Gregory Dow, a 61-year-old US national has been handed a 16-year jail term by a US Federal court for defiling minors in Bomet County years ago.
Dow came to Kenya in 2008 as a missionary before he turned to preying on young girls at Dow Family Children’s Home orphanage in Boito, Bomet County.
Dow managed the orphanage which gave him an advantage when it came to sexually molesting the girls. He had lobbied for financial aid from churches in the US to find the orphanage.
Dow had in June 2020 pleaded guilty to the sexual assault charges.
During the ruling of the case, acting U.S. Attorney Jenniffer Arbittier Williams condemned Dow’s acts of depravity likening them to those from “hell”.
“Under the guise of faith-based charity work benefiting orphaned children, Gregory Dow traveled halfway around the world to prey on incredibly vulnerable victims,” she said according to People Daily.
The court heard that in his guilty feeling, he ran away from Kenya in 2017 and returned to the US upon learning that was being investigated on alleges molestation.
Investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) indicated that Dow who hails from Pennsylvania sexually abused four underage girls.
His wife according to FBI investigations was aware of this. She at time took some of the victims to a local health centre in Bomet to get birth control implants.
Philadephia-based FBI special agent Michael Driscol said that Dow’s acts betrayed the community which believed in his charity works.
Driscol said the sentencing serves Dow right.
“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.