July 9, 2020 • 53 mins
Robert is joined again by Andrew Ti to continue discussing John of God.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we
talk about terrible people. And this is part two of
our series on John of God. Bastard is also Oprah
Umr and Susan Casey, the author of that terrible article.
So pull up a fine Chilean red. Get ready to
(00:24):
hear some more. Um, I have to this is this
is off topic, but I want to tell something. I
just ran across to my guest Andrew T before we
roll in the epode, Andrew, how are you doing today?
What's up? J O G Ready to hear about the
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
(00:46):
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
(01:16):
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
(01:36):
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,
(02:00):
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
(02:22):
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,
(02:42):
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
(03:04):
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
(03:25):
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
(03:50):
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.
(04:11):
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
(04:33):
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
(04:55):
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
(05:15):
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,
(05:39):
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
(06:03):
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
(06:27):
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
(06:48):
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,
(07:10):
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
(07:31):
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
(07:52):
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
(08:15):
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
(08:38):
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
(09:00):
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
(09:21):
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
(09:42):
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
(10:02):
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
(10:27):
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
(10:54):
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,
(11:17):
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
(11:38):
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
(11:58):
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
(12:20):
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
(12:40):
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
(13:04):
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?
(13:26):
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
(13:50):
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
(14:11):
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
(14:33):
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
(14:57):
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
(15:18):
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
(15:41):
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
(16:02):
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
(16:24):
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
(16:46):
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
(17:07):
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
(17:29):
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
(17:50):
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
(18:12):
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
(18:34):
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,
(18:56):
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
(19:17):
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
(19:37):
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
(20:00):
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
(20:24):
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.
(20:46):
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
(21:06):
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
(21:28):
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,
(21:54):
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
(22:14):
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.
(22:35):
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.
(22:58):
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.
(23:20):
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
(23:42):
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
(24:04):
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
(24:26):
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,
(24:48):
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
(25:08):
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
(25:30):
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
(25:52):
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
(26:16):
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
(26:37):
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
(26:58):
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,
(27:18):
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.
(27:39):
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,
(28:01):
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,
(28:22):
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.
(28:44):
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,
(29:07):
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
(29:27):
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,
(29:48):
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
(30:10):
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
(30:31):
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,
(30:55):
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
(31:16):
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
(31:36):
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
(31:58):
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
(32:19):
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
(32:40):
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
(33:01):
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.
(33:21):
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
(33:42):
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,
(34:05):
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
(34:27):
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
(34:50):
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.
(35:13):
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
(35:34):
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.
(35:56):
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
(36:17):
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
(36:38):
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
(37:01):
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,
(37:24):
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
(37:44):
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
(38:05):
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,
(38:25):
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
(38:48):
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
(39:09):
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
(39:32):
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
(39:53):
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
(40:14):
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
(40:35):
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,
(40:56):
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
(41:19):
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
(41:48):
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
(42:08):
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
(42:30):
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
(42:50):
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
(43:12):
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
(43:35):
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
(43:57):
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
(44:18):
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,
(44:40):
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
(45:00):
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
(45:21):
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
(45:41):
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
(46:02):
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
(46:23):
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
(46:46):
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
(47:09):
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,
(47:33):
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
(47:55):
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,
(48:18):
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
(48:39):
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
(49:04):
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
(49:26):
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
(49:47):
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
(50:08):
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
(50:28):
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,
(50:50):
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
(51:11):
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
(51:35):
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,
(52:00):
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
(52:22):
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.
(52:44):
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
(53:05):
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,
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we
talk about terrible people. And this is part two of
our series on John of God. Bastard is also Oprah
Umr and Susan Casey, the author of that terrible article.
So pull up a fine Chilean red. Get ready to
(00:24):
hear some more. Um, I have to this is this
is off topic, but I want to tell something. I
just ran across to my guest Andrew T before we
roll in the epode, Andrew, how are you doing today?
What's up? J O G Ready to hear about the
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
(00:46):
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
(01:16):
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
(01:36):
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,
(02:00):
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
(02:22):
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,
(02:42):
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
(03:04):
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
(03:25):
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
(03:50):
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.
(04:11):
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
(04:33):
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
(04:55):
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
(05:15):
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,
(05:39):
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
(06:03):
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
(06:27):
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
(06:48):
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,
(07:10):
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
(07:31):
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
(07:52):
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
(08:15):
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
(08:38):
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
(09:00):
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
(09:21):
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
(09:42):
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
(10:02):
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
(10:27):
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
(10:54):
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,
(11:17):
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
(11:38):
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
(11:58):
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
(12:20):
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
(12:40):
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
(13:04):
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?
(13:26):
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
(13:50):
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
(14:11):
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
(14:33):
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
(14:57):
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
(15:18):
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
(15:41):
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
(16:02):
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
(16:24):
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
(16:46):
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
(17:07):
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
(17:29):
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
(17:50):
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
(18:12):
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
(18:34):
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,
(18:56):
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
(19:17):
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
(19:37):
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
(20:00):
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
(20:24):
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.
(20:46):
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
(21:06):
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
(21:28):
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,
(21:54):
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
(22:14):
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.
(22:35):
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.
(22:58):
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.
(23:20):
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
(23:42):
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
(24:04):
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
(24:26):
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,
(24:48):
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
(25:08):
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
(25:30):
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
(25:52):
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
(26:16):
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
(26:37):
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
(26:58):
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,
(27:18):
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.
(27:39):
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,
(28:01):
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,
(28:22):
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.
(28:44):
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,
(29:07):
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
(29:27):
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,
(29:48):
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
(30:10):
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
(30:31):
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,
(30:55):
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
(31:16):
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
(31:36):
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
(31:58):
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
(32:19):
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
(32:40):
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
(33:01):
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.
(33:21):
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
(33:42):
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,
(34:05):
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
(34:27):
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
(34:50):
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.
(35:13):
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
(35:34):
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.
(35:56):
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
(36:17):
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
(36:38):
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
(37:01):
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,
(37:24):
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
(37:44):
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
(38:05):
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,
(38:25):
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
(38:48):
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
(39:09):
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
(39:32):
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
(39:53):
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
(40:14):
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
(40:35):
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,
(40:56):
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
(41:19):
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
(41:48):
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
(42:08):
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
(42:30):
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
(42:50):
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
(43:12):
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
(43:35):
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
(43:57):
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
(44:18):
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,
(44:40):
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
(45:00):
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
(45:21):
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
(45:41):
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
(46:02):
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
(46:23):
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
(46:46):
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
(47:09):
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,
(47:33):
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
(47:55):
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,
(48:18):
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
(48:39):
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
(49:04):
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
(49:26):
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
(49:47):
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
(50:08):
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
(50:28):
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,
(50:50):
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
(51:11):
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
(51:35):
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,
(52:00):
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
(52:22):
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.
(52:44):
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
(53:05):
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,
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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