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: Renee Bach wants you to know something. Yes, she admits
Speaker 1: a hundred and five children did die at her ng o,
Speaker 1: but she did the best she could for them, hiring nurses, doctors,
Speaker 1: bringing medical equipment from the US over to Uganda, even
Speaker 1: paying for kids to go to private hospitals when things
Speaker 1: got serious. We can't make a difference to everyone, but
Speaker 1: we can't make a difference to some people. And just
Speaker 1: because there are so many negative things happening, and people dying,
Speaker 1: and you know, kids getting kidnapped, and when it seems
Speaker 1: like the world is just kind of crashing down, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you can't make a difference for that
Speaker 1: one person. Renee and her lawyer implored, instead of focusing
Speaker 1: on those inevitable tragedies, why don't we take a look
Speaker 1: at the good that they did in Uganda from two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, eight hundred other children came in sick and
Speaker 1: starving and went home happy and healthy. To drive that
Speaker 1: point home, Renee's mother, Lorie told us about a little
Speaker 1: girl named Patricia, one of serving his children's smiling success stories.
Speaker 1: She came in with her body swollen from head to
Speaker 1: toe and covered in boils. Weeks later, she was back
Speaker 1: to a regular way, back to being a messy eater,
Speaker 1: and back home with her family. I think she's just
Speaker 1: like nine or ten now, and she goes to school.
Speaker 1: And I mean they're a family because they thought help
Speaker 1: if somebody would be able to help them. So I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just a whole great story right there. And then
Speaker 1: Lorie sent us a video. Oh no, it was an
Speaker 1: interview with Patricia's father, James o'kello. Didn't he speaks in
Speaker 1: the local language. But the subtitles underneath read this white
Speaker 1: has helped us up to the time our daughter got well,
Speaker 1: even up to date, we thank them. If you saw
Speaker 1: the photos of Patricia on Rene's blog, swollen almost like
Speaker 1: she was going to burst, you think it was nothing
Speaker 1: short of a miracle. But the video also showed a
Speaker 1: picture of Patricia now almost a teenager, and she has
Speaker 1: a scar running down the side of her face, and
Speaker 1: James says, we were told that the white lady is
Speaker 1: being prosecuted for keeping the flesh of my daughter on
Speaker 1: ice and eating it cannibalism. I can't say I have
Speaker 1: that on my missionary bingo card in association with I
Speaker 1: Heeart Media. I'm Roger Gola. I I'm Malcolm Burnley and
Speaker 1: this is the mission An Area, episode four, the video.
Speaker 1: Before we got this video, Patricia wasn't really on our radar.
Speaker 1: She wasn't part of the court case, and she wasn't
Speaker 1: one of the hundred and five children who died at
Speaker 1: Renee's facility. But when we started looking into it, she
Speaker 1: didn't seem like much of a success story either. The
Speaker 1: first people who told me Patricia's story were Renee's former employees,
Speaker 1: the ones that had written affidavits in the case against her.
Speaker 1: Jacqueline at Him, one of Renee's former social workers, told
Speaker 1: me that Renee gave Patricia a blood transfusion when she
Speaker 1: came to serving his children. Real needed that transfusion without
Speaker 1: cross matching the blood. I think she just went on
Speaker 1: go to blood and started transfugient immediately, and this kid
Speaker 1: was in critical condition. The blood had banned and that
Speaker 1: girl has a very big ska. The transfusion of this
Speaker 1: girl from my UK called Patricia was not good because
Speaker 1: one whereas he was transfused. Was not Igenique. The place
Speaker 1: was not looking good. Indeed, the girl reacted to the blood.
Speaker 1: She almost died. She just survived by God is a mercy.
Speaker 1: That's Charles o'waeny, Rene's former program manager, and he told
Speaker 1: me if I wanted to get to the bottom of
Speaker 1: Patricia's story, I needed to talk to the woman who
Speaker 1: was actually there, who had seen all of it firsthand,
Speaker 1: an American volunteer named Jackie Kramlick. Jacqueline Crumblin's was always
Speaker 1: telling know what you're doing is wrong. Let the medical
Speaker 1: people do it. If it was not Jacqueline Crumblin's, Patricia
Speaker 1: would have died. Jackie Cramlick was a nursing student at
Speaker 1: Jamestown College in North Dakota when she met Chris. He
Speaker 1: was five years older and had just gotten back from
Speaker 1: a rock where he served with the Army. We were
Speaker 1: in acquired together at college, and then yeah, I knew
Speaker 1: her older sister from high school, so so you just
Speaker 1: kept asking me how my sister was doing, until finally
Speaker 1: they hit it off right away. Chris is lean and athletic,
Speaker 1: with the same stubbly beard and buzz cut. He got
Speaker 1: in the army. He seems confident, impatient. Jackie's a little
Speaker 1: shorter and just as cheery. They were both raised Christian
Speaker 1: and held their faith close. Pretty soon they got married,
Speaker 1: and when Jackie graduated and got her nursing degree, she
Speaker 1: knew she could be useful abroad. That's when a friend
Speaker 1: in Uganda told him about serving his Children and the
Speaker 1: incredible woman running it, Renee. Without a second thought, Jackie
Speaker 1: submitted a volunteer application, which we pulled from the court
Speaker 1: files and asked them to read. We feel that the
Speaker 1: size of serving His children maintains a sense of order,
Speaker 1: while at the same time allows for God to move
Speaker 1: and speak to the volunteer. We've been so encouraged by
Speaker 1: the way Renee and other volunteers simply love Jesus and
Speaker 1: love others. Serving His children is very to the point,
Speaker 1: very biblical, and we think it is a perfect fit
Speaker 1: for us. At the bottom of the application is a
Speaker 1: little note. You don't have to be a licensed teacher
Speaker 1: to teach, or be in the medical field to put
Speaker 1: on band aids. You just have to have passion and
Speaker 1: working knowledge in that area. The organization that Jackie and
Speaker 1: Chris walked into was very different from the one that
Speaker 1: Renee started back in two thousand nine. In less than
Speaker 1: two years, Renee had transformed serving his children into a
Speaker 1: full fledged rehabilitation center. She was shipping in medical equipment
Speaker 1: from the States and buying more materials for in house treatments.
Speaker 1: By the time I was there, there was kind of
Speaker 1: two parts of the house, So it was like the
Speaker 1: general kids who are just kind of generally you know, ill,
Speaker 1: and they're going through this process of being refed, and
Speaker 1: most of them had I V S in and things
Speaker 1: like that, and then there were kids who have kind
Speaker 1: of It was this little tiny bedroom off the side
Speaker 1: um of her living room, and it was painted red,
Speaker 1: and there were two beds in there, and that is
Speaker 1: where kids would be hooked up to oxygen or be
Speaker 1: on more intensive IVY therapy, have more close monitoring. So
Speaker 1: the concept was not very different from what we would
Speaker 1: consider you know, I See You in the sense that
Speaker 1: kids who needed more intensive care went there. Renee called
Speaker 1: this makeshift I See You the Red Room. The walls
Speaker 1: were painted a deep red and were plastered with pictures
Speaker 1: of children who had passed through the facility. One of
Speaker 1: the first photos I saw Renee was actually taken in
Speaker 1: the red room. In it, she stands with her head down,
Speaker 1: arms stretched out, light filters in behind her, making a
Speaker 1: halo around her whole body. As soon as I entered
Speaker 1: in that room, it's when a lot of guesswork was
Speaker 1: happening and a lot of actions that she was not
Speaker 1: trained to do or happening. I was fit to like
Speaker 1: provide medical care and whatever this is over my head,
Speaker 1: like this is serious, serious, Nick, you take you walk care.
Speaker 1: The list of medical procedures that Jackie says she saw
Speaker 1: Renee perform reads like a med school curriculum, intramuscular injections
Speaker 1: for moral artery puncture, blood transfusions, naso gastric tube insertion,
Speaker 1: baby delivery, and the preparation of a dead body. In
Speaker 1: terms of Ugandan's I don't know how you wouldn't enter
Speaker 1: her as a doctor. I think the confusion live. And
Speaker 1: did she ever say hello, my name is doctor Renee?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not now, she never said that in my presence.
Speaker 1: Did she wear a stethoscope around her neck and assens
Speaker 1: children and did uban and call her mousau, which is
Speaker 1: in Luganda word for a doctor or nurse, Yes, they did.
Speaker 1: She's giving that offense. She's providing I VS. She's doing
Speaker 1: blood transfusions, she's assessing children, she's diagnosing, she's prescribing. I
Speaker 1: don't really know how you can call those things, and
Speaker 1: then in the same breath claim I've never representing myself
Speaker 1: as a medical healthcare provider. What else would I be doing.
Speaker 1: In her affidavit, Jackie claims that when she asked Renee
Speaker 1: how she was making clinical decisions, Renee said that she
Speaker 1: used a medical handbook, relied on her gut feeling, and
Speaker 1: that she felt God would tell her what to do
Speaker 1: for a child. It kind of stems from disbelief of
Speaker 1: like God a sovereign f anything that happens was supposed
Speaker 1: to happen. So this is really common in the missionary community.
Speaker 1: So for example, child would die and you know, Renee
Speaker 1: would have her hysterics, and then people would be like,
Speaker 1: Renee got a sovereign There's nothing you could have done.
Speaker 1: Van would have prevented this, because if a child was
Speaker 1: meant to die, child's going to die, and if God
Speaker 1: wanted to prevent it, he would have prevented it. Despite
Speaker 1: Jackie's training, she noticed that Renee would call friends in
Speaker 1: the States or even ask less qualified volunteers for medical advice.
Speaker 1: To Chris, it almost felt like everyone was just playing house,
Speaker 1: but after a child died without explanation, it became almost
Speaker 1: too real. The point I guess for me is when
Speaker 1: I had to drive the van one night to take
Speaker 1: this child's body back of the village um when Jackie
Speaker 1: wrote along too, and I'm driving and we get out
Speaker 1: to the village and people are waiting for us like
Speaker 1: they're wailing and watching Charles or whoever carry out this
Speaker 1: body wrapped in a sheet. That just brought back memories
Speaker 1: of Iraq to me and seeing people get killed there,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, yeah, this is I mean
Speaker 1: to me that this was as real as a war
Speaker 1: at that point, like there were people dying here. She
Speaker 1: knew that the way serving his children operated it wasn't right,
Speaker 1: but no matter how bad it got, Jackie just wouldn't
Speaker 1: or couldn't speak up. I felt like I didn't have
Speaker 1: a right to tell this person who was viewed as
Speaker 1: a superhero Christian viewed as you know, mother Teresa and Carnate.
Speaker 1: I felt like I didn't have a right to tell
Speaker 1: her certain things because I didn't have the same spiritual weight.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the same social weight as her, and
Speaker 1: I just didn't know how to contet end with that.
Speaker 1: But after a little girl left serving his children scarred
Speaker 1: for life, Jackie knew she couldn't keep quiet any longer.
Speaker 1: That entire case. There was so much about that case
Speaker 1: and what went down that just was the absolute nail
Speaker 1: in the coffin of me not being willing to give
Speaker 1: her the benefit of the doubt anymore as to what
Speaker 1: was happening. So then it becomes a whole different issue. Right,
Speaker 1: This isn't just mistakes on other ignorance. This is mistakes
Speaker 1: done attentional. That child's name was Patricia, it was fault
Speaker 1: and Renee hadn't been to church in weeks. The red
Speaker 1: room was overflowing with kids and she was exhausted. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a day of rest and worship,
Speaker 1: but just as a service began, her phone rang. It
Speaker 1: was Mama Fatima, one of her employees at the facility.
Speaker 1: There were two parents at the door and their baby
Speaker 1: was in critical condition. Renee grabbed her bag and hopped
Speaker 1: in the car. She raced across Ginger to get back
Speaker 1: to Missess. On the outskirts of town. When Renee got
Speaker 1: to her facility, a little girl was waiting there for her.
Speaker 1: She was just nine months old. Her parents had been
Speaker 1: trying to find help at different clinics for weeks, but
Speaker 1: nothing was working. Serving his children was their last resort.
Speaker 1: It was clear that she was very ill. She was
Speaker 1: completely swollen from head to toe, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: know by just looking at a kid. You know, you
Speaker 1: really have to do some investigations. So we weren't really
Speaker 1: sure what was going on, but just ran some initial tests.
Speaker 1: The blood tests came back with bad news. Patricia was
Speaker 1: positive for malaria and had a severely low humo globe.
Speaker 1: Account At the time, Serving his children had a doctor
Speaker 1: that would come in to make rounds a few times
Speaker 1: a week. The doctor wasn't at the facility that day
Speaker 1: because it was a Sunday. What was called and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I should probably go ahead and start a blood transfusion,
Speaker 1: So they started one pretty quickly, though Renee noticed something
Speaker 1: wasn't right. Patricia space and neck were swelling up. Within
Speaker 1: a few minutes, her throat was beginning to close, and
Speaker 1: that's when Renee finally called Jackie. I get a call
Speaker 1: from Renee on a Sunday and she's like, could you
Speaker 1: come down to the house. There's this child there and
Speaker 1: I think they're having in an anti flactic action, but
Speaker 1: I don't know because Google says that they're supposed to
Speaker 1: have a rash and they don't have rash, So like,
Speaker 1: could you come see? Blood? Transfusions have become one of
Speaker 1: the more contentious and confusing allegations that have been lodged
Speaker 1: against RENEE, so Halima went out to a few hospitals
Speaker 1: to get a closer look. In her blog, she constantly
Speaker 1: wrote about this desperate search for blood for the children
Speaker 1: at her facility. After visiting countless hospitals and health centers,
Speaker 1: I learned that there was a national blood shortage in Uganda,
Speaker 1: a crisis in fact. On one of my visits to
Speaker 1: the children's hospital in Jina, I remember sitting outside of
Speaker 1: the emergency room waiting for a doctor. As I'm waiting,
Speaker 1: I see a nurse walk by and put the body
Speaker 1: of an older child in a room in front of me,
Speaker 1: and then I see the child's mother come out of
Speaker 1: the room sobbing. Later, a doctor told me that that
Speaker 1: family had been driving throughout the whole night searching for blood.
Speaker 1: For their child. By the time they arrived in Ginger,
Speaker 1: he was nearly dead. Months later, I reached out to
Speaker 1: a malnutrition doctor to learn more about why blood transfusions
Speaker 1: might have been used to treat severely malnourist kids at
Speaker 1: serving his children and can you introduce yourself? What's your
Speaker 1: name and where are you working now? Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: My name is chi Yogo Sant. I'm walking at Embied
Speaker 1: General Fido Hospital as a senior nutritionist and also I
Speaker 1: Nevil as a regional nutritionist. Doctor Serage told me that
Speaker 1: blood transfusions were incredibly risky procedures, especially for severely malnourist kids.
Speaker 1: They were incredibly fragile and often have these other medical complications,
Speaker 1: so even the slightest imbalances could result in death. That's
Speaker 1: why only the most qualified experts or specialists to treat them.
Speaker 1: They needed constant supervision. If someone is not trained any
Speaker 1: nutrition and the management of the student, especially children with complications,
Speaker 1: they will use or apply procedures that are not suitable
Speaker 1: for them, that are suitable for other children, and this
Speaker 1: would cause a lot of death in these children. Dr
Speaker 1: Saraj said that in most cases, a child's hemoglobe account
Speaker 1: would return to normal after a few days of close care,
Speaker 1: but blood transfusions were an absolute last resort. The blood
Speaker 1: itself causes complications, the transfusion would be very very dangerous
Speaker 1: giving access with results to death of this CHILDE So
Speaker 1: that was no one recommended. This is the sidious procedia,
Speaker 1: the dangerous actually prosidia in these child is here, my god,
Speaker 1: I started showing him photos that Renee had posted online
Speaker 1: of children receiving blood transfusions at serving his children. Oh no, when, okay,
Speaker 1: this is very well. Here he is getting your blood, franst. Wow.
Speaker 1: And this child should should not be given a blood transfusion,
Speaker 1: this one, I don't know for what reason, because the
Speaker 1: child looks so stable and the child is well hydritten
Speaker 1: because I can see look at the head, all these brains.
Speaker 1: They shown that the child is okay. When the head
Speaker 1: they appear is the eyes are bright, Charley is very stable.
Speaker 1: Such a child should not be transfused. But I'm warning
Speaker 1: from your perspective, um, you know, even if somebody is
Speaker 1: very talented at putting in i VS, should people without
Speaker 1: this experience, even medical professionals without nutrition expertise, be dealing
Speaker 1: with these cases. No, no, no, no, you see, these
Speaker 1: are sidious medical complications. It should be managed by pediatriction.
Speaker 1: Four years before Serving his Children was opened, there was
Speaker 1: a study done at Uganda's bigg Ast Hospital and Lago
Speaker 1: and it looked at more than two hundred severely malnourished
Speaker 1: children who had died there in The study concluded that
Speaker 1: blood transfusions and i VS were the main risk factors
Speaker 1: in their deaths. Over the years, Renee has gone back
Speaker 1: and forth on whether there were ever blood transfusions done
Speaker 1: at Serving his Children. In an interview with The Smith
Speaker 1: Mountain Eagle, she said, we do a lot of blood transfusions,
Speaker 1: but in her response to the lawsuit, Renee denies that
Speaker 1: Serving his Children performed blood transfusions. They sent children to
Speaker 1: medical facilities to have them done elsewhere. When I asked
Speaker 1: her about it again and whether she was personally involved
Speaker 1: in starting any transfusions, her answer was puzzling. You individually
Speaker 1: didn't start any book intrusions, even to under the discretion
Speaker 1: of a doctor or Serving his Children did. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: and I was usually involved in that process. But I
Speaker 1: didn't like say Okay, this kid needs a blood transfusion
Speaker 1: and then go and do it. Um, so that's not
Speaker 1: to say that I wasn't involved in the process. So
Speaker 1: I'm sure that can be construed as doing it. I
Speaker 1: started a lot of i VS for kids who got
Speaker 1: blood transfusions, but I never carried out all of that
Speaker 1: process on my own discretion. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's an argument over the semantics of a
Speaker 1: risky medical procedure. Patricia was given a blood transfusion at
Speaker 1: serving his children and unlicensed and unrecognized medical facility without
Speaker 1: a doctor present. I don't know why. She was like
Speaker 1: very averse to me being involved in those situations. You
Speaker 1: don't want me here. You need to be in the
Speaker 1: center of this. That's what's very clear to me. It's like,
Speaker 1: not it's not about saving kids. It's a out you
Speaker 1: being someone who saves kids. That's what this is about.
Speaker 1: So I walk in on this and I'm like, in
Speaker 1: this really like horrific situation of like not knowing if
Speaker 1: they're in a state of shock. Did they come in
Speaker 1: wheezing and swollen? I don't know. Jackie knew this was
Speaker 1: more serious than she could handle. Stop the blood, give
Speaker 1: ben and drill um, and then she rushes the child
Speaker 1: to camp Paula. Patricia needed more blood transfusions, but the
Speaker 1: hospital in Kampala didn't have her type. The doctor asked
Speaker 1: Rena if she'd be willing to give a blood sample
Speaker 1: to see if she was compatible. The test came back
Speaker 1: be positive, exactly what Patricia needed. It was almost too
Speaker 1: good to be true. Patricia was given a transfusion with
Speaker 1: Renee's blood and a few days later her condition stabilized.
Speaker 1: She was discharged into Renee's care. But when they got
Speaker 1: back to Ginger, Jackie noticed something strange. Slowly they settle,
Speaker 1: bump appears on her cheek and it's like slowly creeping
Speaker 1: down to her jugular like skin is like gaping off.
Speaker 1: And I'm like going back and forth with the medical
Speaker 1: team that I had in the States, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what they thought, what should we do. Renee took
Speaker 1: photos of Patricia in this condition and posted them on
Speaker 1: her blog. The skin on Patricia's cheek is black and
Speaker 1: bloody and there's white puss around the edges. She has
Speaker 1: plastic tubes running all over her body and looks like
Speaker 1: she's barely hanging on. Jackie didn't know what the disease was,
Speaker 1: but she knew she was running out of time to
Speaker 1: figure it out. Every day, the wound was getting bigger
Speaker 1: and deeper, making its way down to the blood vessels
Speaker 1: and Patricia's neck. Fortunately, a group of nurses and doctors
Speaker 1: from Alabama had just arrived in Ginger to volunteer for
Speaker 1: a few weeks, and after days of desperation, the visiting
Speaker 1: doctor recommended a new tree that plan. As the child
Speaker 1: is recovering, I'm like sorting through the child's medical file
Speaker 1: and I see on one of the papers from the
Speaker 1: hospital it says necrotizing fasciitis question mark written in by
Speaker 1: a doctor. That's medical speak for flesh eating disease. We
Speaker 1: were searching for days, like, trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: this was, how do we treat it. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this child's face was being eaten off. Okay, like you
Speaker 1: saw this, you knew this was here, Like this child
Speaker 1: had already been diagnosed. Before you discharge the child out
Speaker 1: of the hospital, Why would you discharge them? And her
Speaker 1: response was, well, yeah, they mentioned something about that, but
Speaker 1: it just didn't sound like they knew what they were
Speaker 1: talking about. Jackie didn't buy it. She thought there was
Speaker 1: no way a hospital would have discharged the patient after
Speaker 1: a diagnosis like that. I'm not going to say that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't imagine a world at or where
Speaker 1: someone might say, okay, fine, take her home if you
Speaker 1: want to. But I'm just saying it seems very bizarre
Speaker 1: to me that it seemed to be happening to her constantly,
Speaker 1: that doctors were just saying to her, you could do
Speaker 1: a better job than we could do. For her part,
Speaker 1: Renee admits that the discharged documents said that Patricia had
Speaker 1: flesh eating disease, but she claims that the doctors in
Speaker 1: Kampala told her it wasn't a big deal rooms um.
Speaker 1: And the person that I spoke with was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I it's like not a big deal. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know. So the person that wrote her discharged papers,
Speaker 1: you know, wrote his findings in his summary whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And to be honest, I didn't even really read those um.
Speaker 1: I brought them back and gave them to her nurses
Speaker 1: to put in her file. I know, Jackie says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Renee said she didn't know about that or
Speaker 1: wasn't a big deal. But then on these papers, and yeah,
Speaker 1: because I didn't read the papers, I just listened to
Speaker 1: what I was told. If that was an oversight by
Speaker 1: our nurses, then that was an oversight um. Not to
Speaker 1: cast any blame on anyone. Of course, slowly Patricia's swelling
Speaker 1: went away, the wound on her face began closing up.
Speaker 1: As Renee wrote in her blog, the most important thing
Speaker 1: about the days that came is that we saw God
Speaker 1: move in huge ways. He literally performed a miracle before
Speaker 1: our eyes. The pictures on Renee's blog show Patricia with
Speaker 1: a small bandage on her face. Her mother is beaming.
Speaker 1: Patricia is sitting in her lap wearing a yellow polka
Speaker 1: dot diaper. In another picture, she's making a mess out
Speaker 1: of a bowl of beans and rice. Patricia stayed at
Speaker 1: serving his children for a few more weeks before going home,
Speaker 1: but to this day she has a large scar running
Speaker 1: down the side of her face where the disease ate
Speaker 1: away at her There was no need for that child
Speaker 1: to have permanent scarring at all. Now. Granted, I am
Speaker 1: surprised that child survived at all, but I'm sure they
Speaker 1: would have been fine in the hospital, if not clearly better.
Speaker 1: It did away with any illusions Jackie might have had
Speaker 1: about Renee that she was acting selflessly as a good
Speaker 1: Samaritan would. A good Samaritan is walking down the street
Speaker 1: and see somebody who falls over, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: what do I do? I'm going to do my best.
Speaker 1: It's a one off. It's probably the only time in
Speaker 1: the entire life they find themselves in that situation. It's
Speaker 1: not a good Samaritan. She created an e r in
Speaker 1: her living room and then always happened to find herself
Speaker 1: in an emergency. It's like, you don't get to place
Speaker 1: yourself in an e er and then claim what was
Speaker 1: an emergency. She wasn't a good Samaritan. She was a fraud.
Speaker 1: Like that's the difference. Like if I were to walk
Speaker 1: into an ear and just start like willing nearly treating
Speaker 1: people because the line is long, you bet your butt,
Speaker 1: I'd be like kicked out of there and arrested in
Speaker 1: two seconds. That is not a good Samaritan. Law Today,
Speaker 1: Renee admits that her memory of the whole Patricia saga
Speaker 1: is a bit hazy. What you don't understand is that
Speaker 1: I lived in Negana for ten years and Patricia is
Speaker 1: one of like almost a thousand kids that was like this,
Speaker 1: and so recounting her exact story and then being held
Speaker 1: and bound by those details on record for the media
Speaker 1: is really tough because then it kind of is that
Speaker 1: he said, she said game. You know, Jackie's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: Renee said this or Renee did this, And I'm like, honestly,
Speaker 1: don't remember that happening, But if Jackie said it did,
Speaker 1: it's probably true because she likely has a better memory.
Speaker 1: What happened with Patricia is what happened eight times out
Speaker 1: of ten with kids that walked into our front door.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I know it's been said like, oh, she's
Speaker 1: scarred for life from Renee or whatever, and Jackie's had
Speaker 1: a lot of really negative things to say about that
Speaker 1: instance and me in that situation, and I'd love to
Speaker 1: say some really negative things about Jackie and the instituation,
Speaker 1: but in all honesty, Jackie is the one that determined
Speaker 1: the drug that stopped that flash eating bacteria, and so
Speaker 1: if it weren't for Jackie, she could have died. Renee
Speaker 1: denies all of Jackie's accusations entirely. She says she never
Speaker 1: did any of the medical procedures that Jackie claims. She
Speaker 1: says she trusted her local staff and that she only
Speaker 1: assisted when asked by professionals. I was always encouraged and
Speaker 1: led to believe that, like, yes, if someone else can't
Speaker 1: meet this need and you have the know how, then
Speaker 1: you should agree. You know, if someone said can you
Speaker 1: start this I V and you know how? Like, well,
Speaker 1: why would she not? And she denies wanting to push
Speaker 1: Jackie away. Instead, she says that Jackie just couldn't handle
Speaker 1: working at the clinic. Renee says she was too emotional,
Speaker 1: wouldn't take advice from local nurses, and just wasn't ready
Speaker 1: for Uganda. Any time you start a new job, everyone
Speaker 1: who's been there longer than you was always going to
Speaker 1: be like, you don't know anything. You're just such a newie,
Speaker 1: you know. It's so definitely a part of me thinks like, oh,
Speaker 1: come on, Jackie, like buss your heart. You haven't been
Speaker 1: there that long, and your world was very sheltered while
Speaker 1: you were there because you self admittedly like emotionally couldn't
Speaker 1: handle the tough reality of being in a developing situation
Speaker 1: like that. So I don't know that it's really fair
Speaker 1: for you to say like what you would or wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done in this situation. Renee also says that Jackie
Speaker 1: never actually got a license to practice nursing in Uganda,
Speaker 1: which means any medical work that Jackie did would have
Speaker 1: been illegal, But Jackie says that she was told by
Speaker 1: Renee's mother that a nursing license was unnecessary. Shortly after
Speaker 1: Patricia went home, Jackie resigned from serving his children. She
Speaker 1: wrote a letter addressed to the board of directors, made
Speaker 1: up of a few church leaders from back in Virginia.
Speaker 1: The letter was polite, but offered a stern warning of
Speaker 1: what was going on and serving his children. I don't
Speaker 1: wanted a letter to like be like, oh, you're undoubtedly
Speaker 1: motivate it in an intelligent and blah blah blah, but
Speaker 1: you're not trained. And the response is like, that's hurtful,
Speaker 1: and like the fact that you find that hurtful, it's
Speaker 1: really troubling. I don't know what you find hurtful about
Speaker 1: the fact that you're not a trained professional. What you're
Speaker 1: saying is it's hurtful to you to be told that
Speaker 1: you're not believe you are like this fantasy of yourself.
Speaker 1: Years later, Jackie would even help file a police report
Speaker 1: against Renee. No one's going to call out a girl
Speaker 1: who has like dropped her life and moved here and
Speaker 1: is serving serving serving to be like, are you really
Speaker 1: doing this right? Well, they look like a huge asshole now.
Speaker 1: No White Saviors seized on Patricia's story. They shared Renee's
Speaker 1: blogs and photos. The captions reminded followers quote Renee was
Speaker 1: not a license or trained medical professional. Her center was
Speaker 1: also not a licensed medical facility. Yet here they are
Speaker 1: giving a blood transfusion to a critically ill child. There
Speaker 1: was no doubt that Renee and Lorie were losing the
Speaker 1: online battle. It looked like they were losing the ground
Speaker 1: game too. No White Saviors had been canvassing Uganda for
Speaker 1: families who had suffered injury or death at serving his children,
Speaker 1: convincing them to join up in the cause. No White
Speaker 1: Saviors even convinced former volunteers and employees to join the
Speaker 1: lawsuit and put them in touch with journalists ourselves included.
Speaker 1: But Lorie believed she had an ace in the whole.
Speaker 1: A video testimony of Patricia's father, Laurie told me about it.
Speaker 1: This is the child that No w Saviors is saying
Speaker 1: that Renee just figured this child, and Renee did this,
Speaker 1: and you know they're using it to crustify her. But
Speaker 1: the family themselves actually are so thankful and are willing
Speaker 1: to do whatever they can to the corney. That's just
Speaker 1: like one of the kids. The questions appear on a
Speaker 1: black title screen, and James Akello, Patricia's father, answers them
Speaker 1: directly to the camera. He's speaking in his local language,
Speaker 1: and English subtitles are pasted underneath. He speaks quietly and calmly,
Speaker 1: but his eyes keep starting throughout such a James offered
Speaker 1: a glowing review of the services his daughter had received.
Speaker 1: He says that Renee paid for all of Patricia's hospital bills,
Speaker 1: nearly a thousand dollars. He says he's grateful for Renee
Speaker 1: and his eyes the woman who saved his daughter's life.
Speaker 1: I have never seen the white lady treating my child,
Speaker 1: but what I saw our local medics came in to
Speaker 1: treat my child. But the next question, that's what this
Speaker 1: video was really about and why we think Lorie shared
Speaker 1: it with us in the first place. It goes like this,
Speaker 1: will you briefly explain how you met the people who
Speaker 1: are asking you to accuse the white lady, Renee Bach,
Speaker 1: of chopping the meat off of your child. The first
Speaker 1: time we went to serving his children, we met Joyce
Speaker 1: aunt Jackie pastor who would always preach to console us
Speaker 1: every time, and the black man who was the driver.
Speaker 1: James goes on to say that earlier that year he
Speaker 1: was approached by some of Renee's former employees. He says
Speaker 1: they offered to pay his family to give testimony in
Speaker 1: the civil suit that no white save years had helped
Speaker 1: bring against Renee and Gina's High Court. That case is
Speaker 1: still under deliberation. James said they wanted him to say
Speaker 1: that Renee had cut off the skin of his daughter
Speaker 1: and eaten it up. Dumbs mind. Cannibalism is a pretty
Speaker 1: old trope in Africa. In colonial times, missionaries would write
Speaker 1: stories about the man eating cannibals they had encountered in
Speaker 1: the wild. In the seventies, Uganda's old dictator Idioman is
Speaker 1: said to have told a reporter, I don't like human flesh.
Speaker 1: It's too salty for me. The press needless to say,
Speaker 1: ate it up. And if you remember hearing about Joseph
Speaker 1: Coney in two thousand twelve, you might remember claims that
Speaker 1: he made soldiers drink blood or eat human flesh. Even
Speaker 1: these days it's not uncommon to see headlines in the
Speaker 1: Uganda tabloid's about witch doctors in the village making potions
Speaker 1: out of the body parts of children. If Renee's critics
Speaker 1: wanted a headline that was sure to generate clicks and retweets,
Speaker 1: what could be better than white savior eats black babies.
Speaker 1: But in the video, James completely refutes that will do
Speaker 1: the thing to yok and come each other. He goes
Speaker 1: on to say, even for ten million shillings, I can't
Speaker 1: take it and I cannot falsely testify accusing the woman
Speaker 1: who treated my child. But the experience spooked James so
Speaker 1: much that since then he has kept Patricia and hiding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are afraid because the other people here cautioned me
Speaker 1: that these people can come at any time to kidnap
Speaker 1: and kill the child in order to change the case. Okay,
Speaker 1: So as an attempt to clear Renee's name, the video
Speaker 1: sort of falls short because the story James tells is
Speaker 1: just so full of holes. First off, he makes no
Speaker 1: mention of the flesh eating disease that nearly killed his daughter. Then,
Speaker 1: when asked whether Renee ever performed medicine on Patricia, he
Speaker 1: says he never saw any white person touches child, even
Speaker 1: though Jackie Kramlick and a team of visiting doctors tended
Speaker 1: to her for weeks. He even admits that he wasn't
Speaker 1: around at the facility that much. It was his wife
Speaker 1: who stayed by Patricia's side, so how could he speak
Speaker 1: confidently about the care. Finally, No White Saviors, the former employees,
Speaker 1: and the lawyers, none of them had ever accused Renee
Speaker 1: of cannibalism. James was defending her from an allegation that
Speaker 1: no one had made the purpose of the video seemed
Speaker 1: less about Patricia as a success story and more about
Speaker 1: smearing the other side for tampering with witnesses. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the only time, and this happened, according to Renee, No
Speaker 1: White Saviors was paying off Charles, the former program manager
Speaker 1: at serving his children, and so I honestly feel like
Speaker 1: he The NWS had already offered him an extensive amount
Speaker 1: of money to take him to clients, and he was like, well,
Speaker 1: if we sit down and you offer me more money
Speaker 1: than I'll basically work for you and work for you
Speaker 1: by not working for them. Did indicate that that's just
Speaker 1: a personal hunch. Yeah. She also said that both Charles
Speaker 1: and Jacqueline, the former social worker at serving his children.
Speaker 1: We're going around town and swaying ex employees not to
Speaker 1: speak up on behalf of Renee, often through extreme tactics,
Speaker 1: because all of those guys, I think, said more than
Speaker 1: once like oh, Renee's I mean, they said things like
Speaker 1: Renee said she will kill herself if I testify against
Speaker 1: her in court. Renee said she'll just commit suicide. So
Speaker 1: they're they're saying all kinds of things like that. Renee
Speaker 1: said She's going to burn down my house if I
Speaker 1: testify against her court. And soon enough, Renee's camp wasn't
Speaker 1: just accusing No White Saviors or the former employees of
Speaker 1: tampering with the case. She was now starting to accuse
Speaker 1: us of bribery and conspiracy. I'd spend time reporting with
Speaker 1: and about No White Saviors, and Lorie would tell you
Speaker 1: that I was working for them, even called me the
Speaker 1: NWS journalist. I tried to explain, you were embedding as
Speaker 1: a reporter, trying to see the world through their eyes.
Speaker 1: Renee even asked me if you were dating Kelsey, which
Speaker 1: was crazy. It was clear that they were trying to
Speaker 1: drive a wedge between us. I even heard a rumor
Speaker 1: in Ginger that I had been fired from the investigation
Speaker 1: for bribing sources to give false testimonies. To me, this
Speaker 1: felt like another window into Lorie and Renee's worldview. Again
Speaker 1: and again they viewed these small, isolated events in their
Speaker 1: lives as being part of some broader evil or a
Speaker 1: broader grace. Lori and Renee's this whole case not as
Speaker 1: one based on what actually happened at Serving his Children,
Speaker 1: but as a campaign engineered by people with personal vendettas
Speaker 1: against Renee. It was a version of the story where
Speaker 1: Renee was the real victim. So yeah, to them, I
Speaker 1: was just another conspirator. It seemed like every time our
Speaker 1: team started investigating some part of this story, something would
Speaker 1: come up to try to throw us off the scent
Speaker 1: or distract us from our investigation, And each time that happened,
Speaker 1: the truth of what actually went on at Serving his
Speaker 1: Children all of those years ago got muddier and muddier.
Speaker 1: The video and the cannibalism rumors were a message that bribes, intimidation,
Speaker 1: and other criminal activities were happening in the backdrop of
Speaker 1: our investigation. But was any of that real, or was
Speaker 1: it an attempt to take the focus off of Renee
Speaker 1: and put the blame on everyone, anyone but her. On
Speaker 1: the next episode of The Missionary, we go beyond the
Speaker 1: media frenzy and the rumors to try to find the
Speaker 1: medical facts what happened. Now, I've got a story that
Speaker 1: got me just I even wanted to just throw this
Speaker 1: at somewhere for real. It got me so emotional, and
Speaker 1: it's all about this fake ass, you know, white supremacist.
Speaker 1: She ain't even a doctor. She didn't get children who
Speaker 1: were fine from the villages, but she was getting children
Speaker 1: from the villages who are the spirit to bring them
Speaker 1: and how at least they for them to afford a
Speaker 1: smile if they were readying those children who are dying
Speaker 1: happy being attended to. Saw that video running, so she
Speaker 1: wanted to know the issues to do that first. It
Speaker 1: went down. Producer Primary Port The Missionaries produced an association
Speaker 1: with iHeartMedia. It's written and reported by Roger Gola, Helene
Speaker 1: mcge Coondi, and Malcolm Burnley. It's produced by Michelle Lands
Speaker 1: and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto is our story editor. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mangish Thicketter, our fact checker. Is Austin Thompson,
Speaker 1: mixing by Josh Rogisson and voice acting by Taylor Kaufman.