In a small town in the Brazilian state of Goiás, João Teixeira de Faria spent decades building a worldwide reputation as a medium and faith healer.
He pulled off one hell of a scam. He was so good that he attracted the attention of none other than the queen of daytime TV and richest woman in America, Oprah Winfrey. In fact, millions of people make up an unofficial club of “if Oprah loves it, I do too!”
Remember her famous specials– Oprah’s favorite things? Ok, I will admit it, I was glued to the screen. I wasn’t really impressed with all the products, but there was just something about Oprah’s declarations that “this is what you need” or “this is the book you should read.” Somehow, she just commanded automatic trust– if Oprah said it, then it MUST be true. Most everyone was willing to play a blind game of “follow the leader” if Oprah was at the front of the line.
Fast forward to the woman I am now, and I could care less about Oprah and her favorite things. I stopped being so dazzled by Oprah when she built two schools for girls in South Africa with a pricetag of $40M. Sure, it sounds amazing. It sounds great. But guess what she didn’t do? Oprah didn’t build a school in Chicago! Oprah moved to Chicago in1984, and broadcast her show from there for 25 years. She knows first hand how dangerous Chicago is. They ranked seventh in the nation for homicides.
I won’t bore you with the whole “When Trump was President, crime was going down” speech because you already know that.
However, the SOS Private Security blog extrapolates some of the crime data for the windy city.
According to Governor J.B. Pritzker, Chicago’s crime rate is on a downward trend. However, the statistics don’t seem to agree with such an assessment.
It helps to consider the pre-George Floyd crime statistics to get a clear picture of the surging crime and murder rate. This volatile period stretched the police and other security services. Worse still, even the number of repowered murders, theft, felonies, and property crimes reported in 2022 was 33% higher than in 2019.
In 2022, major crime went up by 41% compared to 2021. 100 days into 2023, and it promises to be another worrying year for the city’s law-abiding citizens.
Current data shows a 61% rise in reported major crimes in March 2023 compared to the same period last year. In addition, it’s 97% higher than in 2021.
My point here is that Oprah’s judgment is clearly skewed.
She never even tried to make Chicago better, but she went to another continent and passed out her money like a bucket full of gumballs. Now, her judgment is even more shocking. But before we go into her endorsements of John of God, let’s keep in mind a few things.
Oprah helped pimp out girls for Harvey Weinstein.
As Page Six reported:
An aspiring actress says Harvey Weinstein used Oprah Winfrey and Naomi Campbell to dupe her into thinking he would help her with her career — only to use her for sex.
British actress Kadian Noble said Tuesday she was head-over-heels impressed when she first met Weinstein at an event in London because he was hanging out with model Campbell and had megastar Oprah “swinging off his arm.”
“I thought, obviously, this man has something amazing in store for me,” she said during a teary-eyed press conference in Manhattan to discuss the sex trafficking lawsuit she filed a day earlier against Weinstein in Manhattan federal court.
Instead, Weinstein used promises of career advancement to lure the actress to his hotel room in Cannes, France, where he forced himself on her, she said.
“I felt completely played,” she said.
Oprah has a lot of other secrets in her pocket.
Oprah Winfrey — who built a billion-dollar empire persuading everyone from celebs to average Joes to reveal the truth about themselves — is a big phony when it comes to her own past, an explosive new book charges.
Winfrey’s relationship with longtime “love” Stedman Graham, her reputed dirt-poor upbringing in rural Mississippi, her rumored lesbian crushes on women such as Diane Sawyer — all are stories she has manipulated for decades in the name of sensational ratings, according to writer Kitty Kelley’s latest unauthorized biography “Oprah.”
The much-anticipated book details how:
* Winfrey concocted stories about sexual abuse she suffered as a child — and grossly exaggerated the poverty she was brought up in.
* She went to great lengths to conceal her “lesbian affairs” — including hefty payoffs — and publicly attached herself to Graham to appear more normal to her audience of housewives.
* She lavished romantic gifts — including a diamond toe ring — on ABC talking head Diane Sawyer.
* Winfrey sold her body to earn extra money and has even described herself as a teen “prostitute.”
* She doesn’t know the true identity of her biological father.
* Her relationship with her own mother is so cold that Winfrey won’t even let the older woman have her phone number.
Funny thing about past, people love the sad stories.
Kevin Jackson once wrote:
From my personal perspective, people are often disappointed to learn that I was never a Democrat. They love the “conversion” stories. It isn’t bad enough that my mother died before my 5th birthday and my father was in prison for most of my life?
Back to Oprah, she knew the story of rags to riches plays well. Know anybody else like that with a funny name?
Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Miss., in 1954, and, the way she likes to tell it, she was so impoverished that she never had any new dresses or dolls and had to adopt two cockroaches as pets, naming them Melinda and Sandy.
But her family says that’s nonsense.
She may not have been well off, but Oprah was relatively “spoiled” as a little girl, her cousin said.
“Where Oprah got that nonsense about growing up in filth and roaches I have no idea,” said the relative, Katherine Carr Esters. “I’ve confronted her and asked, ‘Why do you tell such lies?’ Oprah told me, ‘That’s what people want to hear. The truth is boring.’ “
To Oprah’s credit, she’s turned her life around. But why the lies?
And here’s a part of her story that doesn’t play well with her disdain for men.
As a teen, Winfrey was a wild child, promiscuous to the point of prostitution, her relatives said.
The future star would steal from her mother’s purse, pawn her jewelry and even turn tricks. She was eventually sent to live in Nashville with Vernon Winfrey, who was her mother’s former lover and who is listed on her birth certificate as her father. He has been described as the domineering disciplinarian who set her straight.
Yes, a man got her life on the straight and narrow.
Yet, her judge of character has pushed her to choose some shady men in her life. Oprah’s personal spiritual healer, João de Deus or “John of God,” has been sentenced to an additional 99 years in prison after being found guilty of raping hundreds of women and young girls.
According to The People’s Voice:
Oprah Winfrey endorsed João de Deus on her talk show in 2012 after traveling all the way to Brazil to interview him, calling him “inspiring” and encouraging women to seek his help.
O Globo reported:
“João Teixeira de Faria, ‘João de Deus’, gained a following of faithful foreigners – who call him ‘John of God’ – when he appeared on a program by American presenter Oprah Winfrey, in 2012. Among his international fans, figures like former US president Bill Clinton, actress Shirley MacLaine and model Naomi Campbell.”
But his empire came crashing down in 2018, when a scandal of gigantic proportions broke, revealing that the medium had raped or abused hundreds of women and girls who had sought his ‘spiritual help’.
Conexão Política reported: “This Monday, the 10th, the medium, better known as João de Deus, was sentenced to an additional sentence of 99 years in prison for sexual crimes.“
John of God will spend the rest of his life behind bars, but the most disturbing allegations against him have been brushed under the carpet.
‘BABY TRAFFICKING OPERATION‘
An anti-child trafficking activist blew the whistle claiming John of God “ran a baby trafficking operation where children were then sold to childless couples.”
Sadly, It gets worse. Far, far worse.
This isn’t the first time allegations of this “healer’s” criminal activities have surfaced. In fact, the Daily Mail broke the story back in 2019:
“Activist Sabrina Bittencourt – whose investigations lead to his arrest – claims the celebrity medium ran a baby trafficking operation where children were ‘farmed’ in Brazil before being sold to childless couples around the world.
She alleges that young girls were held captive in remote farms where they were forced to produce babies – before being murdered after ten years of giving birth.”
Bittencourt spoke to women from three continents who claimed they bought Brazilian babies from John of God.
“These girls were murdered after 10 years of giving birth. We have got a number of testimonies.’
She added: ‘We have received reports from the adoptive mothers of their children that were sold for between $20,000 and $50,000 in Europe, USA and Australia, as well as testimony from ex-workers and local people who are tired of being complicit with John of God’s gang’.”
In a shocking – but hardly unexpected – turn of events, Sabrina Bittencourt was found to have ‘committed suicide’ while living in Spain under protection from death threats she was receiving.
The Sun reported:
“Sex abuse support group Victimas Unidas, which worked with Sabrina Bittencourt, said she had left a note explaining why she killed herself.
[…] Eldest son Gabriel Baum confirmed her death, writing on Facebook: “She took the last step so that we could live. They killed my mother.”
Before her death, Bittencourt said: “Hundreds of girls were enslaved over years, lived on farms in Goias, served as wombs to get pregnant, for their babies to be sold.” After she made her statement, MORE than 600 women came forward with their own stories of abuse! Yet, Oprah Winfrey hailed this man as an INSPIRATION. My stomach is literally churning, and I just want to know, does Oprah understand her culpability in all this?
Experts say when it comes to sexual assault, “rape is the most under-reported crime; 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police. Only 12% of child sexual abuse is reported to the authorities.”
This means there could be more than 1,600 victims here. Victims this man should have never had access to.
Oprah’s endorsement was one helluva perk that legitimized John of God. People blindly followed him because Oprah said so. They considered themselves lucky, blessed, and in awe of his presence. That is, until he pushed them through the gate and locked it behind them.
