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Title
Delight Jewett
Alternative Title
Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection
Date Created and/or Issued
1937
Contributing Institution
Los Angeles Public Library
Collection
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Rights Information
Images available for reproduction and use. Please see the Ordering & Use page at http://tessa.lapl.org/OrderingUse.html for additional information.
Description
Title supplied by cataloger.; Photograph was edited for publication purposes.
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 23, 1937 reads "Miss Jewett is shown resting during a recess in her testimony at the trial of Hunt. Composedly she revealed secret after secret of the Father Divine harlem cult, of which Hunt is a wealthy disciple. Telling of her first visits to the cult mission in Denver, she said: 'It suddenly dawned on me that I was the Virgin Mary.' She said Hunt wired Father Divine 'he had another bird.'" Jewett is seated in a chair. A man can be seen in the background.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;31 x 24 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00106554
Herald Examiner Collection
HE box 6761
CARL0005345967
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/32095
Subject
Jewett, Delight
Jewett, Delight--Trials, litigation, etc
Hunt, John Wuest--Trials, litigation, etc
United States.--Mann Act of 1910--Cases
International Peace Mission
Victims of crimes--California--Los Angeles
Crime--California--Los Angeles
Cult members--California--Los Angeles
Cults--United States
Young women--California--Los Angeles
Men--California--Los Angeles
Trials (Sex crimes)--California--Los Angeles
Courtrooms--California--Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express photographs
Herald-Examiner Collection photographs

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