Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

This is the story of John of God, a faith healer from Brazil

This is your fix. I am your host, Stasi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Stephen, because he's so evil. I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone base consequences. It's intoxicating.

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Hurry. This deal for 149 or less is like your phone at 1%. It's about to power down. Limit a time offer for new clients on federal returns locations only, terms of jackson,hoe.com slash 149. So this woman, she's losing her eyesight, and she'll do anything to get it back. So one day, she hears about this famous spiritual faith healer in Brazil, and she thinks

maybe he can heal her eyes. So she travels to Brazil with some friends, and they get there, and she meets this faith healer, and she has a session with him, and he has her sit down in a chair, and he tilts her head back, and then he pulls out a scalpel, and he starts cutting right into her eye. Now the woman, let's call her mother-in-law because she's my actual mother-in-law. But we'll get to her in a second. First, let's talk about the faith healer. So the faith healer, his name's John of God. And this dude claims that his God or whoever will heal people through him if he like does his hocus pocus and touches them. Of course he has no formal training in medicine. He's never been to med school. In fact, he dropped out of elementary school in the second grade.

But regardless, he considers himself a healer. And one day, he just decided to be a medical. He's to travel around Brazil and tell people, hey, look, I can heal you. And people fall for it. In fact, they're really into it. And over time, he slowly builds a following. And his following becomes so big that he eventually builds a spiritual healing center in the middle of this small town to accommodate all of his visitors. And there, John of God becomes known for performing what he calls psychic surgeries,

which is exactly what it sounds like. He uses no anesthesia, no sterilization, and he does these medical techniques on people that just don't make any damn sense. Like he shoves surgical forceps up people's noses to heal them. Or he'll scrape the white of someone's eyeball with a scalpel in order to heal them. It's weird. Like someone will come in with back pain and he'll be like, let's scrape your eye with a scalpel. That'll heal you. But anyway, he claims this works.

He claims that he's cured people's cancer. He claims that he's healed multiple sclerosis. he claims that he's helped people walk who couldn't previously walk. And while he's doing all this, he allegedly doesn't take any payment for all these healings. But he does, of course, accept donations. And he sells things to his followers, like special healing pills that are just placebo. And he also sells, and I'm not making this up, bottled holy water. And so by doing all this, John is starting to get really popular in Brazil.

In fact, he gets so popular that ABC notices and they do a one-hour special. on him. And they treat him not as if he's a con man, which he is, but they treat him as if he's actually healing people. And specifically on this special, they interview a woman named Lisa Melman. And Lisa Melman, on this show, she gets on camera and she loudly declares that she has breast cancer, but that she's going to quit all her chemo and all her traditional cancer treatment, and instead, she is only going to let John of God treat her. I don't know, I guess he's going to stick forceps up her nose and that's going to cure her breast cancer. Oh, but it gets worse. A few years later, after the ABC special, someone very influential learns about John of God,

Oprah. And Oprah decides she's going to investigate and she's going to see herself if any of this is real. So she travels to Brazil and she spends a bunch of time with him. And she dedicates several episodes of her very popular TV show to praising him and his work and all these people he's allegedly healed. She even has Lisa Melman come on one of those episodes. And miraculously, Lisa claims that her breast cancer is now gone. She says her sessions with John of God cured her. And Oprah and her audience, they applaud this. But then, two years later, sadly, Lisa Melman dies.

It turns out her breast cancer hadn't actually been cured. She just thought it had because that's what John of God told her. In fact, when she stopped her treatment, her cancer got progressively worse. And she was apparently in a lot of pain when she died. Of course, Oprah never gets on TV and mentions that part. Regardless, the damage has already been done. Oprah has endorsed John of God on her show twice and exposed him to an international audience.

And from there, his business just explodes. People are flying in from all over the world, trying to get healed by him. At this point, at his spiritual healing center, he's healing over 10,000 people a month. And he's making bank. He's getting tons of donations. He's selling trinkets and bottled holy water.

and those placebo pills left and right, and he's making more money than he's ever made. Allegedly, he's making over $14 million a year just on those pills alone. But then, in a weird twist, at some point, John of God gets diagnosed with stomach cancer himself. And so does he use his magical spiritual healing powers to heal his stomach cancer? No, of course not. He goes to a regular-ass doctor, and he gets normal treatment, and he gets surgery, in a normal hospital, and he does five months of chemo like anyone else who would have stomach cancer. And of course, he recovers in like a year. And then he initially denies to everyone that

that happened, because I guess him using traditional medicine is bad for his business. So anyway, my mother-in-law hears about this guy, and she wants to travel to Brazil to see him. See, my mother in-law, she has an eye disorder called macular degeneration. And unfortunately, every year, she loses more and more of her vision. And she's lost most of it at this point. And she feels like, hey, maybe this John of God guy can help bring her eyesight back. And she's not dumb, she's not gullible. She's just desperate for a cure. So she comes to me and my wife and she tells us that she's going to Brazil. And me and my wife are like, oh, please don't. You know, we're worried about what could happen to you. And this guy is obviously a fraud and a turd for telling

people he can heal them. But unfortunately, she doesn't listen to us. She'll do anything to fix her eyes. So she goes to Brazil and she meets him. And she has a session with him and he sits her down in a chair and he tilts her head back or whatever, and he pulls out a scalpel and he does the thing where he scrapes the white of her eye with that scalpel. He then has her put a cover over that eye, and he tells her that in a few days she can take that cover off and her vision will be healed, somehow in both eyes. Meanwhile, me and my wife are there in the U.S. and we're just waiting, waiting to see that when that cover comes off if her vision is actually healed. Now this is where the story goes off the rails. You aren't ready for this. Around this,

Around this same time, a Dutch woman named Sahira, she's struggling with some mental trauma. And she sees this guy on Oprah's TV show, this guy named John of God, who claims he can heal people. So she's like, hey, maybe he can help heal my mental trauma. So she flies to Brazil and she shows up to the spiritual healing center, and she waits in line and she sees him a couple of different times. One of those times she sees him, something exciting happens. John of God offers her a private consultation. And she's super excited. So she waits until everyone's gone and then he invites her into his office.

And while she's there, he takes her into the bathroom and he makes her hand touch him inappropriately. And afterwards, she's like, that was weird. And like, I don't know, maybe that's just part of the healing process. So she goes back later for another private session with him. And this time, when they're alone, he takes her into the bathroom again and he straight up SAs her, like with a hard R. And here's the thing. The mental trauma that Sahira went to see him for was

specifically sexual trauma. So she went to see him and told him about her sexual trauma and his response was to essay her. And so poor Zahira doesn't know what to do. I mean she feels violated and sick to her stomach and she wants to tell someone but at the same time she believes this man is actually healing so many people. So she decides to not tell anyone and she buries it deep down with all her other sexual trauma. Until four years later, the Me Too movement happens. And Zahira finally finds out she's not alone. So she posts about her experience with John of God on Facebook. And then she gets invited onto a Brazilian TV show to talk about it. And there, on that show, she meets a dozen other women, all who say that

John of God essayed them too. And this TV show airs, and suddenly all of Brazil knows about these accusations. And everyone's talking about it. And bam, more women come forward. And so in In response, the public prosecutor's office for the state, they're getting tons of accusations from a lot of different women. So they set up a hotline in an email address, specifically to receive all of these accusations that they're getting about John of God. And in the first day, that hotline goes live. Nearly 200 women come forward saying John of God essayed them.

And then in the weeks that follow, even more women come forward. And eventually that number of women who claimed that John of God essayed them is over 600. And of course, John of God denies this. He claims that all 600 of these women are lying. But then his own daughter comes forward. And she claims that he had essayed her too. From when she was the age of 9 to 14, he would tell her that he was healing her, but instead he would essay her. And she said that he finally stopped essaying her when she was 14, because that's when she got pregnant,

by another man. And when he found out that she was pregnant by another man, he beat her so hard that she lost the baby. In fact, his daughter said, and I quote, my father is a monster. So anyway, all of this becomes public. And police are like, all right, it's time to get him, and they issue an arrest warrant for him. But John of God, he ain't going out easy. He immediately withdraws $9 million from his various bank accounts. And he goes on the run and no one can find He's just hiding out somewhere, like he is gone. But about a week later, I guess the pressure is just too much for him. Like, he knows he's fucked.

And he turns himself in. And they throw him in jail. Here's his mugshot. And eventually, he goes to trial, he's found guilty, and he's sentenced to a grand total of 489 years in prison. Good for him. And okay, so at this point, I know what you're thinking. You're like, Ray, did he do anything horrible like that with your mother-in-law while she was there?

First of all, let me just say none of that essay stuff was public when she went to visit. So none of us knew what had been going on. And while she was there, lucky for her, she said she met him in a room full of people, there were no private sessions. So no, nothing inappropriate happened with her. But it's also worth noting that she eventually took her eye cover off. And so, did John of God end up healing her eyesight? No, he did not. Shocker.

Shout out to Brazil.