End-month news, April 2025
Jim Harries, jimoharries@gmail.com
Dear Friends,
You will know, that on 26th March, a team of Kenyans, mostly police officers and some government officials, did a kind of ‘sting’ operation on me at my rural home in Kenya. They had been sent by the UK, on suspicion that I was abusing, grooming, and trafficking children. They questioned us, took statements, talked to the children, and continued their investigation up to Easter. They took my phone, computer, and back-up drives. They asked me to leave my home. 10 days later, all the kids I had been looking after were dispersed to their relatives. Everyone vacated my home on Monday 4th April.
How things looked, around 18th April
I was recently feeling sorry for myself. I am really in a pickle! Despite all good motives, and 28 years of very successfully looking after an average of about 10 orphan children here in Kenya, I am now told that I was illegally running a children’s home! This, it seems, has consequences. The potential consequences seem very dire. I have been under criminal investigation, initiated from the UK – can you believe it for a missionary!! Who knows what trials are around the corner.
One thing I am very glad of is that I retained 100% integrity in my relationship with the children. I lived and expressed unwavering fatherly love to them for 28 years, right up to the point at which the police sent from the UK came to investigate my living circumstances. So the kids know that our subsequent separation was neither my preference or my choice, but mandated by the British government. My kids never had to doubt my unwavering sincere concern for them up to this point. This integrity in some ways cost me dearly, and is still costing me. It arose from my conviction that the well-being of the children in my care should be paramount. (It would have been very different if I had tried to back-off from them so as to follow UK safeguarding regulations, while they were ignorant of their nature, and of how seriously Brits are expected to take them, even should they be living in an African community and village 5000 miles away from British shores. I believe I would have done much more damage to the kids and to everyone else, had I attempted to follow British safeguarding rules, from my village home, in which I was living life much ‘as-if’ a local person!)
I have subsequently regularly prayed for the sick in our Coptic hospital. There are often a wide variety of sick people of different stripes. On this particular occasion and in the male and female wards that I visited, many seemed to be serious cases. Some described their ailments to me as I asked them what I could pray for them about. ‘I eat, but the food doesn’t go in’, was one. ‘My leg won’t heal’, was another. Some were sleeping, or too far gone, to respond to such a question. I prayed for them all. And as I prayed, I reflected; the human condition is terminal. OK, my situation is in a sense particularly alarming, in a foreign land, in a ‘poor’ community, as a total stranger, now I’m accused of being a criminal, because I have been looking after children … ! But, then again, others have terminal cancer, others eat, but the food doesn’t go in. Others are in my kind of position, and are not part of a loving community that cares for them as I am. And so one could go on. We should give thanks to God always for all things.
Two paths are laid out before me, as means of responding to allegations arising from the current investigation. (Locally, these seem to centre on the legality, and ‘abusiveness’, of how I have looked after children in my home for the last 28 years.)
- Flee, get to the UK, face up to the source of the allegations, someone in the UK who has reported me to the police.
- Stay in Kenya, let the Kenyan police do what they want with me. Survive if I can. Very likely, have to face accusations in court, pay expensive costs, possibly get a jail term, and more.
I have received much conflicting advice! It would be easier if everyone said the same thing. Some say ‘get out of Kenya at all costs to save your life’. Others say ‘stay, if you flee, you will be conceding guilt, and not be able to come back again. Trust in God and take the music here’. Who to believe? What to do?
In case I am arrested, we are coordinating some addresses of people who can be called upon to assist through making contributions to any demand for bail. If you would like to join this list, please write to my in-law Steve Cresswell ( steve.cresswell.123@gmail.com ).
Update, to 25th April
Since writing the above, the Coptic Orthodox church, who has been my umbrella church for most of the last 13 years, asked me to vacate my house on their mission compound. Justifiably, they were concerned that I would bring them damaging publicity. This was hard news to take! I had already lost the house I had lived in for 23 years, the children I had looked after, and now I was also to lose my base in the Coptic Mission compound! This had been a wonderful resource, with friends, security, electricity, running water, certain meals provided, and when I have moved to different parts of Kenya and Tanzania to do ministry, I have automatically been welcomed at Coptic centres there. Is all that over? Disconnecting from all that is painful! I have accumulated books and documents over more than 30 years, but I no longer have a place for them when I go back to living in a typical village home!
Ironically, in a way, what I am ‘falling back onto’, are the very people who initially invited me to Kenya, and hosted me in Kenya. The bishop who originally invited me is deceased, but his children are around. They have, at least temporarily, taken me back in!
I spent three days packing, burning things that I don’t really need, and dispatching my personal library to the local theological college (KIST) for their library. I moved my ‘stuff’ into the house I originally built, in 1996/7. (I lived there for one year, then left it, due to conflict with a British church.) Big problem: termites! On 23rd April, I had some pest control experts fumigate the whole house for termites. On 25th and 26th April, ¾ of the roof should be removed, rafters replaced, and then iron sheets to be returned, because of damage already done by termites. So, potentially, I will move in on Monday 28th April. The question remains ‘with whom’? At least one or two of those who were ‘my kids’, who are now over 18, are struggling to find a place, so I may take them back in, which will require for there to be either a new, or the original, housemother, in residence. We still need to find a means of separating sleeping arrangements by gender. And other arrangements in detail!
My Kenyan lawyer explained as follows:
Good evening. As I said, the powers that be in Kenya have concluded that you’ve broken no Kenyan laws. The police said they are ready to return your computer and phone to you. They have completed the investigation. I imagine they’ll do so this week. Don’t fear! Carry on with your normal activities. Just do remember though – if the UK want to extradite you, that could still be troubling.
This is excellent news! The only cause for my being imprisoned in Kenya, would now be if the UK demands that I be extradited. I hope that doesn’t happen. I am searching for information on its likelihood. My plan is anyway to come to the UK in October. I do not yet know what legal action may be awaiting me when I reach the UK. If I am going to have to defend myself, that could involve expensive lawyers etc. The above arrangements for bail, may still be needed in the UK.
The investigation in Kenya has found no incriminating evidence. There is no evidence at all that I have been in any way abusing children. So I do wonder, how can the UK want to take me to court?
Book on Prison Life in Kenya
I found this book, recently written, that tells of an American’s experience of the Kenyan prison system. This had made me rather nervous about what Kenyan authorities might do, until I received the above news from my lawyer!
Off to Tanzania
BTW, because I am told I am now free to travel internationally, I am expecting to pick up 6 weeks of teaching at a Bible College in Babati, Tanzania, beginning 5th May 2025. Then to spend some time visiting missionaries in Musoma, Tanzania. I am to share a paper (online) at a conference in Germany on Bible Translation, being held from 2nd to 3rd May 2025. Hence my time here at home in Kenya is getting a little squeezed!
Some Shocking Things
Some of what has recently gone on, has been quite shocking. Many people know, that Christian missionaries work cross-culturally in complex contexts with people whose ways of life are very different to those of Brits. My prior official visit from a supporting church was, I believe, in 2009. Before that, it was in 1998. If supporting churches had concerns, why did they not visit themselves first before getting the authorities involved and even sending the police? If my reputation had not been as good in the community, police intrusion may have been extremely damaging to ministry and to my name. It could have been life-threatening. In the meantime, I had been trying to talk to people in the UK about some of the difficulties I was facing, mainly in fulfilling UK safeguarding regulations. Over at least 2 ½ years of doing so, I found almost zero responsiveness, inside and outside of the church. My situation of being deeply embedded in a traditional society of a different cultural context seemed to not have fitted their expectations and assumptions. Instead of chatting through and talking about things, a police investigation was initiated, deep into sovereign Kenyan territory and into an obscure African village, on the basis of ungrounded accusations apparently connected to child abuse. This has been so alarming, that some missionary friends of mine put out an official statement questioning the legitimacy and advisability of this action: https://vulnerablemission.org/statement-on-investigations/
Many of you will know, that I have long been researching on ways in which, unfortunately, even when well-meaning, Western control over Africa is having pernicious damaging effects. Not that there are simple answers. But police are not usually the people most able to take account of complex cultural and linguistic characteristics of the lives of those in African tribes. Was this cracking a mustard seed with a sledge hammer? Why was sending police preferred to talking-through issues? Why were advisers in the UK on safeguarding issues so reluctant to help me? Why was I not getting pastoral visits?
Part of the answer to the above questions seems to be, that times have changed. Living in the middle of a Kenyan village under local conditions, made it impossible for me to get high levels of UK-approved safeguarding. Yet, I was living with children in my home. Hence, legally, supporters did not have to visit me to encourage me or find out how I was doing. Instead, it seems, they were legally obliged to report me to the police.