João Teixeira de Faria, also known as John of God, self-proclaimed Brazilian medium and spiritual surgeon, has accumulated sentences exceeding 489 years in prison for systematic rapes and sexual abuses.
In September 2023, a Goiás court imposed an additional 118 years, six months, and 15 days on him for 17 cases of rape, rape by deception, and rape of vulnerable persons. He had already received 19 years and four months in December 2019 for four rapes, and in 2020 he added another 40 years for five additional cases.
The convictions are based on judicial evidence and testimonies that the courts considered credible. More than 600 women from Brazil and abroad, aged between 9 and 67 years, reported abuses committed between 1986 and 2017 at his center in Abadiânia.
Among them is his own daughter, Dalva Teixeira, who recounted abuses from the ages of 10 to 14 and a forced pregnancy that ended in abortion due to beatings.
The victims described an identical pattern: Faria would separate them during “private healing sessions,” turn off the lights, and sexually assault them under the excuse of transferring spiritual energy.
International media reported even more serious allegations of an alleged “baby farms” system: poor young women supposedly held and forced to gestate in order to sell newborns abroad.
Hellbound and Down 