Instagram's fake guru

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Former Brazilian model, wellness influencer and spiritual life coach Kat Torres was an inspiration and a lifeline to women all over the world. More than a million people on Instagram followed her extraordinary career trajectory from extreme poverty in Brazil, to a European modelling career and a life of luxury in the US. But behind the perfectly curated posts is a story of witchcraft, sexual exploitation and human trafficking; a dark and secretive sorority that led to missing women and sent their families and the FBI on a desperate search to find them. After months of investigations, a team from BBC Eye and BBC News Brasil uncover a wellness empire built on half-truths and lies. For the documentary Hannah Price tells the story of her enslaved followers and the heavy price they paid. And for the first time - in a surreal confrontation behind the walls of a Brazilian prison - we hear from the self-proclaimed “guru” who exerted absolute control.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm entering a Brazilian prison. We've just gone through a small black door to come out the other side of looming walls topped with barbed wire.
0:14.2	The door locks behind us.
0:18.1	As we hand in our phones and passports, I hold my breath.
0:21.9	Inside is the person we've been investigating for the last nine months,
0:26.4	Cat Torres. Before, I'll describe myself as a model, as a guru, as a spiritual person or something like that.
0:35.0	Now I describe myself as a prisoner.
0:38.0	If you'd seen her life just a few years ago,
0:42.0	you wouldn't believe that this is where she'd end up.
0:45.6	I'm Hannah Price and this is Instagram's fake guru for the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:59.7	Anna was in her early 20s when she came across the Instagram account of Kat Torres.
1:01.8	She was immediately drawn in. I liked everything that she was posting.
1:04.0	I used to read all the taxes that she had.
1:07.0	Her page was mainly of pictures and long texts.
1:10.0	She seemed happy. She seemed healthy.
1:12.0	She seemed like she was in a stable relationship.
1:14.0	She seemed happy with her career, like she was happy in all areas.
1:18.0	It seemed like all boxes in life she ticked.
1:21.0	Cat Torres had grown up in a poor neighborhood of
1:23.8	Beleng in northern Brazil. She started modeling as a teenager and entered beauty
1:29.3	pageants. It wasn't long before her modeling career took off and she moved to the United States.
1:38.0	Soon she was traveling the world and partying with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio.
1:45.8	She posted her jet setting life on Instagram, quickly gaining more than a million followers.
	...

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