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 April 6, 1937 reads "Smiling and wearing a $400 fur coat bought for her by John Wuest Hunt, the man she accuses of betraying her in his Beverly Hills cult mansion after telling her she was a modern-day 'Virgin Mary,' Delight Jewett is shown when she appeared in New York for questioning on possible clues as to the whereabouts of Hunt." Jewett is show in a doorway, hands in her pockets.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;32 x 20 cm. Photographic prints
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--New York (State) Crime--New York (State) Cult members--New York (State) Cults--United States Young women--New York (State) Fur coats New York (State) Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express photographs Herald-Examiner Collection photographs
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