A paedophile pretended to be a church missionary, pretending to help children, but instead, he took young boys who were being forced into trafficking and sexually harmed them.
Thomas Scheller lied about spreading the good news of Jesus in Kenya and instead sexually assaulted three young children, with the youngest being only 10 years old.
A 74-year-old man from Germany was caught filming and sending videos of abuse to other countries, as it was stated in the Milimani Law Courts.
Last month, he was put in jail for 81 years because he was found guilty of seven crimes. These crimes included hurting young boys, transporting children illegally, and having inappropriate material involving children.
Scheller said he was trying to help the kids and had permission from their moms, according to local news.
He said those parents were trying to make him look guilty and trying to hurt him and asked for mercy while in court.
The engineer who used to work committed very bad crimes in the city Kisumu, after running away from the police in the coastal town of Kilifi.
In March or April 2020, a man named Scheller sexually assaulted a 13-year-old boy in a poor area of Kisumu.
During that period, he also made two boys watch inappropriate videos.
Scheller was caught by the police in Nairobi, the capital city, while he was with one of the people he had harmed right outside the German Embassy.
He has been held since 2020 because the prosecution successfully argued that he might try to escape and should not be given temporary release.
The person who hurt children will probably stay in prison until they die since they would have to live for 155 years to complete their punishment.
Magistrate Carolyne Muthoni Njagi said: ‘The courts protect children’s rights and won’t just stand by while the wealthy visitors from the West and East, who pretend to be good in church, abuse Kenyan children. ‘
This is only one of many stories about Western people pretending to be Christians and hurting children in the continent.
The US missionary, Renee Bach, is well-known for being accused of running a charitable center in Uganda where over 100 children died.
The accusations were that Ms Bach pretended to be a doctor even though she didn’t have any medical training. These accusations led to a lawsuit that was resolved in July 2020.
She keeps saying that she didn’t do anything wrong, and her lawyer says that everyone involved thought it was best to reach an agreement.
The story will be shown in a new TV show called Savior Complex, which will start airing on September 26.
Andreana Prichard, a researcher from the University of Oklahoma, has looked into evangelical missions in Africa. She says that people in the Western world became overly fixated on African orphans back in the 1830s.
Many people want to help orphans and widows like the Bible says, but it can be controversial and complicated.
Dr Prichard, in an article for The Conversation, talked about a problem that started in 1890 regarding the ‘mission’.
She said that because there was a shortage of food, many children had to go to an orphanage run by the Church Missionary Society in Frere Town in Mombasa to ask for help.
When things got better and parents wanted to bring their children back home, missionaries refused because they were concerned they would lose people who converted to their religion and stop receiving donations for their work.
Kenya has started making big changes to replace privately-run orphanages with care provided by families.
The government, along with many others on the continent, is trying to stop the practice of putting children in institutions.
In 2019, Nic Hailey, who was the British ambassador to Kenya at that time, said that protecting the children of Kenya was the most important thing. It made him sad to see adults from the UK and other countries coming to Kenya with the intention of hurting children.