Really, he should have been charged years ago, and almost was. The current charges I think we should credit the Me Too movement. Long, LONG overdue. From 2005.
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https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Primetime/story?id=482292&page=1....It's against the law to practice medicine without a license in Brazil. "John of God" has been charged, fined and even
jailed briefly. He keeps on performing surgeries, saying it's the entities, not him, at work.
About the surgeries, he said: "I don't do that. God and the spirits do that." He says even looking at the videotapes of the surgeries makes him queasy.
He says he doesn't even remember the experience. "I am unconscious," he told "Primetime Live's" John Quiñones. He likened his state to being asleep.
Challenged over the propriety of these operations, João answered, "Bring your scientists here, bring the doctors, bring them here. There is no magic going on. Just the power of God."
The Darker Side
Some people say the healings are just a front -- a way to make John of God rich.
Even though he charges no fee for treatment, João appears to be a wealthy man.
He owns a cattle ranch just down the road from where he sees patients -- more than 1,000 acres.When Quiñones pointed out to João that his town has become a tourist beacon with thousands coming to spend money for herbs and other items, he looked hurt. His eyes turned red and watered.
He said he has money but he spends it to pay for food and education for the poor. "I have cattle, but that's not enough to keep the casa," he said.
Yet, there are also rumors that John of God has a much darker side.
Juliana Almeida Franca, a district attorney who has investigated John of God, says he sent her death threats -- delivered by a relative. João denies this.
João has also been accused of taking advantage of a woman who came to be healed. "There is a lot of jealousy. People talk. What dictates is the conscience toward God," he answered.
He insisted his healings are legitimate. "You can fool the people for one to two years. But you cannot fool people for 45 years," he said....
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https://web.randi.org/swift/no-healing-miracles-found-in-john-of-god-follow-up-investigation....reporter Michael Usher revealed that
a woman declared as cured of breast cancer by a spirit entity channeled by João died in 2003. A woman in a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis who, in the 1998 report said she visited to João with the expectation of walking again didn’t feel any effect, is still in a wheelchair, and her condition deteriorated. Her trip to the Casa cost $5,000. Usher said that none of the other people [forty Australians] who made the pilgrimage that Hayes joined for investigation improved. Usher’s report mentioned that some of the thousands in João’s audience three days per week hope to receive “spiritual surgery” from him. These
practices such as inserting scissors (or forceps) deep into a nose and scraping an eye without an anesthetic have been shown in previous stories about João. I was disappointed that Usher did not point out that
James Randi and Joe Nickell have described these procedures as old carnival tricks.João is also shown making various skin incisions without anesthetic or sterile procedure.
“…modern medical world could not condone this behavior in any way whatsoever,” said emergency medicine specialist Dr. David Rosengren in an extended interview.
Usher reported:
Meeting John [de] Faria is free, but he often prescribes visits to these
crystal beds [shown with colored lights shining on them]. At $25 a session, they earn him around $1.8 million a year. Then there’s the
blessed water, a dollar a bottle. There’s a gift shop and next door to that, a pharmacy. It sells one thing:
blessed herbal pills, only available by a John of God prescription apparently. They’re $25 a bottle and would make Mr. Faria about $40,000 a day. That’s more than $14 million a year.
(An Australian dollar is currently valued at $.88 American.)
Usher noted, as did Nickell, the
pills contain nothing more than passionflower. In his book The Honest Herbal, Varro Tyler wrote that the herb is reputed to have sedative effects and has been used in sedative products in Europe, but in 1978, the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibited its use in over-the-counter sedative preparations because it had not been proven safe and effective.
According to Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, passionflower has GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status for use in foods in the US, is “possibly safe when used orally and appropriately for short-term medicinal purposes,” “possibly unsafe when used in excessive amounts,” but unsafe when used orally during pregnancy since“…passionflower constituents show evidence of uterine stimulation.” The database suggests its possibly effective for adjustment disorder with anxious mood, anxiety, and opiate withdrawal, but
it “can cause dizziness, confusion, sedation, and ataxia” and there are some reports of more severe side effects including vasculitis and altered consciousness. A 34-year-old woman required hospitalization for IV hydration and cardiac monitoring following use of passionflower for therapeutic purposes. Passionflower received a moderate rating for interaction with anti-hypertensive and depressant drugs.
Part 2 of “John of God” Report
In Part 2 of his report, Usher stated that
there were two deaths in recent years at the Casa that warranted investigations, but no one was charged. He also reported that
in 2010, when João visited Sedona, Arizona, the police department investigated him because a woman said he took her hands and placed them on his genitals; João also tried to pull down her skirt. The case never went to court; one of his associates encouraged the woman to drop the allegations.Usher attempted to interview João, but the exchange became testy after Usher asked if João is more about money than miracles and if he ever sexually assaulted his followers. The report shows that João walked away, responded sarcastically to the interpreter following him that he sexually assaulted her mother, and returned to the interview insisting to see what has been recorded. He does not come off as godly in this investigation.
The Primetime Investigation and John Quiñones
....In 2004, medical writer Clare Bowerman wrote in Skeptic magazine:
Better investigative features do more than hang an argument between opposing views. They consider the ordering of these views carefully, and seek to position and frame information so that readers can understand the merit of each viewpoint.
In reporting on João Teixeira de Faria, Oprah and Quiñones selected and framed information to encourage the wishful thinking that God and spirits use an uneducated man as a conduit for supernatural healing.... -----------
https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/the-right-chemistry-brazilian-healer-john-of-god-leads-cancer-patients-by-the-nose....in 2015 John of God complained of a pain in the stomach to his cardiologist. Yes,
the medium who claims wondrous healing powers has a cardiologist who without fanfare years earlier had implanted three stents in John’s narrowed arteries. Now he sent his patient for
an endoscopy that revealed a tumour. A 10-hour surgery, not the spiritual variety, was followed by extensive chemotherapy. A year later, John appears to be well, cured not by mumbo jumbo, but by modern surgery and drugs. No problem affording the treatment. John is wealthy from donations and sales of blessed water and magic triangles.
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https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/john-of-god-miracle-worker-or-charlatan-20141002-10jl7q.html....eight crystal beds at the casa that are rented out on high rotation (for $60 an hour), as well as a gift shop selling all manner of John of God-branded merchandise:
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
pendants, postcards and travel pillows, even glow-in-the-dark John of God wall stickers.
Both the gift shop and cafe also do a brisk trade in
water that has been "blessed by the Entity". People at the casa treat the "Blessed Water" like nitroglycerine. "Don't drink it all at once!" Jana Tsu-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 10-litre jugs of the stuff to take home in her luggage.
Then, of course, there is the "pharmacy", where patients buy their healing herbs. I had assumed that the pharmacy would stock a range of different herbs to treat a range of different conditions. But no, there is only one herb for sale here: passiflora, the flower of the passionfruit plant. When I ask 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.
Virtually all of the approximately
2000 people João sees daily receive a prescription for herbs. Some buy $50 worth, others as little as $10. The average purchase appears to be about $20, which would account for $40,000 a day, in herb sales alone.
Coppola now seems distinctly lukewarm on the prospect of my interview with João, who didn't like "my energy". (I'd apparently moved too fast around him, which had "disrupted his field".) This is a shame, since I would like to ask about
allegations I have read that João has sexually abused female staff at the casa and misappropriated donated funds meant for building a soup kitchen to renovate his own home.
Instead, Coppola arranges for me to speak to former patients, casa regulars who have been cured of various cancers, a stroke, a broken spine; one woman was made to walk again, despite the fact she has no kneecaps. (She insists I touch her knees, which are like sacs of jelly.) These people all seem sane and relatively sensible, but the evangelism of their cumulative testimonies produces in me something akin to "miracle fatigue": if one more person tells me about their amazing recovery, I'll kill them.
And so I take a walk around town. About 7000 people live in Abadiânia, mainly engaged in farming and small business; there are also three brick factories, which pump out sooty, black smoke all day long. But the biggest industry by far is Medium João. There are no less than
72 pousadas (or hotels) here, all catering to casa pilgrims, most of whom come on two-week tours arranged through booking agents. These tours cost many thousands of dollars, and must be approved by João, or rather, The Entity. (There are rumours that he also demands a percentage from the tour operators, but Coppola denies this: "Medium
João owns farms and some mines. He doesn't need more money.")
It soon becomes apparent just how closely
the town has been moulded in João/The Entity's image. Photos of him are everywhere: on street poles, in the pousadas 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," one 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 casa staff member told me that before building a house here, she ran the plans past The Entity.
There are now
about 60 expats living in town: Americans, English, Dutch, Australians. The demand has forced up the price of land considerably, yet the town itself remains singularly unattractive. "All the world has an anus, and this country's anus is Abadiânia," says Australian expat Robert Pellegrino-Estrich. "It's a craphole." As the author of The Miracle Man, Pellegrino-Estrich has done more than anyone to put John of God on the map. Born in Bowral in NSW, the 76-year-old is a former jewellery shop owner, air traffic controller and reiki master, but now works full-time organising tours to Abadiânia, where he owns four villas and two houses. "I first met John of God in 1995, when I came here with my wife. I remember him telling me, 'Robert, you will write a book that brings the whole world to Abadiânia.' And so I did."
Talk turns to the sexual assault allegations against João. "I've never seen any evidence of that," says Pellegrino-Estrich. "But who knows? There are two different things: João, the Entity, and João, the man. A man is a man: we have impulses, right?"
....I start by asking João how the Entities come to him ("I surrender myself to the highest being, and then the work happens") and how sticking forceps up someone's nose can cure cancer ("Anything is possible with the power of God"). I then mention the sexual abuse allegations. When Coppola translates my question, João looks up, frowns, and says he is closing the interview. "I thought you came to talk about me," João says. "Not other people." He then tells Coppola he wants to rest.
Apologising, I squeeze in one more question, about the allegation that he diverted funds that were meant to go toward a soup kitchen into renovating his own home. This does not go down well. João begins a long rant, about how he has been a successful farmer and businessman, that he has worked for 50 years, that he is not a thief; quite to the contrary, the person who made that allegation is a thief, a vagabond and a bandit. He says he will show me his tax receipts and that he wants to see mine, too. Then he walks out, shouting, and does not return....
