tim knows,
Speaker 1: the average purchases about twenty dollars, which would account for
Speaker 1: forty dollars a day and herb sales alone. Jesus, so
Speaker 1: great grift, a fucking plus grift. John of God like
Speaker 1: very smart. So. Abadianya is a small town. Um. It
Speaker 1: is not located in a nice part of Brasil. Before
Speaker 1: John of God, it's biggest industry was a series of
Speaker 1: brick factories. By the mid auts, John was by far
Speaker 1: the largest business in the area, and this gave him power.
Speaker 1: The way Tim describes it, John of God's financial leverage
Speaker 1: turned Abadianya into his own personal fiefdom. Quote. The biggest
Speaker 1: industry by far is medium jow. There are no less
Speaker 1: than seventy two posadas or hotels here, all catering to
Speaker 1: Cassa pilgrims, most of whom come on two week tours
Speaker 1: and arranged for booking agents. These tours cost many thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars and must be approved by Joo, or rather
Speaker 1: the entity. There are rumors that he also demands a
Speaker 1: percentage from the tour operators, but Coppola denies this medium.
Speaker 1: Joal owns farms. In some minds, he doesn't need more money,
Speaker 1: not even making forty grand a day for merb sales.
Speaker 1: He doesn't. He also is definitely getting that kick back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my my friends in the pot industry got another wrong business.
Speaker 1: Just convince people that any random plant cures everything and
Speaker 1: starts selling that ship. Like that's the fucking money. You
Speaker 1: don't even need real plans. They could just be putting
Speaker 1: grass in those bills and people wouldn't notice yeah or nothing,
Speaker 1: Yeah or nothing, just sawdust. It's brilliant. So it soon
Speaker 1: becomes apparent just how much the town has been molded
Speaker 1: in the Joual the entities. Image photos of him are
Speaker 1: everywhere on street polls. In the posadas and cafes, a
Speaker 1: whole industry has sprung up around the sale of white
Speaker 1: clothes for visitors who forget to bring their own. He
Speaker 1: is the brand here. When visitor told me the locals
Speaker 1: are now worried about how long he's going to live.
Speaker 1: The entity oversees everything here, from new businesses which must
Speaker 1: be Entity approved, to new construction. One Australian COSA staff
Speaker 1: member told me that before building a house here, she
Speaker 1: ran the plans past the Entity. Now. Tim did eventually
Speaker 1: get to conduct an interview with John of God, but
Speaker 1: only after he made it through a gauntlet of fawning
Speaker 1: former patients. The center made him interview all of John's regulars,
Speaker 1: men and women who claim he healed them. The goal
Speaker 1: of this was obviously to instill a sense of awe
Speaker 1: in him, so that by the time he got to
Speaker 1: talk to John of God, he was in a mentally
Speaker 1: receptive place. But Tim is a good journalist and this
Speaker 1: did not work on him. In fact, he says that
Speaker 1: by the end of the whole routine he suffered from
Speaker 1: miracle fatigue. Quote one more person tells me about their
Speaker 1: amazing recovery, I'll kill him like I'm a fan of
Speaker 1: Tim very good. When they sat down to talk, Tim
Speaker 1: became probably the first reporter to directly ask John of
Speaker 1: God about the sexual abuse allegations against him. John's response,
Speaker 1: I thought you came to talk about me, not other
Speaker 1: p That's fucking awesome. I mean, I guess if you're
Speaker 1: going to pass the buck, yeah, not Jesus Christ. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At this point, John tried to break off the interview
Speaker 1: to go nap, but Tim asked him about another allegation.
Speaker 1: Local reporters had alleged that he diverted donations meant to
Speaker 1: build a soup kitchen and used them to renovate his house.
Speaker 1: John responded with a rant that he wasn't a thief.
Speaker 1: The person making the allegations was a thief, So like,
Speaker 1: very incredible guy here. Then the interview ended and for
Speaker 1: a while that was about all anyone had on the
Speaker 1: allegations against John of God. The Montreal Gazette had a
Speaker 1: big laugh in two thousand and fifteen when John of
Speaker 1: God had an endoscopy which revealed a tumor and he
Speaker 1: had to undergo major surgery and chemotherapy to have it removed.
Speaker 1: When asked if this was hypocritical, John of God responded,
Speaker 1: what barbera cuts his own hair and went right back
Speaker 1: to fleecing thousands of people per year, which is just great, Like,
Speaker 1: all cure your cancer, But if I get cancer, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get some fucking chemo. Yeah that's I mean, look,
Speaker 1: he had an answer and the right answer ready to go.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, that is the right answer. You know
Speaker 1: what will cure your cancer. We are f d A
Speaker 1: backed to say that all all cancers are cured by
Speaker 1: whatever product and or service comes up next. So again,
Speaker 1: the f d A completely backs and supports this. And
Speaker 1: if they have a problem, they can come after me.
Speaker 1: Come on, you fucking FDA cowards. Bring it on, Bring
Speaker 1: it on anyway, here's healing. We're back, uh, And I
Speaker 1: am just waiting for the f d A to to
Speaker 1: to try and take me on. Let's do it, and
Speaker 1: come on, they'll take they'll take this cancer from your
Speaker 1: cold dead hands. Yeah yeah, fuck. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know who knows what's happening anymore. In September of
Speaker 1: two thous eighteen, a very brave Brazilian activist Sabrina Bittencourt
Speaker 1: went public with allegations from dozens of women against John
Speaker 1: of God. The blowback against her was immediate and severe.
Speaker 1: John was well connected in the Brazilian government as well
Speaker 1: as extremely popular. An avalanche of death threats forced Sabrina
Speaker 1: to flee her home country for Spain, one of John's
Speaker 1: victims was hounded into suicide by her own family, who
Speaker 1: are all adherents of the medium and members of the cult.
Speaker 1: The story did not disappear, though, because as the weeks
Speaker 1: went by, dozens and then hundreds of new women came
Speaker 1: forward with their own stories of sexual abuse and rape
Speaker 1: at the hands of John of God. By the time
Speaker 1: the three hundred allegation hit, the chief lawman and Goyas
Speaker 1: was forced to issue a preventative incarceration request against John
Speaker 1: of God. Initially, John expressed a desire to work with
Speaker 1: law enforcement and comply with the investigation. From a local
Speaker 1: news story, quote, I am grateful to God for still
Speaker 1: being here. I still a brother and God. I want
Speaker 1: to comply with Brazilian law. I am in its hands.
Speaker 1: Joel Didos is still alive, he told his followers when
Speaker 1: he left. Only ten minutes later, he told reporters that
Speaker 1: he was innocent of all accusations. The psychics appearance cause
Speaker 1: a visible uproar in the center. Some followers greeted him
Speaker 1: with applause, while others complained about the presence of reporters.
Speaker 1: Respect my father, one of the volunteers asked, now, I
Speaker 1: included that quote about that John of God coupemember saying
Speaker 1: respect my father, Uh, which is really because I think
Speaker 1: it's really interesting, and it's interesting because John's actual daughter
Speaker 1: accused him of sexual assault. Um. In January of two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, after three hundred other allegations go public, John
Speaker 1: of God's own daughter goes to the Brazilian magazine JA
Speaker 1: to announce, quote, under the pretense of mystical treatments, he
Speaker 1: abused and raped me between the ages of ten and fourteen.
Speaker 1: Oh God. She claims the abuse from John of God
Speaker 1: only stopped after one of his employees impregnated her. In
Speaker 1: response to this, John of God beat his own daughter
Speaker 1: so badly that she suffered a miscarriage, she told via
Speaker 1: my father is a monster. True. Now, Eventually more than
Speaker 1: six hundred women came forward to level accusations against John
Speaker 1: of God, like it is hard to overstand that. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's thousands, Like it's six hundred women came forward
Speaker 1: in a climate so dangerous, were like at least one
Speaker 1: of his victims was hounded to suicide. I suspect he
Speaker 1: is guilty of thousands of acts of sexual assault, but
Speaker 1: we know six hundred women leveled accusations. Rather than report
Speaker 1: to the police as he said he would, John of
Speaker 1: God went on the run withdrawing nine million dollars in
Speaker 1: cash in an attempt to flee the country, but he
Speaker 1: was unsuccessful in this and eventually had to turn himself in.
Speaker 1: Raids on his compound found millions of dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: as well as a large number of illegal firearms. Police
Speaker 1: who interrogated him started to report bizarre incidents, including their
Speaker 1: computer spontaneously typing the letters O O a bunch of times,
Speaker 1: the printer printing spontaneously, and a mini fridge exploding. These
Speaker 1: reports are almost certainly untrue. They come from tabloid sources,
Speaker 1: but there is a lot of evidence that sympathetic Brazilian
Speaker 1: police certainly wanted citizens to believe this was all going on.
Speaker 1: You know, we started this episode talking about like the
Speaker 1: police tend to be on these guys sides because they
Speaker 1: believe the bullshit. Yeah. Less than a month after making
Speaker 1: initial allegations, Sabrina Bittencourt released a bizarre six minute long
Speaker 1: video accusing John of Gott to having run a twenty
Speaker 1: year long human trafficking operation. She alleged that the colt
Speaker 1: Leader's spiritual hospital was nothing but a cover for a
Speaker 1: baby smuggling empire that sold infants to parents in the US, Australia,
Speaker 1: and Europe for up to fifty thou dollars a piece.
Speaker 1: Bittencourt alleged that John had established a network of isolated
Speaker 1: farms and minds, and that he would bribe poor girls
Speaker 1: aged fourteen to eighteen to move there and spend the
Speaker 1: next decade continuously pregnant. Once born, the babies were sold
Speaker 1: on the black market. After ten years, the birth mothers
Speaker 1: were executed to prevent any witnesses. Sabrina wrote quote or
Speaker 1: stated quote, hundreds of girls were enslaved over the years,
Speaker 1: lived on farms and goyas served as wombs to get
Speaker 1: pregnant for their babies to be sold. These girls were
Speaker 1: murdered after ten years of giving birth. We've got a
Speaker 1: number of testimonies. We've received reports from the adopted there's
Speaker 1: of their children that were sold for between twenty and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand in Europe, USA and Australia, as well as
Speaker 1: testimony from ex workers and local people who are tired
Speaker 1: of being complicited with John of God's Gang. Now, those
Speaker 1: are some wild ass allegations, and unfortunately, I don't know
Speaker 1: if any of this really happened. Sabrina was absolutely right
Speaker 1: about John of God's career of sexual abuse. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: women came for including his own daughter, like and they're
Speaker 1: they're like, there's so much testimony, it's very clear what happened.
Speaker 1: But the baby smuggling stuff, there's not hard evidence of this.
Speaker 1: An investigation is ongoing into it. Um and Sabrina Bittencourt
Speaker 1: like she got hounded out of her home and delusied
Speaker 1: in death threats and suffered a mental breakdown. She came
Speaker 1: out with these allegations days before committing suicide. Um, she
Speaker 1: was a sexual abuse survivor herself, clearly traumatized by that
Speaker 1: as well as the ocean of death rates. And this
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that her allegations weren't accurate, because there's actually
Speaker 1: a long history in Brazil that includes to the present
Speaker 1: day of like religion, like particularly Christian cults that have
Speaker 1: like farming communes, abducting people basically and forcing them into
Speaker 1: slavery to like grow plants and ship like stuff happens
Speaker 1: in Brazil. It's a big country and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of areas that are beyond the rule of law. This
Speaker 1: is not impossible, but it's really hard to know exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on, and you won't find any credible publications
Speaker 1: that have gone into the matter in detail, because really
Speaker 1: all we have are the allegations and the fact that
Speaker 1: they're being investigated, and unfortunately, it is unlikely we will
Speaker 1: ever know the truth because if Bitten Courts allegations are accurate,
Speaker 1: it is highly unlikely that the Boson Yarrow administration would
Speaker 1: allow the truth to get out because JayR. Boson Yarrow
Speaker 1: has connections to John of God and a lot of
Speaker 1: members of his political party were backers of John of God.
Speaker 1: And if John of God was operating a massive, multimillion
Speaker 1: dollar baby smuggling empire, he absolutely did it with the
Speaker 1: consent and help of powerful men in Brazil. And the
Speaker 1: truth is just not gonna get out. So this is
Speaker 1: not a satisfying ending um in that case, because I
Speaker 1: can't tell you what happened with his whole a be
Speaker 1: smuggling business. Pretty clearly raped a whole lot of people
Speaker 1: and it was a monster um. But there's just a
Speaker 1: lot that's unclear about this story that will be up
Speaker 1: in the air for years hopefully good investigations will kind
Speaker 1: of come to a more concrete conclusion about some of
Speaker 1: this stuff in the future. Um. I will say, though,
Speaker 1: while our story doesn't end in the most satisfying way possible,
Speaker 1: it does end with something that kind of resembles justice.
Speaker 1: In December two, nineteen, a judge and Goyas sentence John
Speaker 1: of God to nineteen years and four months in prison
Speaker 1: for the rapes of four different women. His lawyers are appealing,
Speaker 1: but John is incarcerated today and at age seventy seven,
Speaker 1: he is very likely to die in prison. So that's
Speaker 1: something Yeah, some thing I guess resembling justice. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you like squint, Yeah, it's okay. So Robert, as someone
Speaker 1: who spends a lot of time looking at men like this,
Speaker 1: is there ever a case where it's like it just
Speaker 1: feels like these like the patterns of this ship is
Speaker 1: always the same. And I guess it's maybe self selecting
Speaker 1: because it's the ship we hear about is is, But
Speaker 1: why did it always feels like it feels follows like
Speaker 1: such a similar blueprint. It's like, you know, like every
Speaker 1: cult feels the same. Yeah, I mean because they because
Speaker 1: they all operate on the same principle, like every cult
Speaker 1: feels the same in the way that every oil and
Speaker 1: gas company works broadly the same way because the same
Speaker 1: sort of tactics, the same sort of promises UM attract
Speaker 1: and work on the same sort of people, and the
Speaker 1: same kinds of folks are able to successfully carry out
Speaker 1: these griphs because being able to do the work that
Speaker 1: these kind of people do, like John of God isn't
Speaker 1: all that different from um, a guy like out On Hubbard,
Speaker 1: Like they all have more more more alike than different
Speaker 1: or all that different from Sarah Paula White Kane, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's spiritual advisor. They're all they just pick different kind
Speaker 1: of ways to do the same thing. Um, and some
Speaker 1: of them are more successful than others, and they're all
Speaker 1: differently successful. But it is it's always the same grift
Speaker 1: and it just leaves a huge amount of human shrapnel
Speaker 1: in its wake, which sucks. Yeah, Jesus Christ, this is man,
Speaker 1: Yeah man, this one's a rough story. Yeah yeah. And
Speaker 1: like I just I wish we knew more about the
Speaker 1: baby farming stuff that just doesn't seem to be solid information.
Speaker 1: And also, just like Sabrina Bittencourt, by the time she
Speaker 1: came up with those allegations, was like pretty broken, like
Speaker 1: like broken in the sense that like human, an ocean
Speaker 1: of hate from other people had like shattered her psyche. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is also tragic and um, you know what she
Speaker 1: did was very brave and she brought down this guy,
Speaker 1: but it cost her own life, which is really fucked up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sucking horrible. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, another successful
Speaker 1: episode behind the best. We really nailed it today, just
Speaker 1: grim ship. How often does it end in anything resembling justice? Can? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Not not all that often. You know, most of them
Speaker 1: don't wind up in prison. Yeah, I guess everyone dies.
Speaker 1: But still yeah, about fifteen percent of the time something
Speaker 1: that like resembles justice happens to these guys. Yeah, about
Speaker 1: of the time. I'll say, I feel like that's higher.
Speaker 1: It's probably maybe. Maybe. Look, if you, if you the fan,
Speaker 1: want to go through and run the numbers, please do Um,
Speaker 1: I hate I hate numbers and don't trust them. Don't
Speaker 1: do someone do run the stats, run the stats on
Speaker 1: the bastards. Yeah, let us know, run the stats or
Speaker 1: just listen to run the jewels. It's only one, only one,
Speaker 1: and you can't do both. Yeah. No, absolutely, that's the key,
Speaker 1: and you have anything you want to plug after that?
Speaker 1: Really just uplifting comment. God, I guess. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: this is probably the only podcast that I can comfortably
Speaker 1: say that, yo, is this racist. When we take some
Speaker 1: of the worst of you know, just situations and shipping
Speaker 1: the news people's like questions on racism, it's horrible. Often
Speaker 1: not horrible, horrible, but I can definitively say we're less
Speaker 1: depressing than this. So check it out. Yep. We you
Speaker 1: can find us on mind the Bastards dot com, where
Speaker 1: we will have the sources for this article or this episode.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter and I write okay,
Speaker 1: and I have a podcast called The Women's Ward. Check
Speaker 1: it out, The Women's Worries, uplifting and not it's hopeful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm horrible in this bullshit. So yep, damn man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. This is I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: I can't say it was fun, but it was certainly something. Yep,
Speaker 1: it was certainly something. So yep, we're done. I'm gonna stop. Yeah,