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. Amen. Amen, Now, Renie,
Speaker 1: before you go, obviously, I'm praying that there's gonna be
Speaker 1: some young people listening going maybe the Lord wants me
Speaker 1: to do something like that. But I don't want to
Speaker 1: put words in your mouth. What's on your heart today
Speaker 1: as we sit here? Well, you know, um, I moved
Speaker 1: to Ganda and I was really young. Prior to leaving
Speaker 1: and moving, there was a lot of fear. Am I
Speaker 1: going to fail? Am I going to be that person
Speaker 1: that you know said I was going to do this
Speaker 1: thing for the Lord and just couldn't do it and
Speaker 1: didn't have the strength or didn't have the knowledge, or
Speaker 1: couldn't rally their resources. That was a real fear for me.
Speaker 1: But the Lord just continued to bring to mind that
Speaker 1: if you trust in him, even your failures can be
Speaker 1: made beautiful. And I think that that was renee Bach
Speaker 1: did trust in the Lord with all her heart her
Speaker 1: whole life. She listened to him, saw his wisdom, followed
Speaker 1: his lead, and he led her from a small town
Speaker 1: in Virginia all the way to Uganda, where she started
Speaker 1: a charity to help malnourished kids. Renee was entrepreneurial, inspiring.
Speaker 1: She was the perfect local girl does good story. Here
Speaker 1: she is on a Virginia Christian radio station called equipm FM.
Speaker 1: We just launched a campaign this past month called Cycle Breakers.
Speaker 1: We really do believe that Malnatician is a cycle um
Speaker 1: and then it really can be broken, and we need
Speaker 1: people just like you to help us break that cycle.
Speaker 1: We are completely funded by generous owners. Renee was a
Speaker 1: modern missionary. She didn't work for institutions like the Seletian
Speaker 1: Sisters or the International Mission Board. Instead, she ran her
Speaker 1: ministry like a tech startup, raising money through blogs, marketing
Speaker 1: through YouTube videos, and doing church tours and radio interviews
Speaker 1: like this one. And that's when I found it serving
Speaker 1: his children. How old were you? I was nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: That's just when I read that piece in the paper
Speaker 1: about your ministry, I'm thinking that is crazy because I
Speaker 1: wasn't thinking about starting ministries at nineteen years old. So
Speaker 1: obviously the Lord really had a special plan for you.
Speaker 1: And and still does. I mean you're you're so if
Speaker 1: God had a plan for Renee Bach, then why did
Speaker 1: he lead her to where she is today? Tonight at six,
Speaker 1: a Betverord woman is facing disturbing allegations about her nonprofit
Speaker 1: in Uganda. Essentially, a U s Citis been with no
Speaker 1: medical training set up a medical clinic in Uganda serving
Speaker 1: his children was actually shut down and five children died
Speaker 1: at an unlicensed treatment center for malnourished kids in Uganda
Speaker 1: is being sued in Ugandan court. This girl going into
Speaker 1: this situation just the savior complex on our own. It's
Speaker 1: closed to people's lives. I'm Rogi Gola, I'm a journalist
Speaker 1: and I moved to Uganda last year. Just five days
Speaker 1: after I got there, I received a message on WhatsApp.
Speaker 1: It was about Renee Back and it was one of
Speaker 1: the wildest leads i'd ever heard, probably the most severe
Speaker 1: case of the Savior complex we've ever seen. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: children have died as a result. The message came from
Speaker 1: Kelsey Nielsen, one of the founders of an activist group
Speaker 1: called No White Saviors. She was a former missionary. She'd
Speaker 1: seen the inside of that world and now she was
Speaker 1: speaking out. Kelsey told me that Renee wasn't just feeding
Speaker 1: or ministering to kids. She was playing god, she was
Speaker 1: masquerading as a doctor, and hundreds of kids had died
Speaker 1: because of her actions, and that Renee was back home
Speaker 1: in Virginia living scott free most of the time. If
Speaker 1: you're white and have money and access to the right resources,
Speaker 1: you're not You're going to be able to get away
Speaker 1: with whatever you want to. And I think know Kelsey
Speaker 1: and here you've gone, and co founder Olivia Alasso, we're
Speaker 1: helping to file a case against Renee in Uganda's High
Speaker 1: court fields like, finally someone will pay four hundreds of
Speaker 1: kids deaths that have been written off as good deeds
Speaker 1: um for so long, that just because of some spiritual
Speaker 1: bypassing in some God complex, that someone can come and
Speaker 1: practice medicine without a medical degree. No White Saviors had
Speaker 1: been sounding the alarm about Renee on Instagram for months.
Speaker 1: It was the centerpiece of their advocacy. People in the
Speaker 1: comments called Renee a serial killer, an angel of death.
Speaker 1: At first, I was skeptical. Hundreds of dead kids, and
Speaker 1: the more I looked into the story, the more the
Speaker 1: accusations piled up that she'd been stealing children from hospitals
Speaker 1: and villages, experimenting on them. The children were like, it
Speaker 1: was like a science lab where everyone will touch and
Speaker 1: you know, try to inject, try to do that. So
Speaker 1: for me, there's no excuse for that. There were allegations
Speaker 1: of murder, government conspiracies. It is shocking the medical profession
Speaker 1: after one of their own was gunned down in Iganga
Speaker 1: District Friday night, Bribery, blackmail, even cannibalism. The father of
Speaker 1: Patricia alleges that he was bribed to tell the courts
Speaker 1: that Renee cut off the skin of Patricia's face and
Speaker 1: kept in the fridge so she could eat it. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: I knew right away that it would be tough to
Speaker 1: pick apart rumors from facts. This wasn't a story about
Speaker 1: just one victim, one event, or one crime. It was
Speaker 1: a saga that stretched over ten years, to continents and
Speaker 1: touched thousands of lives. So I pulled together a team
Speaker 1: Malcolm Burnley in Philadelphia and Helimakkandhi and Kenya, and together
Speaker 1: we spent the next year investigating Renee's story. We ended
Speaker 1: up interviewing over a hundred people, and almost no one
Speaker 1: could agree on what kind of person Renee Bach was
Speaker 1: or if she'd done anything wrong at all. Just a
Speaker 1: few months ago, this story might have felt distant, But now,
Speaker 1: as we're all caught in a deadly battle between arrogant
Speaker 1: ignorance and a desire for authority, we can trust it's
Speaker 1: closer than ever. In association with I Heeart Media, I'm
Speaker 1: Roger Gola. I I'm Malcolm Burnley, and this is the
Speaker 1: missionary episode one the Lord's Work. Before we dive in,
Speaker 1: let's get you situated. Our story takes place in the
Speaker 1: town of Jinja in Uganda. Pull up a map of
Speaker 1: Africa and find the mouth of the Nile River where
Speaker 1: Egypt meets the Mediterranean. Then trace it all the way
Speaker 1: down through Sudan, past South Sudan and into Uganda. And
Speaker 1: right there underneath your fingertip, that's Ginger. It's a small
Speaker 1: town on the lip of Lake Victoria, a lush, tropical
Speaker 1: paradise built on the banks of the world's longest river.
Speaker 1: Gingers become known as the adventure sports capital of East Africa.
Speaker 1: Tourists from around the world come to Ginger for its
Speaker 1: world famous rapids, bungee jumping, mountain biking and hiking. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get going. I had Arthur Wassawa take me through
Speaker 1: town one afternoon. As a professional tour guide, he spent
Speaker 1: years working with Westerners, or as they're called here, Mazungos.
Speaker 1: A lot of actually a lot of people who write
Speaker 1: to me or emailed me about inquiries. They have read
Speaker 1: about the country and they're very educated about the country.
Speaker 1: Other people think it's the jungle, most especially missionaries who
Speaker 1: have been a kind of tote that they're going to jungle,
Speaker 1: expected jungle. I don't really talk to your Gunmans unless
Speaker 1: they're told the space to Ugandon. So it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: Main Street is the heart of Ginger. One side is Ugandan,
Speaker 1: full of shops and apartments and street stalls. The other
Speaker 1: is for foreigners with upscale hotels, hip coffee shops and
Speaker 1: souvenir stalls. I mean, so this part of town, I
Speaker 1: mean it seems like it's largely Uganda, not Zongles on
Speaker 1: the side. Yeah, there's a there's a sort of divide,
Speaker 1: uh them there on the other side and this guy
Speaker 1: is there on this side. You know. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: divide does happened in the last year or so. Hold,
Speaker 1: this guy doesn't stop. No one stops in traffic here.
Speaker 1: Everyone has right away. If you take the Ugandan side
Speaker 1: of main Street all the way down, you end up
Speaker 1: on a pothole road that follows the shore of like Victoria.
Speaker 1: The road is lined with factories and warehouses and a
Speaker 1: fish processing plant that stinks up the whole neighborhood. On
Speaker 1: the other side is Messesse, where Renee set up shop
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. And Messesse is kind of like
Speaker 1: the slum of our area. And so I was advised
Speaker 1: several times by by folks in Uganda, like I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's a good idea, you being like a
Speaker 1: Western girl by yourself moving to Missess. But I just
Speaker 1: felt so strongly that's where the Lord had us, and
Speaker 1: he used among shacks made of scrapwood and tin roofing.
Speaker 1: Rene's house was easy to spot. It was a two
Speaker 1: story brick building with a wrap around porch and clean
Speaker 1: white banisters, almost like a New England bed and breakfast,
Speaker 1: and it served double duty. It was Renee's home and
Speaker 1: the headquarters of her new NGO. Serving his children. Serving
Speaker 1: his children took a single action, a single choice, and
Speaker 1: it was bold enough to cause others to do the same.
Speaker 1: Save a life. The goal of the NGO was to
Speaker 1: fight child malnutrition, a daunting task, especially in a place
Speaker 1: where thirty of the population faces chronic food in security.
Speaker 1: The Lord just allowed me to see that malnutrition is
Speaker 1: such an issue in Uganda that's often really hidden in
Speaker 1: dark places, and families are ashamed of having children that
Speaker 1: are malnourished. And it wasn't a need that other ministries
Speaker 1: in our area were meeting. And by all accounts, serving
Speaker 1: as children was an early success. Twice a week, hundreds
Speaker 1: of kids would line up with empty bowls and wait
Speaker 1: their turn for beans and rice. I think it was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: she's serving a thousand children lunch out of her yard.
Speaker 1: Like that's Ashley Laverty, one of Renee's first friends in Ginger.
Speaker 1: And again it was kind of like a tourist attraction.
Speaker 1: People would come on those specific days specifically to go
Speaker 1: serve rice and beans to the kids of messssy and
Speaker 1: like photo op, like serving these poor kids around the world.
Speaker 1: There these global hotspots for missionaries like poor to Prince
Speaker 1: and Haiti and San Jose and Costa Rica. Similarly, Jinja
Speaker 1: is home to hundreds of NGOs and just as many
Speaker 1: young eager people following their calling and even in the
Speaker 1: community like that, Renee stood out. She was just twenty
Speaker 1: years old, the director of her own organization, helping thousands
Speaker 1: of people. Here's Jackie Kramlick, one of Renee's old volunteers.
Speaker 1: Anyone who would have been in Ginger around that time
Speaker 1: with Renee would remember a time where, you know, she
Speaker 1: get a call in the middle of church or in
Speaker 1: the middle of the party or whatever and just grab
Speaker 1: her stuff and run out the door. And she, I
Speaker 1: think really liked that. Being the kind of the emergency person,
Speaker 1: she always felt like there was something more that she
Speaker 1: could do. Like when I remember Rene, she just always
Speaker 1: wanted to be doing the next thing. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of her personality is just always very much focused on
Speaker 1: like the next project she was going to start. In
Speaker 1: terms of people who just like plan on conquering everything,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would definitely consider her a very ambitious person.
Speaker 1: That ambition led Renee to transform serving his children from
Speaker 1: a simple feeding program into a full on rehabilitation center
Speaker 1: with impatient services and professional medical equipment. That decision would
Speaker 1: eventually split open the entire missionary community. Again, Ashley Laverty,
Speaker 1: there was just a lot of strength. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was a very clear divide. You were either pro Renee
Speaker 1: and going to stand up for her and you know,
Speaker 1: have her back, or you were very much against what
Speaker 1: she was doing and just kind of outraged by it all.
Speaker 1: Last January, I made my first trip to Ginja. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be there as Kelsey Nielsen from No White
Speaker 1: Saviors and her Ugandan co founder Olivia Alasso filed the
Speaker 1: case against Forna in Jina's High Court. It feels like
Speaker 1: I don't know Christmas for me today, like I'm just
Speaker 1: just bringing the paperwork here. Seems like a victory for
Speaker 1: both of them. I'm just fitting to alive. I'm checking
Speaker 1: right now. But I think this is like what we've
Speaker 1: waited for, Like this comes to the world right now
Speaker 1: that the kiss has been filed, it's on record. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I started reporting this project, it felt like No
Speaker 1: Waight Saviors was the story. It was a charismatic premise,
Speaker 1: two young women, one American the other Ugandan fighting for
Speaker 1: justice and trying to radically change their communities from the inside.
Speaker 1: I think being a white person and it all involved
Speaker 1: in this is like again totally like there is no
Speaker 1: me being the hero or me doing It's literally the
Speaker 1: things we should be doing like we should be holding
Speaker 1: each other accountable, and we should be doing what we
Speaker 1: know is right instead of just pretending these things don't exist.
Speaker 1: We should be using our access to resources to rectify
Speaker 1: these situations that, otherwise injustice would have just continued. Kelsey
Speaker 1: and Olivia spoke so passionately it was hard not to
Speaker 1: get carried away. They made it clear that this fight
Speaker 1: wasn't just about Renee and tied it to bigger issues
Speaker 1: of racism and colonialism. They made it feel like this
Speaker 1: case really was a historic milestone. They made me want
Speaker 1: to believe in their fight as much as they did.
Speaker 1: No Weight Saviors have been effective at using Instagram to
Speaker 1: draw attention to Renee's story, but they've been hard at
Speaker 1: work on the ground as well. For months, Kelsey and
Speaker 1: Olivia had been gathering evidence and tracking down witnesses to
Speaker 1: file a core case against Serving his children. Once they
Speaker 1: had the funding, they hired a Yuganian law firm to
Speaker 1: file a civil case on behalf of the two grieving mothers,
Speaker 1: one was Gimbo Zoo Beta. In her affidavit, she says
Speaker 1: that in she lets Serving his children take her malner
Speaker 1: three year old to Lali to Ginger for treatment. Three
Speaker 1: days later, Gimbo was told that her son was dead.
Speaker 1: She received to Lali wrapped in a white sheet and
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars as a condolence. The other mother's name was
Speaker 1: Kakai Rose. Her one year old son, Elijah Kawa Gambe,
Speaker 1: had been diagnosed with TB. She says, us serving his
Speaker 1: children worker insisted that she admit her son to the facility.
Speaker 1: After a few days, they were sent home without any
Speaker 1: information or medication. Elijah died three days later. Those are
Speaker 1: our future leaders in this country that died, future lawyers
Speaker 1: and doctors. She shut at their gems by not giving
Speaker 1: them a chance to live. The mother's demands are simple
Speaker 1: compensation for their loss and the permanent shutdown of serving
Speaker 1: his children. For Kelsey, a former missionary with her own NGO,
Speaker 1: there was something personal about the moment. It's a civil
Speaker 1: rights case, and I think for me, being a white
Speaker 1: person who has done work in this town for several years,
Speaker 1: being a recovering white savior, as I say myself, this
Speaker 1: is going to go down in history. We're definitely not
Speaker 1: the heroes of the story. The families who have stood
Speaker 1: up and said I'm going to fight for justice for
Speaker 1: my children. It's an honor to even be at all
Speaker 1: part of this and to to see them and their courage.
Speaker 1: After hanging around the courthouse all afternoon, the court registrar
Speaker 1: finally gave us a hearing date March twelve. Over the
Speaker 1: coming months, that date would be pushed back again and again,
Speaker 1: first to January, then to February, then March. But I
Speaker 1: jumped into my investigation right away. The cornerstone of the
Speaker 1: case against Renee is a handful of her Yugandan employees.
Speaker 1: They worked with Renee for years but were fired in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen over a pay dispute. In their affidavits, they
Speaker 1: claimed to have seen hundreds of dead children, gross medical malpractice,
Speaker 1: and that they suffered from racist and discriminatory treatment. We
Speaker 1: are recording this for a radio documentary. Kelsey set up
Speaker 1: a meeting for me with some of the former employees
Speaker 1: in Ginger and the information you provide. We met at
Speaker 1: a hotel early in the afternoon and took seats in
Speaker 1: the sunny courtyard away from the other guests. They sipped
Speaker 1: cokes and fantas and told me their stories from their
Speaker 1: years with Renee. My name is Lana Jays, I worked
Speaker 1: with serving his stidren from two thousand thirteen tooth and seventeen.
Speaker 1: Asa Joyce Alana worked with Renee for four years, and
Speaker 1: she was proud of the work she did. I was contented.
Speaker 1: I loved what I used to do. I was like,
Speaker 1: if I'm to leave this work, is there someone who
Speaker 1: is going to come and do the exact thing I'm doing?
Speaker 1: How was like, let me be ready. Toself Joyce told
Speaker 1: me that Renee performed medical treatments on children, but she
Speaker 1: assumed Renee knew what she was doing. In fact, I
Speaker 1: thought she's a nurse or a medical expert. Also where
Speaker 1: because I saw her she introduced that myself to me
Speaker 1: as a director and I saw her doing medical practices,
Speaker 1: doing other things, So myself I concluded that she's a
Speaker 1: medical expert. Yeah. But the longer she was there, the
Speaker 1: more trouble she became. The thing which which had me.
Speaker 1: Most children dying all of a sudden, you find you
Speaker 1: reach home, they call you this one has died. Even
Speaker 1: in the morning. At times you come and you find
Speaker 1: the bad is empty, as what happened to this child?
Speaker 1: They will tell you that the child has died. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I used to take the dead buddies to dead villages.
Speaker 1: Charles Alwaeny was the oldest of the crew, and he's
Speaker 1: in his early fifties, short and bald, and has the
Speaker 1: leathery hands of a farm worker. At different points he
Speaker 1: worked as a driver, program manager, and security guard for
Speaker 1: serving his children. In his affidavit, Charles wrote that he
Speaker 1: would see anywhere from seven to ten dead children every
Speaker 1: week now as I take the dead buddies, I was
Speaker 1: always given the task of explaining how these children were daying,
Speaker 1: and it was really hard for me. I couldn't explain
Speaker 1: anything because one, I'm not a medical doctor, and I
Speaker 1: don't know what caused the death of the child? What what?
Speaker 1: It was something that I had for me. And I
Speaker 1: was almost seven to ten a week. If that was true,
Speaker 1: the death toll would get into the thousands in just
Speaker 1: a few years. I hunt Buffalo, so I brought my
Speaker 1: rifle into the country with me legally, and I kept
Speaker 1: it at the police station. Elizabeth Nicholson was one of
Speaker 1: the older missionaries in town. Were chuffed this this silly
Speaker 1: little woman went this big giant rifle. I had heard
Speaker 1: that she was the wild white lady in Ginger. When
Speaker 1: I finally met her. I wasn't disappointed. I go hunting
Speaker 1: when I want to kill some person, then I go
Speaker 1: out into the bush and get out my aggressions. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: was a real estate agent in California in a previous life,
Speaker 1: but she heard God calling her to Uganda ten years
Speaker 1: ago and she hasn't looked back since. She saw a
Speaker 1: place with institutions that were struggling to keep up, and
Speaker 1: she wanted to support them. Children and the children's hospital
Speaker 1: now La Fania were three sometimes four to a bed,
Speaker 1: or they were on the concrete floor in the corridor.
Speaker 1: The children of malnutrition are very vulnerable, so I ended
Speaker 1: up building another mini hospital on the government hospital grounds.
Speaker 1: It was an attritional unit. You had a free place
Speaker 1: for the malnourished children to be and to stay as
Speaker 1: long as they needed. Elizabeth and Renee were both dealing
Speaker 1: with malnourished kids, which means Elizabeth ran into Renee at
Speaker 1: the local hospital on a regular basis. At first, she
Speaker 1: thought Renee was just another young, pretty missionary. But then
Speaker 1: something strange started happening. I noticed that well, there would
Speaker 1: be malnourished children and then one day they'd be gone.
Speaker 1: What happened? Why? Each time this happened, Elizabeth assumed the
Speaker 1: worst that the child had died in hospital, or maybe optimistically,
Speaker 1: that the kid had recovered and gone home. But it
Speaker 1: turns out it was neither what I was told. She
Speaker 1: was paying a couple of the nurses to let her
Speaker 1: know every time a malnourished child came, and then she
Speaker 1: would come to the hospital and she would talk to
Speaker 1: the parents into signing out and then taking the child
Speaker 1: to her, which I thought was wrong. It was something
Speaker 1: the former employees had written about in their affidavits as well.
Speaker 1: Renee called them referrals. Others called it kidnapping. I'd begun
Speaker 1: to get nervous about all the children that were ending
Speaker 1: up with her. She didn't make sense when they had
Speaker 1: the government free hospital and free food. So I decided
Speaker 1: that I would least like to go and check and
Speaker 1: see what it was like. When I went there, Renee
Speaker 1: wasn't there. She was in America. She had I think
Speaker 1: three volunteers who are about eighteen years old, weren't trained
Speaker 1: in anything medical, and they had like children. I found
Speaker 1: it appalling. Elizabeth had good reason to be frustrated. She'd
Speaker 1: been fighting child malnutrition for a decade. In her mind,
Speaker 1: she's been doing it the right way, following the rules
Speaker 1: and letting doctors take the lead. I mean, my understanding
Speaker 1: is she has her high school g e d. She
Speaker 1: didn't even finish regular high school. She didn't at the
Speaker 1: time have any medical I think now she only has
Speaker 1: um like Red Cross stuff. And she was doing things
Speaker 1: that we're not only out of her capabilities, but we're painful,
Speaker 1: not nice easy things, um, taking jiggers out of toes okay, fine,
Speaker 1: but emptying somebody's kidneys with a long syringe no, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: and slitting their chest to get into their lungs. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of doctors that won't do this and know
Speaker 1: we need a specialist for that to be clear. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: didn't actually see any of this firsthand, but these were
Speaker 1: the rumors that have been floating around Ginja for years.
Speaker 1: Eventually Elizabeth would even get the police involved and try
Speaker 1: to get Renee shut down. I heard a lot that
Speaker 1: she was stubborn, She wouldn't listen to anybody. She looked
Speaker 1: down on yuganden professionals, didn't take advice from anybody. What
Speaker 1: leads Renee to go down this path? She thinks that's
Speaker 1: what God wants her to do. Although the idea that
Speaker 1: God would want her to operate on children which she
Speaker 1: has no training, and there's a hospital ten minutes away,
Speaker 1: it's a little hard to swell. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's incomprehensible to me. It was such an
Speaker 1: outstandingly evil thing. So many children were dying, and it
Speaker 1: was getting bigger and bigger. Honestly, from the get go,
Speaker 1: I had my doubts about the case of success. Holding
Speaker 1: the filing in my hands, it was flimsy, maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred pages, front to back, printed double sided. Yes, there
Speaker 1: were strong affidavits from Ashley Jackie and the former employees,
Speaker 1: but the evidence, that's where the trouble was. It was
Speaker 1: mostly anecdotal. There were a few photographs of malnourished children
Speaker 1: and some Health Ministry protocols and registration documents, and sure
Speaker 1: there were a couple of photos of Renee inserting IVY lines,
Speaker 1: but that's a procedure anyone could be trained to do,
Speaker 1: and didn't speak to the more severe allegations of medical misconduct.
Speaker 1: Without much more, it would be difficult to keep this
Speaker 1: case from getting into he said, she said, So we
Speaker 1: set out to look for those details, but we also
Speaker 1: needed to hear from Renee herself. In the court documents
Speaker 1: and all around town. There was something that kept coming up,
Speaker 1: Renee's blogs. Blogging was huge among young missionaries, heroic stories
Speaker 1: of service in far flung corners of the world and
Speaker 1: pictures of children suffering starvation and disease who needed your
Speaker 1: help in your prayers, So send money now. They were
Speaker 1: the millennial version of those old Sally Struthers ads where
Speaker 1: she holds a starving, sick child in her arms and
Speaker 1: asks you for donations while a number flashes underneath. It's
Speaker 1: enough to make the angels cry. No. I can't get
Speaker 1: used to this any more than you could. But we
Speaker 1: can get rid of it. Yes you can. Your seventy
Speaker 1: cents will put one of these otherwise doomed boys or
Speaker 1: girls into a clean and bright to Elizabeth. The blogs
Speaker 1: are proof of Renee's insincerity, that she cared more about
Speaker 1: her image than actually helping kids. It was on her
Speaker 1: website and her blog or what, but that she had
Speaker 1: to do these medical things and are to save these
Speaker 1: children because help was so far away and so expensive.
Speaker 1: People really liked that this wonderful woman who's sacrificing, and
Speaker 1: I think that was her thing. I don't think she
Speaker 1: was doing what was best for the children. I think
Speaker 1: she was doing what was exciting and powerful for Renee,
Speaker 1: and getting an awful lot of money for it. Kelsey
Speaker 1: from No White Saviors painted and even darker picture. Every
Speaker 1: time a kid dies, you're writing a blog post, You're
Speaker 1: getting all its attention. You might become addicted to, like
Speaker 1: child death. You might become addicted to like the attention
Speaker 1: and the like the rush you get from it. I
Speaker 1: hope that's not the case, but I don't think we
Speaker 1: can weigh that out. Renee took her blogs down a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and they're only a handful in the
Speaker 1: case filing. So I did some googling and managed to
Speaker 1: find over a hundred of her old posts. I printed
Speaker 1: them all out and spent an entire weekend hold up
Speaker 1: in my room reading through them. At first, I was
Speaker 1: looking for evidence against Renee, proof that she was doing
Speaker 1: what Elizabeth Kelsey and the former employees were telling me,
Speaker 1: and I found some examples easily enough. There were blogs
Speaker 1: about kids hooked up to medical equipment in a red
Speaker 1: room that served as an ic you for serving his
Speaker 1: children there are plenty of stories about kids being brought
Speaker 1: over from the local hospital to miss Essay, and there
Speaker 1: were more than a handful of eulogies that Renee had
Speaker 1: written to children who had passed away over the years.
Speaker 1: The truth is I expected to hate Renee. I'd spent
Speaker 1: weeks hearing stories about how evil she was, how she'd
Speaker 1: been killing kids experimenting on them. But the blogs painted
Speaker 1: a totally different picture. Here's one from We had a
Speaker 1: voice actor read them and they're edited for clarity. I
Speaker 1: am an all or nothing kind of person, and it's
Speaker 1: hard for me not to be able to give to everyone.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa once said, you can do no great thing,
Speaker 1: only small things with great love. I have to remind
Speaker 1: myself of that almost every day, because I believe that
Speaker 1: when you have a great love for Jesus, everything else
Speaker 1: you do is turned into greatness. So if all you
Speaker 1: do in a day is smile at a lady on
Speaker 1: the street or feed four fifty hungry orphan children, you
Speaker 1: have achieved greatness in God's eyes. But there was something
Speaker 1: else about Renee's writing. Her words felt familiar. Then I
Speaker 1: read one of her blogs about a woman named Lydia.
Speaker 1: So much of her body had been overtaken, consumed by
Speaker 1: her si kness. She was scarcely recognizable, but her hands
Speaker 1: and her feet they remained the same. She lay in bed,
Speaker 1: her skeletal figure almost invisible, underneath a single sheet. Renee
Speaker 1: wrote that Lydia was a young woman who sold bananas
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. Her son had been in Renee's malnutrition
Speaker 1: program and had gone home healthy. But soon after that,
Speaker 1: Lydia discovered that she was HIV positive. I sat down
Speaker 1: near her and spoke softly, would you like me to
Speaker 1: paint your fingernails? She slowly opened her eyes and barely
Speaker 1: nodded in response. Renee helped her get medications, but six
Speaker 1: months later got a phone call that Lydia wasn't doing well.
Speaker 1: The sickness had eaten away at her. She was just
Speaker 1: fifty three pounds. I picked up one of her limp
Speaker 1: hands and started to change her dull nails into a
Speaker 1: bright shade or bread. I painted each finger nail slowly
Speaker 1: with care, praying for God to restore strength, to allow
Speaker 1: her the privilege of holding her baby girl again, even
Speaker 1: just once more, so that the next time I could
Speaker 1: paint her fingers purple. Because purple was her favorite. The
Speaker 1: next day, God decided it was time to restore Lydia,
Speaker 1: to make her completely whole by taking her to be
Speaker 1: with him. I was sad to say goodbye, but I
Speaker 1: know I'll see her again dancing in heaven, clothed in
Speaker 1: many shades of purple. I felt like I'd been here before.
Speaker 1: I had written these exact words in my own journal.
Speaker 1: When I was a junior in college, I went to
Speaker 1: South Sudan to try my hand as a freelance reporter.
Speaker 1: Two weeks in, I heard that a town up north
Speaker 1: had been attacked. People were forced to flee their homes
Speaker 1: in large parts of town had been burned to the ground.
Speaker 1: Many people told the stay don't feel safe to return
Speaker 1: to their homes given in Wow Town. When I got there,
Speaker 1: it felt like a ghost town. The only people I
Speaker 1: saw were soldiers, and the scene felt empty, a certain
Speaker 1: kind of hopeless. But then I met Sister Gracie. It
Speaker 1: was at the Catholic compound in the middle of town,
Speaker 1: where thousands of people had sought refuge. She said, I
Speaker 1: reminded her of her nephew back in India, and she
Speaker 1: took me in for the next two weeks. I lived
Speaker 1: by her side as she dealt with the fallout from
Speaker 1: the attack. This is from an interview she did with
Speaker 1: BBC's Outwork. Back when I arrived, there was thousands of
Speaker 1: people walking towards the town, almost without clothes, just naked,
Speaker 1: but just as skeleton and the health of sender was
Speaker 1: fitted with. She's been in Wow for decades, building hospitals,
Speaker 1: running schools, and helping orphans find families. She was fearless,
Speaker 1: staring down soldiers at checkpoints, and she was funny teasing
Speaker 1: her former students. She was tireless. She woke up before
Speaker 1: I did and was still working long after I fell asleep.
Speaker 1: But on some nights when it was just the two
Speaker 1: of us, she would cry. She told me she was
Speaker 1: filled with doubt. She didn't know if she was really
Speaker 1: doing the Lord's work or she was working in vain.
Speaker 1: She knew she had to keep helping people, doing what
Speaker 1: she thought was right, but what did it all lead to?
Speaker 1: It was severe. It's seen many mothers, many babies dying
Speaker 1: out of hunger, and it gave me a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: and I asked the Lord give me strength to work
Speaker 1: for these people until my death. One evening, she took
Speaker 1: me to the government hospital. We went to the children's
Speaker 1: ward and found a teenage girl lying in bed. She
Speaker 1: was so skinny, she just disappeared under the sheets, just
Speaker 1: like Lydia. But then I noticed her fingernail polish, a
Speaker 1: glittery silver. So often in war, where people are forced
Speaker 1: to live in humiliating conditions, it's easy to forget that
Speaker 1: people are people. They become statistics and cases and problems
Speaker 1: to be solved. But seeing this girl with her nails
Speaker 1: painted made her a person again. Before she was in
Speaker 1: this bed, she was a kid. She went to school,
Speaker 1: she hung out with her friends, and she painted her nails.
Speaker 1: It's an image I still see so vividly in my mind.
Speaker 1: Sister Gracie asked the girl's family to stand up. They
Speaker 1: all held hands, bowed their heads, and she said a
Speaker 1: prayer for them. On the way back to the car,
Speaker 1: Sister Gracie whispered to me that the girl wouldn't make
Speaker 1: it through the night. When I returned to the States,
Speaker 1: all I could think about was Sister Gracie. For the
Speaker 1: first time I had seen someone who dedicated their entire
Speaker 1: life to serving others. I felt like every day I
Speaker 1: didn't follow her example, I was taking the easy way
Speaker 1: out for a while. I even thought about dropping out
Speaker 1: of school to go work by her side, until a
Speaker 1: few friends convinced me otherwise. In some ways, I wish
Speaker 1: they hadn't. God keeps sending kids, so I keep saying yes.
Speaker 1: Who am I to say no? Some people say I'm insane, Well, folks,
Speaker 1: I would have to agree with you. Some days I
Speaker 1: think I've literally gone insane. What you hear in Renee's
Speaker 1: words depends entirely on what you believe so far. Maybe
Speaker 1: you hear a woman of good intentions who made some mistakes,
Speaker 1: or maybe you hear a predator posing as a saint.
Speaker 1: I feel like as Christians, we are called to live
Speaker 1: an insane life, a life set apart, a life that
Speaker 1: is not normal by any sense of the word, A
Speaker 1: life that would cause others to wonder, what the heck,
Speaker 1: why on earth would she do that? Now, I'll be
Speaker 1: the first to say a life of insanity is sometimes
Speaker 1: very exciting. By obeying Christ's call, he blesses you with
Speaker 1: many amazing things. I heard myself in those words. Renee
Speaker 1: and I made her first trips to the continent when
Speaker 1: we were around the same age. Neither of us had
Speaker 1: any experience for expertise. We were moved to the core
Speaker 1: by what we'd seen and it felt like doing the
Speaker 1: right thing was the only thing that mattered, never mind
Speaker 1: the cost. But when it came down to it, I
Speaker 1: took a step back from the ledge and Renee kept
Speaker 1: going this season on the missionary, no one's going to
Speaker 1: call out a girl who has like dropped her life
Speaker 1: and moved here and it's just serving serving serving to
Speaker 1: be like, are you really doing this right? Well, they
Speaker 1: look like a huge asshole now. And never witnessed the
Speaker 1: blood being in us fuels though, and any kind of
Speaker 1: bloody product at the facility. I never witnessed it. I
Speaker 1: was watching her be literally crucified for trying to do
Speaker 1: the right thing. Have you explained what we're doing here?
Speaker 1: I'm explained to her because she's what it that she
Speaker 1: needs to be careful of what she's talking. She grabbed
Speaker 1: a medication and injected her with it, and then she
Speaker 1: fell backwards died. Black African lives do not matter to
Speaker 1: the same level to us as white people. I'm Renee Vach,
Speaker 1: the founder and former director of Serving Children. A lot
Speaker 1: of people would say, oh, why did you do this
Speaker 1: or why did you do that? And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: when you explain, the answer wasn't satisfying. And then you
Speaker 1: want to say, well, have you ever been put in
Speaker 1: a situation like that? Do you know what you would do?
Speaker 1: Because like, it's a tough call and sometimes you have
Speaker 1: like minutes to make it, you know, and you have
Speaker 1: to live with yourself with the answer of that for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. The Missionaries produced in association
Speaker 1: with iHeart Media. It's written and reported by Roger Gola,
Speaker 1: Palima Gakandi, and Malcolm Burnley. It's produced by Michelle Lance
Speaker 1: and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Ltto is our story editor. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is at the Good. Fact checker is Austin Thompson.
Speaker 1: Mixing by Josh Rogisson, voice acting by Taylor Kaufman and
Speaker 1: special thanks to equip FM and BBC HM