A US national who came to Kenya as a missionary has been sentenced to 16 years in federal prison for sexually assaulting girls at an orphanage he ran in Bomet County.
Gregory Dow, 61, who hails from Lancaster arrived in Kenya in 2008 and opened the Dow Family Children’s Home near Boito, Bomet County.
He managed to convince a number of churches in the US to fund the orphanage.
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Acting U.S. Attorney Jenniffer Arbittier Williams who described the missionary as one from hell said that Dow’s crimes are nearly incomprehensible in their depravity.
“Under the guise of faith-based charity work benefiting orphaned children, Gregory Dow traveled halfway around the world to prey on incredibly vulnerable victims,” said the attorney while making the ruling.
According to the prosecution, Dow left Kenya in 2017 for the US when he learned that he was being investigated for sexual abuse allegations.
In a statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), he allegedly abused four girls, including two who were 11-years-old.
The officers even accused his wife of taking some victims to a local clinic in Bomet for birth control implants.
Michael Driscoll, a special agent with FBI in Philadelphia, described Dow as a wolf in a sheep’s clothing who tricked many that he was a man with a big heart.
“He presented himself as this big-hearted man who was living according to his faith, when all the while, he was sexually abusing girls placed in his care. These horrific crimes were a betrayal of entire community trust,” he said.
“If he thought he could get away with it because he was in a different country, if he thought no-one would care because his targets were black children, he has been proved wrong,” he added.
In June 2020- Dow pleaded guilty to the four-count charges.
