Kenya: pastor convicted of killing 190 children who starved to death

A court in Kenya has found pastor Mackenzie guilty of murdering 190 children. According to the BBC, he persuaded members of the cult he founded in 2003 to starve their children so that they would “meet Jesus”. The court also found 29 other cult leaders guilty of murder.

All the defendants argued that they had killed no one, since “nobody was forced to die.” They still face charges of terrorism, radicalisation and depriving children of an education. The cult banned all schooling and called modern medicine “evil”; Mackenzie also forbade women from wearing make-up or styling their hair, so they neglected their hair or shaved their heads.

More than 400 bodies in the Shakahola forest

What the pastor had preached only came to light in 2023, when more than 400 bodies were found in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest. The victims included not only children who had starved to death, but also people who had been strangled or beaten. “In every grave we found at least three bodies. Some of the remains belonged to children only a few weeks old,” said James, one of 17 local men hired to carry out the exhumations.

According to the workers, the children’s hands and feet had been tied and their bodies wrapped in sheets. “Once we found twelve children in a single grave. The bodies were stacked on top of each other like clothes,” he added. Many bodies remain unidentified, and in the indictment some victims are listed only as “unknown male child,” with the burial site and the date of discovery.

He lost all six of his children

Stephen Mwiti, 48, lost all six of his children to the cult, which his ex-wife had joined. “If I met pastor Mackenzie today, one of us would have to die. All six of my children died in the Shakahola forest. I found and buried only the remains of my son Samuel,” Mwiti said. His ex-wife is among the cult leaders found guilty on Monday.

The cult, which attracted thousands of followers, reached people’s homes through its own TV channel, Times TV, which broadcast Mackenzie’s sermons. It moved to the Shakahola forest after the church was shut down in 2019.

Among the followers was Peter Shukrani, 23, who had attended church with his mother since the age of eight. He fell ill in the forest, and his mother threw away all his medicine, believing only God could heal him. When local herders found the first bodies in March 2023, the authorities moved against the cult; Shukrani, who had by then been bedridden for several weeks, was rescued. “If I hadn’t been pulled out of the forest, I would have died,” he said, adding that he still loves the pastor and that nobody was forced to starve.

The pastor’s son Dan Mackenzie, who worked as a camera operator at the church, agrees with the verdict: “He was their leader, the one they looked up to. So he is a mass murderer.”

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz