Title supplied by cataloger. Delight Jewett was a 17 year-old high school student from Denver. John Hunt was a California millionaire and disciple of Father Divine's International Peace Mission cult in Harlem. Calling himself John the Revelator, he met 17-year-old Delight Jewett in December, 1936, and took her back to California without her parents' consent. Renaming her "Virgin Mary," he began sexual relations with her. Father Divine summoned the pair to New York, separated the couple and reprimanded Hunt. The Jewetts, finding their daughter brainwashed into believing she was literally the Virgin Mary, demanded compensation. After the movement's attorneys refused, the outraged Jewetts offered their story to William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal, a critic of the cult. After a manhunt, Hunt was charged, under the Mann Act, with taking a minor across state lines for "immoral purposes." The White-Slave Traffic Act, also known as the Mann Act, is a United States federal law, passed June 25, 1910. The act makes it a felony to engage in interstate or foreign commerce transport of "any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." Hunt was convicted and sentenced to three years and adopted a new name, the "Prodigal Son." Photograph caption dated June 22, 1937 reads "Photo shows the jury which was selected today to try Hunt and four co-defendants. Left to right, in front row, F. M. Lovell, Charles Spellman, Clarence C. Mullin, William J. Ladd, John H. Suter and Chester W. Sutton. In back are Joseph C. Snell, George W. Schweitzer, W. H. Draney, John F. Springer, Dewitt R. Lee and Clarence B. Hoadley. Seated at corner of the table in right foreground is Assistant U. S. Attorney Jack Lewis Powell, prosecutor. The jury was chosen after brief but sharp questioning."
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;22 x 33 cm. Photographic prints
Jewett, Delight--Trials, litigation, etc Hunt, John Wuest--Trials, litigation, etc United States.--Mann Act of 1910--Cases International Peace Mission Federal Building (Los Angeles, Calif. : 1908-1937) Lawyers--California--Los Angeles Jurors--California--Los Angeles Courthouses--California--Los Angeles Crime--California--Los Angeles Cults--United States Trials--California--Los Angeles Men--California--Los Angeles Trials (Sex crimes)--California--Los Angeles Courtrooms--California--Los Angeles Interiors--California--Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.) Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express photographs Herald-Examiner Collection photographs
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