Brazilian faith healer facing sex charges turns himself in

BRAZILIAN police said last night that the faith healer accused of sexually abusing more than 300 women had turned himself in.

Joao Teixeira de Faria, who is known as Joao de Deus, had until 3pm local time Saturday to comply with an arrest warrant and was considered a fugitive.

Brazilian prosecutors had included his name on Interpol’s wanted list, though his lawyers were confident the medium would turn himself in.

The case came to light the previous Saturday when 13 women went on television to make sexual violence accusations against him. Prosecutors in the state of Goiás confirmed they had since received 355 reports of abuses committed by Mr Teixeira from women across Brazil and abroad.

Mr Teixeira has insisted that he is not guilty of any alleged abuse.

Among the accusers is his daughter, Dalva Teixeira, 49, who called her father a “monster” and alleged she was beaten and raped by the medium until she was 14. “He used to say that God didn’t exist, that he was God,” she told the Brazilian press.

Ms Teixeira claimed the abuse stopped when she became pregnant by one of her father’s employees and that the faith healer beat her and caused her to have a miscarriage.

“None of those women is lying,” she said, about those who have stepped forward and accused her father of abuse. “I know because I went through it, I suffered.”

Many of the reports of abuse are similar, involving unaccompanied women being invited to have private spiritual treatment sessions with Mr Teixeira, in which he allegedly forced the victims into sexual activity.

Mr Teixeira is known in Brazil and around the world for his supposed ability to perform spiritual “cures”.