{"id":1209,"date":"2025-06-22T08:35:47","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T08:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2025-06-22T08:35:47","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T08:35:47","slug":"1209","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/?p=1209","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A Kenyan evangelical pastor suspected of stealing children presented as &#8220;miracle babies&#8221;, the result of his prayers, was acquitted on Monday by a Nairobi court due to insufficient evidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/justce-01.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/justce-01.webp 1024w, https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/justce-01-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/justce-01-768x432.webp 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gilbert Deya, a former stonemason who moved to London in the 1990s, was accused of stealing five children between 1999 and 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Gilbert Deya, 86, was acquitted by Robison Ondieki, a magistrate in a Nairobi court, who ruled that the prosecution had not produced sufficient evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;The charges were fabricated and could not be brought before a court,&#8221; the reverend&#8217;s lawyer, John Swaka, told AFP, assuring the press that his client was &#8220;very happy&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gilbert Deya, who owns several churches, including in London, Liverpool and Nottingham, was extradited from Britain to Kenya in 2017 after a legal battle lasting almost 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The reverend and his wife Mary claimed that infertile or menopausal women could become pregnant in four months, without having sexual relations, thanks to their prayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the prosecution, the babies had in fact been stolen, most of them from the maternity ward of Pumwani Hospital in Nairobi, a poor suburb of the capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A predominantly Christian country in East Africa, Kenya is home to around &#8220;4,000 churches&#8221;, according to official figures, including those run by self-proclaimed pastors with no theological training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The discovery in April of the bodies of worshippers linked to a sect that practised starvation in order to &#8220;meet Jesus Christ&#8221; raised questions about the need for greater regulation of churches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nearly 400 bodies have so far been found in the Shakahola forest on the Kenyan coast. The sect&#8217;s leader and self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a 50-year-old former taxi driver, is facing terrorism charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Kenyan evangelical pastor suspected of stealing children presented as &#8220;miracle babies&#8221;, the result of his prayers, was acquitted on Monday by a Nairobi court due to insufficient evidence. Gilbert Deya, a former stonemason who moved to London in the 1990s, was accused of stealing five children between 1999 and 2004. But Gilbert Deya, 86, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallingtonjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}