A Brazilian spiritual healer with a large Australian and New Zealander following has been sentenced to more than 19 years in jail for rape in the first of many cases of sex abuse against him.
Joao Teixeira de Faria, known as Joao de Deus or John of God, drew people from all over the world to the middle of Brazil, west of capital Brasilia, with promises of cures for everything from depression to cancer. He attended to as many as 10,000 patients per week.
Hundreds of women, including Faria's daughter, alleged the healer regularly engaged in abuse ranging from groping to rape during private sessions.
Professor Cristina Rocha, an anthropologist and director of the Religion and Society Research Cluster at the University of Western Sydney, studied Faria's followers for 10 years for her award-winning book John of God: The Globalisation of Brazilian Faith Healing.
She told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday the sentence may finally affect some of Faria's followers.
"All of this year, the tour guides have continued to take people to Abadiania. Some said [the allegations] were fake news or that the police in Brazil weren't to be trusted.
"The number of international tourists decreased, but guides continued to promote the town and the casa as a sacred place. They say there's an enormous crystal in the ground which gives energy to all the entities and that they are even stronger now."
Rocha had predicted in her book that some guides would adjust offerings to promote other Brazilian healers.
"The German guides are already doing that, they are taking people to another town nearby. But certainly, they will now have a bigger problem on their hands."
A believer rests on a trinity triangle where people leave notes with requests for "vibrations" at the clinic previously run by Brazilian self-declared spiritual healer Joao de Deus, or John of God.CREDIT:AGENCIA BRASIL
Faria held group séances in Sydney in 2014 when hundreds of people paid up to $795 for a three-day ticket.
That same year, Nine's 60 Minutes confronted him regarding a sexual assault complaint lodged in the US. Faria terminated the interview, then abused the reporter Michael Usher's translator answering "yes, your mother", when she asked him if he had abused other women.
Rafael Velasco, whose ex-wife Sabrina Bittencourt worked with victims to expose Faria until she took her own life while in hiding earlier this year, issued a statement saying it took a "titanic effort to stop [Faria's] influence" over victims and those fighting for them.
"We are grateful for the victims' courage... and the tireless work of good prosecutors in Goias and Sao Paulo," Velasco said, adding thanks to the United Victims Group operating out of Spain.
"It has been the worst year of our lives, but we continue beside the victims and promise that this is just the start."
He said it was but a small victory and his group COAME, which works with victims of spiritual leaders, would continue to advocate for them.
Lawyers for the 77-year-old Faria said they would appeal the decision.
