Joliet Reporter Facing Child Porn Rap Duped Girl With Religious 'Fantasy World': Feds

A weekly newspaperman “created a fantasy world based in religion” to dupe an underage girl into posing for sex pictures he posted on a website in hopes of enticing “young boys to have sex with” her, according to federal court papers.

John Gabriel, 78, was charged in September 2013 with persuading, inducing and enticing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing child pornography. He was also charged with obstructing justice for allegedly destroying a desktop computer while FBI agents were raiding his house on Joliet’s far west side.

About the same time Gabriel was allegedly manufacturing child pornography in July 2012, his live-in lover, 35-year-old Margarita Hernandez, was setting up and indulging in a sex date with a teenage boy, police said. That youth is a friend of the son of one of Hernandez’s cousins, officials said. Gabriel was home with Hernandez at the time of the alleged sex date, police said. Hernandez’s case remains pending.

But according to papers filed in federal court, Hernandez may have been one of the patsies suckered by emails and letters supposedly penned by angels and priestesses, but really just written by Gabriel—the community newsman, not the angel.

Gabriel’s alleged victim received such an email, the court filing said. She “believed that an Angel, named Sarah Weatherby, was emailing her, and that she was selected to participate in a Program run by the Angels, the purpose of which was to save young boys from Satan.”

The girl was told to “listen closely to those things (Gabriel) tells you,” the filing said. “You can have a happy life and leave all the dirty nasty sinful things behind.”

She could accomplish this by having “sex with troubled young boys, under the age of 18,” the filing said.

“In addition,” it said, “according to Sarah, each time a participant had sex with a troubled boy, a wealthy benefactor would purchase guide dogs for the blind and fund children’s wings for hospitals.”

And if she did this enough, the girl would be able to work her way up to the rank of “priestess” the filing said. In fact, “the Level Seven Training Priestesses have sex with different guys and it is all permitted. They remain a spiritual virgin.”

Over the course of a month, the girl “received dozens of emails” supposedly sent by an angel, a priestess and “other Program participants,” the filing said, and was “ultimately convinced to join the Program as a Novata,” or entry level sex worker for God. The feds believe Gabriel was “masquerading” as the various authors of all the email.

The angel Sarah then sent the girl an email telling her she “needed to participate in a ceremony” before joining the program, the feds said, and this entailed Gabriel putting “his hands ‘all over (her) naked body’” to the point she was “to climax one or more times.”

Gabriel also allegedly told her “we have to do things that are very intimate. You will be naked for pictures, for energy massages, and you have to be comfortable to allow me to do what I am supposed to do. So you have confidence in me. Did Sarah explain how you and I are united and how you are united with Margarita?”

The girl was also provided with “various manuals,” including one how “energy is transferred by holding the genitals of the ‘blessed person,’” as well as by handholding or “gentle rubbing contact.”

After taking sexually explicit pictures of the girl, Gabriel put them online “in order to entice ‘troubled’ young boys into having sex with” her, the filing said.

“Indeed, one young boy was scheduled to have sex with (her) when (Gabriel’s) scheme was uncovered and stopped,” it said.

Gabriel also sent a letter, supposedly from a priestess named “Di,” to Hernandez way back in 2002, the filing said. It was written to “Priestess Margarita.”

“The Margarita Letter was discovered at (Gabriel’s) home during the execution of a search warrant,” the filing said.

According to the feds, the letter discussed Hernandez’s potential friendship with another woman and said the devil “calls her Princess Whore and he wants to call you Princess Anyone can F--- me. Can you believe it? He is so rotten.”

In a recorded phone call Gabriel made to Hernandez from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago after his arrest, the filing said, he “expressed concern that the letter would be used against Margarita in her criminal case, and he instructed Margarita to tell her attorneys that he … wrote the letter … in order to give advice to Margarita because, at that time, she was otherwise not taking his advice.”

Go take a look at our Facebook page.

And make sure to check out these other fantastic stories:

• Feces Left at Front Door of Tinley Park Apartment
• Chicago Woman Craps Out in Bid to Steal Sex Dice, Warming Lube and More From Orland Spencer’s: Cops
• Angry Orland Man Cuts Up Mom’s Face With Knife, Threatens to Slice Off Her Fingers: Cops