Brazilian faith healer forced women to work as fertility slaves on ‘baby farms,’ activist says
Disgraced Brazilian “psychic surgeon” John of God has been accused of running “baby farms” where young women were held captive and forced to produce children – then killed when they were no longer fertile.
As if the allegations that the faith healer, who shot to fame after appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s show, sexually abused more than 600 women weren’t appalling enough, Brazilian activist Sabrina Bittencourt claims John of God (real name is Joao Teixeira de Faria) ran a baby-trafficking business for years on farms and mines he owned across Brazil.
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Young girls were allegedly paid to live at these remote sites, where they were forcibly impregnated again and again, their babies sold to childless couples around the world. After 10 years of the constant abuse, Bittencourt says, the girls were murdered.
“We have got a number of testimonies,” the activist reported, claiming she spoke to women from at least three continents who purchased Brazilian babies from Teixeira for between $19,600 and $52,250.
“In exchange for food, they were impregnated and their babies sold on the black market. Hundreds of girls were enslaved over years, lived on farms in Goias, served as wombs to get pregnant, for their babies to be sold,” Bittencourt said. Her organization, Coame, helps women report sexual assault by religious leaders.
Bittencourt’s investigations initially led to Teixeira’s shocking arrest last month. He led authorities on a week-long chase before surrendering himself, and his police interrogations were marked by bizarre, seemingly supernatural phenomena.
Teixeira has so far been charged with two counts of rape and two counts of statutory rape in the continuing investigation. Last week, prosecutors added new charges that he and his son, Sandro Teixeira de Oliveira, threatened a victim at gunpoint, then attempted to bribe her to withdraw a sexual abuse complaint.
Victims began coming forward after Dutch photographer Zahira Leeneke Maus revealed on Brazilian TV that Teixeira had manipulated her into sex acts. Nine Brazilian women shared similar stories anonymously, and the floodgates subsequently opened, with stories pouring forth from all over the world from women who came to the celebrated healer to be cured, blessed, or enlightened and were instead – they say – abused.
The women’s ages when they were assaulted ranged from nine to 67, investigators said, and the incidents occurred from the 1980s to present day. All the women, however, had a similar story: Teixeira had invited them for “private consultations” that devolved into sexual acts, ostensibly as part of their “cure.”
Even his daughter, Dalva Teixeira, claimed he raped and abused her for four years – till she became pregnant. Then, she said, he beat her so that she miscarried. Dalva denounced her father as a “monster” in an interview with Brazilian media.
Teixeira, who claims over 30 different entities working through him can cure cancer and other diseases, has maintained he is innocent of all charges.
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