*Trigger alert: Sexual abuse and cultic narcissistic predation is mentioned.
As someone who spent ten years researching my book Sacred Medicine, which comes out April 2022 with Sounds True, “John of God” (who clearly was not of God) was very much on my radar. Countless people had sent me testimonials reporting miracle cures performed by this psychic medium spiritist who allegedly channels “entities.” Sound kooky? I thought so, but stories of remarkable outcomes were all over the internet too. Even Oprah had platformed him- twice. I mean what bigger endorsement can you get?
My naive, curious researcher parts that wanted to believe in miracles tried several times to get me down to Brazil after being invited by a man in his twenties who had spent years down there after being diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 9 that was supposed to kill him but obviously didn’t after he spent months in the “current room,” treated frequently by the “healer.”
Perhaps by good luck or maybe by cosmic protection, my trip down there never happened. By the time I had done several years of my research and was seeing one dark, scary, unethical energy healer and shaman nightmare after another, I was skeptical and wary about what might be going on down there. After I heard rumors that he might be sexually abusing people, I just decided to drop the idea of going to Brazil all together. If he was raping vulnerable sick people, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him, even if he was curing cancer, which did seem to be happening sometimes, from what I could figure.
I did wind up using John of God as a cautionary tale in the chapter I wrote about The Shadow of Sacred Medicine, in which I disclosed some of the bystander trauma I experienced listening to second-hand accounts of the ways people had been harmed by so-called celebrity healers. The dozens of people whose careers I could have ruined by disclosing what I knew weighed heavy on my soul and I did lots of therapy sessions and talked to some reporters, off the record. Yet because none of it happened to me directly, I didn’t have enough proof to call the cops, and almost all of it was hearsay rather than my direct experience that could have given me the power to press charges and hold someone accountable.
Now, watching this very disturbing documentary about the serial sexual abuse, gangster-like behavior, and cultic dynamics of The Casa in Abadiania, I’m grateful I never went down there but feel absolutely devastated that so many hundreds of women got hurt and so many others got conned. I know lots of people personally who did visit Brazil or Omega in New York to see him and some of them expressed having a good experience, but clearly, way too many people had absolutely horrific experiences of abuse to justify any of it.
The most crushing part of the documentary is the ending, when after being sentenced to 63 years of jail time, John of God is back at The Casa with an ankle monitor, wearing an emerald ring, holding a scrapbook, and petting a cover photo of Oprah on O Magazine, staring into the camera with a “gotcha” look, like he got away with the abuse, sitting on his throne in the Casa, and Oprah had helped him. It’s dizzying to realize, as we all look back with our retrospectoscopes, that Oprah, the queen of female empowerment, was responsible for helping promote him to countless foreigners who trusted her discernment. The hardened look in his eyes made me queasy, the trauma these women endured made me cry, and the anger that flared through me made me want to scream with rage. Weirdly, I also felt sad hearing the stories of how John of God cried in prison so loud that his cellmates complained. Knowing what I know about trauma, it probably wasn’t from remorse or loss that he was crying. He probably has a very young part that relied on being adored by thousands of people, and without the adulation, a young exile was screaming. I know people get upset if you express even one bit of compassion for the perpetrator of abuse, and please don’t misunderstand. I have LOADS more compassion for the victims he hurt, and I’m furious about what he did. And I’m furious he is not getting punished more right now. It doesn’t make any of it okay, and obviously, I sympathize way more with the victims than with their abuser, but still, trauma is sad. Hurt people hurt people, and it’s sad.
Still, I’m pissed. HOW IS HE NOT IN JAIL??? I did not realize this until I watched the documentary. Last I heard was a New York Times article saying he was in jail and had been sentenced to spend the rest of his life there. Hearing that he’s back in the Casa left me outraged.
His crying, devastated victims, whose stories are sickening and hard to watch for anyone, much less empaths, were at home in lockdown while he was also home in lockdown. How is this justice, one of them asked, that his victims are on house arrest and so is he?
I’m so tired of trying to explain the nuance of how I see the world this year when we are reckoning with power, abuses of power, and how we’re going to hold accountable those who use power in abusive ways. We are wrestling with the #MeToo movement, #BlackLivesMatter, QAnon, the Capitol Insurrection, the narcissistic abuses of politicians, cultic spiritual leaders being called out on the Conspirituality podcast and elsewhere, and all the other ways we’re using and abusing power and hurting people. But let me try to summarize the nuance again, to explain what I see us doing so badly and how we might do it better as a culture, especially in the world of spirituality and healing.
1. We need to believe victims SOONER. Our system HAS to make it safe for those who are abused by narcissistic abusers to speak up, be protected, be believed, press charges, win their cases when there’s evidence that it happened, and at least get a moment of peace from feeling like the perpetrators of abuse were held accountable for the damage they cause. Since nobody can take away their pain or ever undo what was done, the least we can do is give them the satisfaction of justice. AND…
2. We need to teach vulnerable trauma survivors how to spot and avoid boundary wounded narcissistic people who use love bombing, narcissistic spell casting, and hooking them by making their young exiled parts feel special and chosen to groom their prey and lure them into abuse situations. AND…
3. We need to get trauma survivors who might be prey for cults treatment BEFORE they get into the cult if at all possible so they can stay safer. AND…
4. If we’re too late and those trauma survivors get victimized by cultic leaders, we need to get cutting-edge trauma therapies to victims of cultic narcissistic abuse in a scalable, affordable, compassionate, gentle, and effective way. Abusers should pay for this treatment, not victims. AND…
5. Once they are in jail or wherever the court systems have decided they need to be, we need to get narcissistic abusers treated for their traumas, rather than dehumanizing them, demonizing them, and casting them out of the wholeness of humanity by labeling them a monster. Narcissistic predation is a developmental trauma symptom, and all trauma deserves our compassion and needs to be treated with cutting-edge trauma therapies. Nobody should be dehumanized, labeled a monster, or exiled from the wholeness of humanity, not even narcissistic abusers. “No trauma survivor left behind” has been my motto this year. AND…
6. We need to hold people who blend with cultic narcissist parts accountable for the boundary violating abusive behavior they commit. Extending compassion and understanding that narcissistic abuse is a trauma symptom DOES NOT equate to letting anyone off the hook. AND…
7. We have a right to feel outraged and frightened when someone is violating our boundaries or the boundaries of other vulnerable people who need to be protected. Anger and fear are not something to be suppressed or spiritually bypassed. All emotions are our friends and can help us have more emotional intelligence. Because cultic narcissistic abusers USE spiritual bypassing as their tool for getting off the hook of accountability for their bad behavior, we need to stop valorizing, publishing, and spreading the teachings of spiritually bypassing teachers. AND…
8. People who abuse their power, especially when they abuse spiritual power in the name of healing, need to feel appropriate shame for the harm they cause others. Shame is not a bad feeling; it’s a necessary feeling. Being shameless is not a pro-social way to be part of a community. You’re SUPPOSED to feel bad when you violate someone else’s boundaries or participate in platforming someone who does! And that painful feeling is SUPPOSED to motivate you to stop doing the bad thing, confess to the crime, apologize, feel regret and remorse, try to initiate repair, make any amends you can make, and accept responsibility for the harm you’ve done by surrendering to however you are held accountable. AND…
9. Those who unwittingly and innocently platform abusers ALSO need to be held accountable for how we help perpetuate cultic narcissistic abuse and predation. Publishers, TV media presences, online influencers, podcasters, journalists, writers, bloggers, …we are ALL complicit in how this goes down. We all make mistakes. I’ve certainly been guilty of platforming some nut jobs in the past when my own young exiled parts got lured into their web of narcissistic spell casting and love bombing before I got into therapy after my mother died in...