For more than 40 years, spiritual healer Joao Teixeira de Faria drew people from all over the world to Abadiania, a small central Brazilian city, offering treatment for everything from depression to cancer.

His work was both praised – Oprah Winfrey once called him “inspiring” – and heavily scrutinized.

However, de Faria, who goes by the name “Joao de Deus,” or “John of God,” was arrested in December 2019 after 250 women, including his own daughter, came forward to allege abuse that ranged from groping to rape.

The ‘healer’ was convicted for the rapes of nine women and was sentenced to a total of 63 years and 4 months, meaning the 78 year old will die in prison.

Numerous people have come forward to say de Faria was involved in the selling of children and even used women to harvest children, getting them pregnant before killing them after their ‘ten year sell by date’ was over.

Oprah Winfrey, the US television celebrity and producer, visited Faria in 2013 to look into his “miracles” and shortly afterwards, they became friends and were pictured together in America.

Faria also became friends with former U.S. President Bill Clinton after he ‘healed’ him.

Brazilian activist Sabrina Bittencourt, whose investigations led to Teixeira’s arrest in December, said the celebrity medium ran a baby trafficking operation where children were “farmed” in Brazil before being sold to childless couples around the world.

Shockingly, she claims young girls were held captive in remote farms where they were forced to produce babies – before being murdered after 10 years of giving birth.

In a video, Bittencourt, whose organisation, Coame, helps women report sexual assault by religious leaders, said she has spoken to women from at least three continents, including Europe, who claimed they bought Brazilian babies from John of God for as much as £40,000.

And she claimed she has collected testimony from former members of Teixeira’s gang, which described how the scheme worked after they became “tired of being complicit” in his crimes.

Bittencourt, who now lives outside Brazil under the protection of international organisations after receiving death threats for her work, claimed Teixeira would offer money to poor girls aged 14 to 18 to go and live in mineral mines or farms he owns in the Brazilian states of Goias and Minas Gerais.

There they would become sex slaves at and be forced to get pregnant and give birth to their babies.

She claims: “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.

“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 we sold for between £15,000 and £40,000 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.”

Oprah Winfrey nor Bill Clinton ever commented on the arrest of de Faria.

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