Speaker 1: What you hear in this podcast does not implicate any
Speaker 1: individual or entity in any criminal activity. The views and
Speaker 1: opinions are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Previously on the Missionary My Friend Napocosa went to View
Speaker 1: with Jesus. She told the story of Napocosa basically all
Speaker 1: about how this girl was so neglected and abused her
Speaker 1: whole life until you know, Renee came in and saved her,
Speaker 1: and her fundraising took off on the back of that story.
Speaker 1: But this is God's perfect end of her story, and
Speaker 1: the story is not mine to write. The Musunglus that
Speaker 1: found Napocosa, they're saying that she was neglected, that they
Speaker 1: were trying to starve for Yeah, that's yeah, She's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, to us in Ducks, we are lying. A
Speaker 1: Christian missionary is finding to clear her name tonight, following
Speaker 1: accusations by two mothers in Uganda and a group called
Speaker 1: No White Saviors that the Virginia woman contributed to the
Speaker 1: deaths of they say, hundreds of babies by treating them
Speaker 1: without a medical license. Renee, that is a serious allegation.
Speaker 1: How do you respond? First off, I have never represented
Speaker 1: myself as a medical professional or health worker of any type. UM.
Speaker 1: The organization serving his children hires UH medical professionals that
Speaker 1: are Ugandan, UM, local and national folks, and UM I
Speaker 1: have assisted our medical team in emergency settings and in
Speaker 1: crisis situations. UM, but I have never practiced medicine, and
Speaker 1: I have never adorned or put on any sort of
Speaker 1: The segment is about five minutes long. Renee Box wearing
Speaker 1: a ruffled blouse, her blonde hair formally swept back behind
Speaker 1: her ear children and personal growth. I realized, and she
Speaker 1: looks nervous. I wasn't even needed. She swivels in her
Speaker 1: chair and her eyes darted around looking at someone off screen.
Speaker 1: And so these accusations are incredibly disappointing, as I've spent
Speaker 1: a majority of my adulthood UM serving in Uganda. It
Speaker 1: was the first anyone had seen of Box since she
Speaker 1: left Uganda in late two thousand eighteen, a couple of
Speaker 1: months before the lawsuit was filed. And you've gotten in court.
Speaker 1: Renee's attorney, David Gibbs, was split screen to Ansuer. So, David,
Speaker 1: I know that you have said, UM, you believe this
Speaker 1: group is potentially defaming her. They may be libelious and
Speaker 1: slandering her. Would you consider legal action in return? Do
Speaker 1: you think your case is strong enough? Well, Shannon, absolutely,
Speaker 1: the case would be strong enough. The problem with these
Speaker 1: reputational terrorists on the internet putting out information it's not
Speaker 1: fact based, and it's very sad when a missionary, humanitarian
Speaker 1: or any individual from the United States or any developed
Speaker 1: nation wants to go into a third world or a
Speaker 1: health crisis somewhere like da Uganda and they come under
Speaker 1: these attacks with no way to really defend yourself affectively.
Speaker 1: For months, I thought I was on a fool's errand
Speaker 1: Renee was somewhere in Virginia according to our best guests,
Speaker 1: unwilling to talk, and then she popped up on Fox News.
Speaker 1: But it was my role on the team to understand
Speaker 1: Renee's version of what happened and to interview her closest defenders,
Speaker 1: which I was finding was going to require a lot
Speaker 1: more patients and imagination than I anticipated. So there definitely
Speaker 1: is a movement right now and the white savior complex
Speaker 1: or white saviorism or kind of hot button topics um
Speaker 1: at least in the world that I come from. In
Speaker 1: association with I Heart Media I'm Malcolm Burnley, I'm Rogie Gola,
Speaker 1: I'm Hollema Condi, and this is the Missionary episode three,
Speaker 1: Good Samaritan. I've spoken to David Gibbs less than a
Speaker 1: week before this interview aired in June. My only other
Speaker 1: outreach to Renee had been through her mother, Laurie. She
Speaker 1: took my calls for about six months until she eventually
Speaker 1: stopped responding and texted me a number I longed to Gibbs.
Speaker 1: It turns out Gibbs has a history with Fox News.
Speaker 1: David Gibbs joins us. He was the attorney for Terry
Speaker 1: Shivo's family, and he's now President and General counsel of
Speaker 1: the National Center for Life and Liberty. David, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us, Shannon. It's a joy to be with you
Speaker 1: on this Sunday, all right, So, Michael Shivo. If the
Speaker 1: name Terry Shivo rings a bell, that's because her case
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Back in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: Shivo quite simply redefined life and death in America, along
Speaker 1: with the government's role in each of those things. The
Speaker 1: ongoing debates over vaccines, abortion coverage, and the line between
Speaker 1: individual freedom and public health in this pandemic they all
Speaker 1: called back to Shiva. It was a war of ideas,
Speaker 1: and Gibbs was on the front line. Is Governor Bush
Speaker 1: was not trying to decide whether Terry Shiva lived or died.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to make sure that fair new profit.
Speaker 1: Shivo was a woman who had been comatose for fifteen
Speaker 1: years when her husband us to pull life support. The
Speaker 1: case made headlines and quickly became political. Everyone from the
Speaker 1: Pope to President George W. Bush weighed in. Shivo had
Speaker 1: no hope for improvement, according to doctors. Gibbs represented the
Speaker 1: parents who wanted to keep her alive. We knew ultimately
Speaker 1: her life was in the hands of God, but the
Speaker 1: concern was that here was this woman who had no lawyer,
Speaker 1: The judge never came to see her, and she was
Speaker 1: going to die in this painful way. Shivo became a
Speaker 1: martyr for pro life causes, and Gibbs was her apostle.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book, Fighting for Dear Life when it
Speaker 1: was all over, then founded a legal ministry that quote
Speaker 1: serves to protect and defend Bible based values. Gibbs got
Speaker 1: famous by asserting a woman's right to life, and now
Speaker 1: he was defending a woman accused of taking life away.
Speaker 1: We were originally contacted by a pastor in the Virginia
Speaker 1: area that was familiar with Renee and her mom and
Speaker 1: dad and also was one of the supporters of serving
Speaker 1: as children. Our goal has been to help them as
Speaker 1: they have worked through, you know, a very complicated media universe.
Speaker 1: In the first two episodes, you heard a lot of
Speaker 1: the accusations about Renee's medical involvement. In a five hundred
Speaker 1: fifty page response to the lawsuits, she denies practically everything,
Speaker 1: wearing a white coat, experimental dosing, even the blood transfusions.
Speaker 1: And so I think I thought Gibbs might try to
Speaker 1: overwhelm me with the details, plucking apart the allegations in
Speaker 1: the lawsuit. She wasn't going in and doing surgeries, cutting
Speaker 1: people open, you know, doing hearts or brains or I
Speaker 1: mean things that obviously you need a lot of medical expertise,
Speaker 1: and you need sophisticated training as well as staff. They're
Speaker 1: providing nutrition services to combat a crisis that literally the
Speaker 1: hospitals and others were unable to handle just due to
Speaker 1: the volume. But mostly he focused on Renee's character and
Speaker 1: he painted with a broad brush. Gibbs told me that
Speaker 1: Renee was a good Samaritan. He said that she had
Speaker 1: nothing to be sorry for it at all. Um. I
Speaker 1: saw Renee's work and what she had done over her
Speaker 1: time in Uganda is something that should be encouraged and
Speaker 1: lifted up. And I was watching her be, you know,
Speaker 1: literally crucified for trying to do the right thing. These families,
Speaker 1: when you're desperate, they know their daughters dying, Renee is,
Speaker 1: they're willing to help, and they're seeking help. The Renee's
Speaker 1: of the world and others like her should be allowed
Speaker 1: to provide help. According to her lawyer, Renee's story wasn't
Speaker 1: about death, it was about life. Renee went to Uganda
Speaker 1: looking to preserve it and fight for it, just like
Speaker 1: Gibbs did with Shiva. They're ignoring the fact that thirty
Speaker 1: six hundred children had their lives saved. What Sir Ring
Speaker 1: his children did with a medical team there in Uganda
Speaker 1: and under Renee's leadership, was truly remarkable. A lot of
Speaker 1: people would walk away from a scene like that in Uganda,
Speaker 1: maybe donate a few dollars, share a link on social media,
Speaker 1: but they don't usually lean in like Renee two Gibbs.
Speaker 1: That's commendable. If you're on an airplane and you've got
Speaker 1: a dying child and you walk up to someone that's
Speaker 1: say can you help me? And the person says, I
Speaker 1: think I can. You're in in the Good Samaritan emergency situation,
Speaker 1: and do we want to get to the point where
Speaker 1: the doctor on the airplane says, you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't want my name and reputation ruined. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get sued. I don't want to get accused of
Speaker 1: killing this guy. I think I'm just gonna stay in
Speaker 1: my seat, buckled in, and whatever happens happens. But what
Speaker 1: if on that plane during that emergency, some do gooder
Speaker 1: pulls out a stethoscope from the overhead and pretends to
Speaker 1: be a doctor. That's more like what Renee is accused of.
Speaker 1: After that Fox interview, I figured what the hell? I
Speaker 1: just drive to Renee's hometown. Bedford, Virginia is six hours
Speaker 1: away from Philly. I let Gibbs know that I was
Speaker 1: heading there, but as I got closer, something unexpected happened.
Speaker 1: Gibbs sent me the address to a church. He basically said,
Speaker 1: if I wanted to meet Renee, I could h This
Speaker 1: was Renee's home court a brick church on a suburban street,
Speaker 1: and when I entered the church, I noticed they still
Speaker 1: had a flyer for Serving His Children on the bulletin board.
Speaker 1: The flyer asked for donations from cycle breakers to help
Speaker 1: end malnutrition in Uganda. Renee and Laurie Bach I don't
Speaker 1: know if they mentioned that we're gonna be there, said
Speaker 1: there's a library. The receptionist was and expecting me, so
Speaker 1: she called for the Reverend Maltain Burley. Thank you. At
Speaker 1: the top of a flight of stairs, I found a classroom.
Speaker 1: The chairs were stocked around the perimeter and the chalkboard
Speaker 1: was wiped clean. I do thank you so much. A
Speaker 1: woman was waiting for me. She wore a hoodie, jeans
Speaker 1: and a half hearted smile when she shook my hand.
Speaker 1: Could you just introduce yourself, say your name and my name,
Speaker 1: and I guess your affiliation with serving I'm Renee Back,
Speaker 1: the founder and former director of Serving his Children. People
Speaker 1: ask me if Renee's in jail when I casually bring
Speaker 1: up this story. Renee is free to celebrate birthdays with
Speaker 1: her two adopted daughters, eat home cooked meals, and isn't
Speaker 1: even charged with a felony in the US or in Uganda,
Speaker 1: but she seemed tense, perhaps unconvinced this was a good
Speaker 1: due to be talking with me. It's hard, but tell
Speaker 1: me where you're at right now and what you how
Speaker 1: you've been yet. Yeah, it's been challenging for sure. No
Speaker 1: one wants to be be said to be, you know, murderer,
Speaker 1: but there has been and there will be some pretty
Speaker 1: serious counseling after all this. Um, it's been pretty emotionally damaging,
Speaker 1: no doubt. I'm not trying to play the victim in
Speaker 1: that or anything, but to hear it from her, she's
Speaker 1: in a special kind of deal. She isn't working, and
Speaker 1: she assumes she may never work again. She says. Strangers
Speaker 1: stop her in public and ask if she's the one
Speaker 1: people have forgotten that I'm a human, like in a
Speaker 1: person with emotions and someone who has children that are
Speaker 1: going to grow up one day and google their mom's
Speaker 1: name and say, Wow, was my mom a serial killer?
Speaker 1: Did she start a genocide? Because that's what people said
Speaker 1: about her. Renee was even in touch with the FBI
Speaker 1: regarding death threads. I'm being watched closely, like I'm being
Speaker 1: watched in my home I'm being watched everywhere I go.
Speaker 1: I feel like people are watching me. I've visited my
Speaker 1: sister in California and people were taking pictures in the
Speaker 1: airport of me. Renee's sister is an actual doctor, by
Speaker 1: the way, you know, the police have put cameras up
Speaker 1: at my parents house and all kinds of things like that,
Speaker 1: which is very unusual because I grew up in an
Speaker 1: environment where like, you go out of town for two
Speaker 1: weeks and you don't lock your door because what if
Speaker 1: the neighbor needs a cup of sugar, you know, and
Speaker 1: just like can wander on over. And that's just a
Speaker 1: terrible feeling to feel insecure about your safety and the
Speaker 1: safety of your kids and your family. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been really sad, to be honest. Renee sounded paranoid, which
Speaker 1: explained why we were meeting in a clandestine location. I
Speaker 1: was asked to keep the name of the church anonymous
Speaker 1: gibbs Us on speaker phone. Her mother, Laurie, was taking
Speaker 1: notes on a laptop off to the side. They were
Speaker 1: all eager to position Renee as a victim of an
Speaker 1: online smear campaign. Here's Laurie box Well on social media.
Speaker 1: Has facilitated a whole made up story that you know,
Speaker 1: you can just say what you want and it's viewed
Speaker 1: as the Gospel treat which is scary. World. Yeah, Renee
Speaker 1: was playing the victim here no matter what she said,
Speaker 1: and this mountain case against her. It was obviously not
Speaker 1: fake news. We do uncovered too much already. It was
Speaker 1: also true, though, that Renee was getting hammered all over
Speaker 1: social media tweets like she's the butcher of Uganda and
Speaker 1: her name is Renee Bach and in a parallel universe,
Speaker 1: Hollywood will make a billion dollar fictional movie about this,
Speaker 1: and somehow managed to paint Renee Bach as a complicated,
Speaker 1: tragically flawed, and yet well intentioned woman whispers we inhabit
Speaker 1: the parallel universe. Despite this, Renee was optimistic and listening
Speaker 1: to Monica Lewinsky's Ted talk. A lot of what she
Speaker 1: says really resonates with me. And that like her name
Speaker 1: was just put it on like the scandal, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and so people
Speaker 1: forgot that she was a human being, an evangelical woman
Speaker 1: finding solace in Monica Lewinsky. I definitely didn't expect that,
Speaker 1: but I understood what she meant once I listened to
Speaker 1: Lewinsky's Ted talk, what that meant for me personally was
Speaker 1: that overnight I went from being a completely private figure
Speaker 1: to a publicly humiliated one worldwide. I was patient zero
Speaker 1: of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.
Speaker 1: But the more Renee talked about Lewinsky, the more I
Speaker 1: realized she was making a different point entirely. For Renee,
Speaker 1: Lewinsky was a story of redemption, like maybe she could
Speaker 1: use this unwanted notoriety and channel it into good, into
Speaker 1: a form of service. Here's Renee again for good. I
Speaker 1: mentioned Monica Lewinski before, but it's been cool to see
Speaker 1: her like now really creating this platform and foundation for
Speaker 1: you know, anti bullying and cyber bullying and things like that.
Speaker 1: I think that, like what a cool testimony of taking
Speaker 1: something that was so horrific and so destructive and turning
Speaker 1: it into a way to really like resonate with people
Speaker 1: in a really hard spot and really help people. So
Speaker 1: seeing a few people that have gone through really hilacious
Speaker 1: trials um and kept their head up and been honoring
Speaker 1: has been a life giving encouragement to me. I'll admit
Speaker 1: I was deeply interested in the fall from Grace narratives,
Speaker 1: what it was like to be chosen and special in
Speaker 1: one moment, exiled in the next. But I never got
Speaker 1: what I wanted. I never got the Renee of her
Speaker 1: blog posts. Her storytelling and introspection were much less impactful.
Speaker 1: In person. Something felt like it was just missing or
Speaker 1: it was guarded from me. And then Renee started telling
Speaker 1: me why that those blog posts were deeply flawed and
Speaker 1: the problem with them was that they had an unreliable
Speaker 1: narrator Renee herself and a lot of my years of blogging.
Speaker 1: I was young, and I wanted to share, like life
Speaker 1: can look so different than what I thought it looked
Speaker 1: like as a girl from a rural town in America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I wanted people to understand that, like, there's this
Speaker 1: world outside of yourself that's so amazing and so beautiful
Speaker 1: and so raw and like so painful, but like also
Speaker 1: can be so beautiful, and like a mural can be
Speaker 1: making made out of that brokenness. Um, and I really
Speaker 1: did want to convey that to the readers. And I
Speaker 1: mean when we first came across the blogs, they felt
Speaker 1: like journalistic treasure. Thirty two thousand words that came straight
Speaker 1: from Renee. Each passage a fossil on the sand, together
Speaker 1: a skeleton for our entire investigation. Now, Renee was claiming
Speaker 1: that she had a propensity for stretching the truth in
Speaker 1: her writing. And I think I really wrote in first
Speaker 1: person a lot um, and so I would say, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: this kid came in and then you know, we started
Speaker 1: the idea, and how come up to oxygen and did
Speaker 1: all these things and um, and I think it really
Speaker 1: reads as though I was doing those things personally, And
Speaker 1: so I can understand how someone would read and think
Speaker 1: like she's just doing all this stuff, like she knows
Speaker 1: what she's doing, you know, um, whereas it was really
Speaker 1: a team. It was so mind boggling it. Renee was
Speaker 1: accused of being a fake doctor, and part of her
Speaker 1: defense was to admit to misrepresenting herself in a different way.
Speaker 1: You know, I wrote it as this was my experience, um,
Speaker 1: and instead of saying like the nurse ran whatever or um, right,
Speaker 1: there were several people there that day, um, and so
Speaker 1: I was definitely involved in all the activities. Renee says
Speaker 1: she kept writing in first person for a simple reason
Speaker 1: because people will pay money to support that kind of narrative,
Speaker 1: and we did. You know, people are emotional impulse givers,
Speaker 1: and so we did receive a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: financial support through people who read my blogs. Um, just
Speaker 1: reading and realizing the raw need and then feeling like, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to be a part of that and would
Speaker 1: give monetarily. So yeah, that was really the goal. And
Speaker 1: I really we had spent hours occupied by these blogs.
Speaker 1: They were so central to Renee's legend, which meant that
Speaker 1: to accept her truth, to accept that broad swass of
Speaker 1: her writing were fabrications. Well, then it threw into question
Speaker 1: everything we knew about Renee. Regieve. Do you remember what
Speaker 1: you thought after spending all that time reading those blogs
Speaker 1: to hear that Renee said they were actually exaggerated? Oh man, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, just not knowing who Renee was anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard so many things, so much my understanding of
Speaker 1: Renee came from the community, came from these blogs, and
Speaker 1: everything was just falling out from underneath us, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know where we stood. Of course, there was another explanation,
Speaker 1: and perhaps a simpler one, that Renee was denouncing her
Speaker 1: blog post because well they looked bad. For her case,
Speaker 1: no one could prove she didn't exaggerate her writing, so
Speaker 1: it was all too convenient. If we wanted to get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of who Renee really was, we needed
Speaker 1: to go back to the beginning to Bedford, Virginia. Turn
Speaker 1: the line onto East Main Street. Signs for US sixty
Speaker 1: west US to North Virginia, North Virginia, Bedford. One of
Speaker 1: the first things you noticed about Bedford, Virginia are the
Speaker 1: lamp posts up and down Main Street. The post carry
Speaker 1: the names and faces of the Bedford Boys, the young
Speaker 1: bab be faced men who died at the beaches of
Speaker 1: Normandy June ninth. The crossfire of German guns still rakes
Speaker 1: the shore. The town lost more men per capita on
Speaker 1: d Day than anywhere else in the country. Out on
Speaker 1: the chunnel, the rescue boats of the Coast Guard are
Speaker 1: looking for survivors and aiding damaged vessels, and the hospital
Speaker 1: ships are waiting for the Renee grew up among these ghosts.
Speaker 1: Their spirit looms over the town. Wounded man has transferred
Speaker 1: to another ship, the life saving blood plasma goes with him.
Speaker 1: This idea of sacrificing for something that's bigger than yourself
Speaker 1: It's easy to see how a young Renee was inspired
Speaker 1: by that idea because it drives her family life too.
Speaker 1: Here's Renee talking about her childhood on a quip FM
Speaker 1: back when Renee was just a feel good story. I
Speaker 1: grew up in a family of five and basically lived
Speaker 1: all of my young childhood and teenage years right here
Speaker 1: in Bedford. I got saved, you could say, when I
Speaker 1: was very young. Um, but it wasn't until my high
Speaker 1: school in middle school years that I really understood what
Speaker 1: having a relationship with Jesus Christ looked like. The box
Speaker 1: live on a modest farm with a bunch of animals.
Speaker 1: The walls are lined with inspiration passages from philosophers, Bible versus,
Speaker 1: even Mumford and Sons lyrics love It will not betray you,
Speaker 1: dismay or enslave you, It will set you free. Lorie
Speaker 1: homeschooled Renee and her four siblings. She taught them to
Speaker 1: take risks and to pursue self mastery in their learning.
Speaker 1: When she was ten, her parents started a nonprofit organization,
Speaker 1: Many Blessings Farm, where they provided writing therapy for children
Speaker 1: with special needs. As a teenager, Renee scheduled volunteers spotted
Speaker 1: children on horseback and oversaw barn duty and so that
Speaker 1: was a huge part of my middle school in high
Speaker 1: school years was doing hippotherapy. So you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like therapeutic writing. Being able to just take part
Speaker 1: in kids that were a little bit different than me
Speaker 1: definitely sparked a desire and need to be able to
Speaker 1: help people. Um, just because there was one horse named
Speaker 1: Sienna who stole Renee's heart. Later on, Sienna developed congenital
Speaker 1: eye defects, and treating him meant around the clock care.
Speaker 1: Every four hours, someone had to apply a stinging ointment
Speaker 1: to his eyes. Lauria wrote to me in an email.
Speaker 1: God used Renee's horse to teach her many things. Here's
Speaker 1: Lauria again in the alarm, go up every four hours,
Speaker 1: and Renee was to get up and get a flash
Speaker 1: like the barn and me and home working comes back
Speaker 1: and go to Renee was like the valedictorian of her
Speaker 1: tiny home school, destined for greater things. Everyone knew it.
Speaker 1: Here's Renee's youth pastor rich heart. She always had a
Speaker 1: book in her hand whenever she was by herself, and
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the ways that she just
Speaker 1: she could self, teach herself, learn or you know, if
Speaker 1: she didn't know the answer, she could find out. She
Speaker 1: had a great imagination and desire for discovery and adventure.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you can hear his admiration even with a crappy
Speaker 1: audio quality. But it wasn't just her intelligence or drive
Speaker 1: that made her stand out in a religious community like
Speaker 1: the one Renee grew up in. Greatness is defined by
Speaker 1: service to others, and it didn't matter if Renee was
Speaker 1: volunteering at her family nonprofit or rebuilding homes after Katrina.
Speaker 1: She was different. She was a leader, anointed by the
Speaker 1: adults around her, a walking embodiment of selflessness. It wasn't
Speaker 1: this arrogance. It was never this condescending like I already
Speaker 1: know the answer, you know. I mean, people can come
Speaker 1: in with confidence, but it can be abrasive. She never
Speaker 1: had that. I mean, it was always a humility coupled
Speaker 1: together with that confidence that just I think is what
Speaker 1: made her so approachable. And white people were just willing
Speaker 1: to be led by her, but wanted to follow her
Speaker 1: because they trusted her. I spoke with Gibbs a week
Speaker 1: before that Fox interview aired, a week before meeting Renee.
Speaker 1: But a week before that, I was sitting in a
Speaker 1: coffee shop with, as Gibbs would put it, her very
Speaker 1: own reputational terrorist. I think that a lot of white
Speaker 1: people fetishize black suffering, were like get off on black suffering,
Speaker 1: And I think that's exactly what seeing those pictures of
Speaker 1: those like malnourished like Ugandan babies, people love that ship
Speaker 1: like it's just like pulling out my heart trees, like
Speaker 1: there's something like you kind of like get off on it.
Speaker 1: It's like really sick. And so that's why I think
Speaker 1: she got as vague and popular as she did within
Speaker 1: Virginia community but also outside. That's Kelsey Nielsen of No
Speaker 1: White Saviors, who we heard from an episode one. She's
Speaker 1: a co founder of the group that's put the spotlight
Speaker 1: on Renee and been heavily involved in the lawsuit in Uganda.
Speaker 1: It turns out Kelsey is from outside Philly, where I live,
Speaker 1: So we met up in person a few times in
Speaker 1: a popular black owned coffee shop called Uncle Bobby's her choice.
Speaker 1: She wore beaded earrings and has tattoos running up her arm.
Speaker 1: And I think people that are very paralyzed by saying
Speaker 1: like I want to help but I don't want to
Speaker 1: be like a white savior. It's looking at like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if you actually care about the needs, how are you
Speaker 1: doing it? Are you doing it for yourself? Are you
Speaker 1: doing it for and like do you need recognition for it?
Speaker 1: Do you need to post about it? Like I think
Speaker 1: that is with the air of social media? Is to Kelsey,
Speaker 1: Renee wasn't a good Samaritan or even well intentioned. She
Speaker 1: was exploiting a desperate situation for her own gain, pretending
Speaker 1: to be a hero. In reality, she was a white savior,
Speaker 1: someone scoring points off other people's misery. That's what Kelsey believed.
Speaker 1: It's also just knowing that she's not the only one
Speaker 1: like this is not Renee is not the only person
Speaker 1: doing this, not in Uganda, not globally, and there needs
Speaker 1: to be a new standard set. White saviors are an
Speaker 1: old trope. Attic is finch in our courts, all equal
Speaker 1: the blind side never had them before? What a room
Speaker 1: to yourself? But well yeah, well now, whether it's books
Speaker 1: or movies, you see these brave heroes taking a stand
Speaker 1: for the less fortunate, and part of their bravery is
Speaker 1: always crossing a color line. No more colored restaurants. No
Speaker 1: more white restaurants. Harry Nasa. We all pay the same color.
Speaker 1: The stories perpetuate this myth that black people need saving,
Speaker 1: but it's way more insidious than that. The trope allows
Speaker 1: white people to see themselves as heroes of their own
Speaker 1: good deeds, the protagonists of racial solidarity, even when they're
Speaker 1: not always helping. In Tissue, Cole wrote about what he
Speaker 1: called the white savior industrial complex. Africa has provided a
Speaker 1: space onto which white egos can conveniently be projected. It
Speaker 1: is a liberated space in which the usual rules do
Speaker 1: not apply. Nobody from America or Europe can go to
Speaker 1: Africa and become a godlike savior, or at the very
Speaker 1: least have his or her emotional needs satisfied. Many have
Speaker 1: done it under the banner of making a difference. Cole
Speaker 1: and Kelsey are both describing a fine line. One person's
Speaker 1: good Samaritan is another's white savior. And if you're not
Speaker 1: asking yourself the difference, especially if you're working in Africa,
Speaker 1: you might just be on the wrong side of it.
Speaker 1: You're in this microcolumn and bubble of like like white
Speaker 1: saviorism isn't just acceptable, it's actually like lifted up is this, Like,
Speaker 1: this is what you should be doing as much sacrifice,
Speaker 1: as much, the more, the more crazy, the more overworked
Speaker 1: entire to you are, the more the more you're doing
Speaker 1: outside of your qualifications, the more you're letting this is
Speaker 1: the mentality, the more you're letting God use you and
Speaker 1: and equip you. Like that's literally what people believe. Renee
Speaker 1: was not living under a rock. She was listening to
Speaker 1: the criticism, trying to understand her own relationship to race
Speaker 1: and white saviors too. She said so in her Fox interview.
Speaker 1: I have to say that when I went to Uganda
Speaker 1: the first time, I was a young American woman boarding
Speaker 1: a plane to Africa, and I definitely had a white
Speaker 1: savior complex. Um. I mean, my desire to go to
Speaker 1: Uganda was was to help people and to serve. And
Speaker 1: I think that oftentimes anyone coming from a culture such
Speaker 1: as America or a culture where we would say we've
Speaker 1: had great privilege, um, going into a culture that is
Speaker 1: stated to be, you know, underdeveloped, with a lack of resources,
Speaker 1: anyone could be considered a white savior in that environment.
Speaker 1: And I was not immune to that myself. I am
Speaker 1: proud to after that meeting at church. Renee gave me
Speaker 1: another interview and another We spoke again at the church,
Speaker 1: then every few weeks by phone, and it took a while,
Speaker 1: but we eventually talked about her chronology in Uganda. She
Speaker 1: first arrived in Uganda in September two thousand seven alone.
Speaker 1: She never traveled abroad before. My goal and purpose and
Speaker 1: going was to work for an orphanage. They had a
Speaker 1: very well established volunteer program. I didn't know anyone there
Speaker 1: or really have any other connection or draw except for
Speaker 1: the fact that they seemed to have a good program.
Speaker 1: They kind of catered to younger girls who wanted more
Speaker 1: of like an exposure experience than anything. Really. That orphanage
Speaker 1: was called a money baby cottage. It was a popular
Speaker 1: launching pad for young missionaries in Uganda. Kelsey Nielsen got
Speaker 1: her start at the same orphanage just a couple of
Speaker 1: years after Renee. It was like the gateway drug. It's
Speaker 1: smoking need for like white Samerism, and then like they're
Speaker 1: on heroin now everyone all of us are there and
Speaker 1: that's one by like a fundamentalist Christian. The running joke
Speaker 1: about a money within missionary circles is that Americans find
Speaker 1: it solely because it's at the top of volunteering lists.
Speaker 1: Its initials are ABC. So I did a lot of
Speaker 1: things like folded laundry and served meals, and based a
Speaker 1: lot of babies because they bade their babies like eight
Speaker 1: times a day, um, and you know, organized storage closets
Speaker 1: and cleaned toys just ever was needed. The problem was
Speaker 1: it was just busy work. Back in the US, Renee
Speaker 1: was used to being in control. She was a leader
Speaker 1: in her youth ministry, but here at the orphanage she
Speaker 1: was non essential. So she began working for other nonprofits
Speaker 1: in her free time. The founders of one of these
Speaker 1: NGOs left abruptly, so they turned to Renee with the keys.
Speaker 1: It was kind of ridiculously crazy. I mean I had
Speaker 1: known them for maybe six weeks, very casually, and they
Speaker 1: were like removing you our program for us. Here's our
Speaker 1: credit card and our house and our car keys, and
Speaker 1: just like here the things you need to do. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well what, I moved into their house
Speaker 1: started running their programs for them. I really had no
Speaker 1: idea what I was doing. They just kind of gave
Speaker 1: me a breach tutorial and then we're like me out.
Speaker 1: This happened Within just a few months of her arrival,
Speaker 1: Renee go to peek at the local hospital. Through her
Speaker 1: work at this NGO, her first glimpses of the Ugandan
Speaker 1: medical system horrified her. I mean, when I first moved
Speaker 1: to Uganda, the quality of care was well, it was bad.
Speaker 1: It was bad. They had moved past reusing needles, but
Speaker 1: like they weren't far past it and still to this day.
Speaker 1: I mean, in busy seasons there are people lining hallways
Speaker 1: and corches and there's you know, rats and cockroaches. But
Speaker 1: when I moved there there was a mentality of you
Speaker 1: have two patients, and which one has a better chance
Speaker 1: of life? This one than this one? You pick and
Speaker 1: this one you leave. It's like you were, you know,
Speaker 1: color coding people on like a warfield, you know, like
Speaker 1: red tag like don't even bother, you know, and it
Speaker 1: sounds horrible and crass and just like disgusting, But it's
Speaker 1: what they had to do, you know, they could choose
Speaker 1: to be. This was over a decade ago. Renee was
Speaker 1: impressionable searching for her own path, and what she found
Speaker 1: was that the doors of the Uganda medical system were
Speaker 1: wide open for her as long as she could stomach
Speaker 1: what she saw. After this short trip to Uganda, Renee
Speaker 1: was planning to apply to college, but a turning point
Speaker 1: came in December two thousand seven. It was her first
Speaker 1: Christmas away from home. Renee drove along one of the
Speaker 1: tributaries to the Nile River, a massive waterway of its own.
Speaker 1: She drove a diesel power advance of the hospital in Ginger,
Speaker 1: carrying a load of mangoes, flatbreads, and snacks. She walked
Speaker 1: into a room with narrow rows of metal cribs holding
Speaker 1: sleeping newborns, including five belonging to a woman named Dorothy Namunana.
Speaker 1: The quintuplets were two weeks old and they all weighed
Speaker 1: less than three pounds. The doctors wanted to monitor the babies,
Speaker 1: so Dorothy was stuck in the hospital. This is from
Speaker 1: another phone call I recorded with Renee kids for a
Speaker 1: long time when she had the babies, her husband's like
Speaker 1: basically took off because he was freaked out. Um and
Speaker 1: so the way she explained, it's like he ran into
Speaker 1: the hurricane field and he never came back. Like she
Speaker 1: was just exhausted. She never slept and at the time
Speaker 1: she didn't really have anyone of the hospital, staying with
Speaker 1: her to help her, And so she was just stuck
Speaker 1: in that like scorching hot room all the time, fading
Speaker 1: her babies because it took so long for them to
Speaker 1: eat such a little bit. They were just so tiny.
Speaker 1: I'd never seen a baby down tiny before. Renee visited
Speaker 1: Dorothy nearly every day for weeks, bringing her fresh clothes
Speaker 1: and food and helping her feed the newborns. The babies
Speaker 1: were doing well despite being so small. During one of
Speaker 1: her regular visits, she brought her friend Katie, but when
Speaker 1: they entered Dorothy's room, they noticed one of the little
Speaker 1: girls was coughing. Renee picked up the baby and felt
Speaker 1: her belly. It was tight, her breathing was slow, and
Speaker 1: then the baby stopped breathing entirely. Renee thought about doing
Speaker 1: CPR and the baby, but she feared it would crush her.
Speaker 1: Katie ran to get help. In a blog post, Renee wrote,
Speaker 1: by the time Katie got back ten minutes later, with
Speaker 1: no doctor, she had already died in my arms. Katy
Speaker 1: and I declared her dead. Not a single doctor or
Speaker 1: nurse had come when we left forty five minutes later.
Speaker 1: No one knows why she died. I guess that Jesus
Speaker 1: wanted that baby with him. You just think, like, oh,
Speaker 1: when someone dies, it's like this huge traumatic thing that
Speaker 1: like you know, everyone's like scrambling and trying to like
Speaker 1: save this person. But like no one was scrambling. No
Speaker 1: one was trying to save that baby. I mean, other
Speaker 1: than my friend nine, we're looking for a doctor to Renee,
Speaker 1: the situation didn't have to be so desperate. She saw
Speaker 1: at the hospital a lack of willpower, a reluctance to
Speaker 1: help or even pay attention, and the dead child she
Speaker 1: held in her arms. She became a call to action.
Speaker 1: I definitely felt that sense of responsibility to like fight
Speaker 1: on behalf of those parents who felt like they didn't
Speaker 1: have any energy left to fight or that no one
Speaker 1: would hear them. Renee set out to create a place
Speaker 1: for more Dorothy Nominanas, a place where families would be loved,
Speaker 1: where no baby would die neglect. A lot of people
Speaker 1: would say, oh, why did you do this or why
Speaker 1: did you do that? And it's like, have you ever
Speaker 1: been put in a situation like that? Do you know
Speaker 1: what you would do? Because like it's a tough call,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have like minutes to make it, and
Speaker 1: you have to live with yourself with the answer of
Speaker 1: that for the rest of your life. In a crisis,
Speaker 1: when the experts and systems are failing around you, it's
Speaker 1: natural to want to do something, to pitch in to
Speaker 1: help flatten the curve. H Now imagine your Renee interpreting
Speaker 1: this very human desire as something more as a call
Speaker 1: from a higher power. Doing nothing at all is sometimes
Speaker 1: the best thing to do. We know that all too
Speaker 1: well these days. But you never hear about God compelling
Speaker 1: people towards inaction, do you. Recently? It's been like, well,
Speaker 1: is everything I did just a total lie and like
Speaker 1: not meaningful in any way? And why would I feel
Speaker 1: so called to have been in this place for really
Speaker 1: my entire adulthood and then just have it all crashing down?
Speaker 1: What is the purpose? Renee was starting to open up,
Speaker 1: but it was easy to confuse that access for trust.
Speaker 1: About a month after meeting Renee, Laurie called me to
Speaker 1: let me know that they no longer be participating in
Speaker 1: the podcast. They'd heard some things about my co host
Speaker 1: Bgive and what he'd been up to in ginger the
Speaker 1: Deception in the story. It was about to get much darker.
Speaker 1: We could see a web of conspiracies building around the
Speaker 1: margins of our investigation, and slowly but surely, we were
Speaker 1: being pulled into it ourselves. That's next on The Missionary.
Speaker 1: The Missionaries, produced in association with I Heart Media. It's
Speaker 1: written and reported by Roger Gola, Helemage Condi and Malcolm Burnley.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Michelle Lands and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto
Speaker 1: is our story editor. Our executive producer is Mangish Thicketter.
Speaker 1: Our fact checker is Austin Thompson. Mixing by Josh Rogison,
Speaker 1: voice acting by Taylor Kaufman and special thanks to equip FM.