Speaker 1: Previously on the missionary. I would assume that this is
Speaker 1: a health facility with the trained health workers. My job
Speaker 1: there was to show people the character in the nature
Speaker 1: of Christ by just like acting out of love and
Speaker 1: kindness and being so compassionate. Seeing how the community reacted
Speaker 1: left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I
Speaker 1: just was constantly asking myself every day, if this is
Speaker 1: how Christians are supposed to act and treat one another.
Speaker 1: There's no one I would say, but please, I want
Speaker 1: to see your papas, but please waise your certificate displayed here.
Speaker 1: There was no way I would ask that. Mal nutrition
Speaker 1: season in Uganda is really like May through September because
Speaker 1: of the rainy season in the way that the harvests
Speaker 1: flow there, And so we had kind of geared up
Speaker 1: for pretty high numbers in the summer. And yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a lot of people that were just coming. We
Speaker 1: had over twenty children because that is the time the
Speaker 1: facility was overwhelmed. We had very many. It was above
Speaker 1: the capacity. But then the morning came when a government
Speaker 1: vehicle pulled up to the gate of serving his children unannounced.
Speaker 1: It was March twelve. It was around eight I started
Speaker 1: due to as you. So at ten we used to
Speaker 1: take the vitals of these children. The babies would go
Speaker 1: to sleep. I was sitting there after taking my vitals
Speaker 1: and so the vehicle for the d H. When they
Speaker 1: came the d H or they came in the car,
Speaker 1: the guard opened the gates. I just saw some officials
Speaker 1: coming out of the vehicle and welcome to him or
Speaker 1: what you've been doing. You're killing children here this and
Speaker 1: you're just for educating in the communities. Why are you
Speaker 1: treating children? I supposed to children. I'm supposed to work here,
Speaker 1: I said, I am a maddie and I'm not a boss.
Speaker 1: They asked for the director. I was killing my friend's
Speaker 1: thirteen children while she was on her honeymoon for two
Speaker 1: and a half weeks. As soon as Renee called wind
Speaker 1: of the raid, she found another babysitter and raced across town.
Speaker 1: They went inside the office and the DHL stood there
Speaker 1: and looked me in the face and said, you have
Speaker 1: to get everyone out by five. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know where we're going to send all these
Speaker 1: kids because they all need really intensive care. And he said,
Speaker 1: I don't care. You can send them home, you can
Speaker 1: refer them to government facility, and I said, but sir,
Speaker 1: these kids will die if we send them home, and
Speaker 1: he said, you're right, they will die, but it's no
Speaker 1: longer your problem, so get them out of here before
Speaker 1: five o'clock or I'm taking you to jail. After that,
Speaker 1: we saw any going in the boys quota and she
Speaker 1: started crying. Then yes, hearing they have closed us down,
Speaker 1: they have closed us down. She called it the stuff
Speaker 1: and said the center has been closed. They could. The
Speaker 1: driver packed up those mothers and took back the motherless
Speaker 1: in their respective places, where they picked to them, women
Speaker 1: on their knees, begging, please don't make us sleep, Please
Speaker 1: aunt your name, please don't make us sleep. Our kids
Speaker 1: are gonna die. And within three days, eight or nine
Speaker 1: of those kids died in other facilities. In association with
Speaker 1: I Heart Media, I'm Malcolm Burnley, I'm Roger Gola, I'm
Speaker 1: Mega Condi. This is the Missionary episode seven Matthew eighteen.
Speaker 1: If you compare the events of two thousand fifteen to
Speaker 1: what is happening today with serving his children, it's a
Speaker 1: bit like deja vu. For the first time, these quiet,
Speaker 1: it simmering whispered complaints about what was happening inside the
Speaker 1: facility started to get out and to be taken seriously
Speaker 1: by people with actual authority. It was the first time
Speaker 1: Renee was forced to answer questions on the record and
Speaker 1: to be held accountable. The good Samaritan defense, the witch
Speaker 1: hunt narrative, and the arguments that Renee was only dealing
Speaker 1: with children under the watchful eye of Ugandan professionals. These
Speaker 1: were all aired out five years ago. Two thousand fifteen
Speaker 1: was the year that everything changed for serving his children
Speaker 1: for Renee for Gina. Just weeks before the shutdown, to
Speaker 1: pediatricians from non Lufenia Children's Hospital visited serving his children
Speaker 1: and they were alarmed by certain conditions like the children
Speaker 1: receiving intravenous fluids. When the pediatricians felt they didn't need
Speaker 1: to so they took their concerns to Peter Joego Natamu,
Speaker 1: the Strict Health Officer or d h O. We know
Speaker 1: that the DHOW handed Renee an inspection notice bearing a
Speaker 1: government insignia, which said in plain language why serving his
Speaker 1: children was being shut down. The first violation was for
Speaker 1: running a health facility with an expired license. What's weird
Speaker 1: about this is that serving his children finally did get
Speaker 1: a license in two thousand fourteen. They had passed a
Speaker 1: government inspection and everything, but without renewal, the medical license
Speaker 1: had expired by March two thousand fifteen. Renee says she
Speaker 1: believed there was a grace period lasting several months where
Speaker 1: they could operate without it as they waited to get
Speaker 1: it renewed. I learned later that this was actually a
Speaker 1: common misconception on the ground and that you gone and
Speaker 1: officials are still trying to correct it. There is no
Speaker 1: grace period. I mean, the realities is not that hard
Speaker 1: to register. It's just a paperwork process, you know. Um
Speaker 1: I really anyone who wanted to register a house center
Speaker 1: probably could. I mean, the qualifications are not that heavy.
Speaker 1: I mean the things that we put into place were
Speaker 1: probably far stricter and more structured than what was required.
Speaker 1: The obvious question here is that if it was so
Speaker 1: easy to do, then why didn't she? For the record,
Speaker 1: licensing is one of those issues that goes well beyond Renee.
Speaker 1: A lot of Ugandan clinics have been shut down because
Speaker 1: they didn't have active licenses. Regardless, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: led the DHO to investigate that day elapsed a license
Speaker 1: was all he needed to shut them down immediately because
Speaker 1: it was illegal, and it wasn't all they found. The
Speaker 1: d h O also wrote down that children with tuberculosis
Speaker 1: or t B were mixed in with the rest of
Speaker 1: the kids. Not only is t B an infectious disease,
Speaker 1: it's also a potential cause of malnutrish in, which is
Speaker 1: why there are strict standards for quarantining children with TB
Speaker 1: from those who don't have it, because otherwise you could
Speaker 1: be treating one problem while potentially infecting children with another.
Speaker 1: The third violation was a bit broad. The d h
Speaker 1: O noted that there were children in need of higher
Speaker 1: level care than what serving his children could visibly provide
Speaker 1: cases that shouldn't have been handled there. So at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, the person who was ultimately responsible
Speaker 1: for the shutdown was the person who was running the facility.
Speaker 1: That was Renee back. What's more, we learned that Renee
Speaker 1: had made multiple attempts to try to get serving his
Speaker 1: children reopened without addressing any of those problems. These were
Speaker 1: actually rumors that we had heard very early on during
Speaker 1: our reporting, claims that Renee had gone to the capital
Speaker 1: of Kampala to try to get reopened had done something fishy.
Speaker 1: What we did learn was this She met with Dr
Speaker 1: Cotumba sin Tango, the chief executive of Uganda's medical and
Speaker 1: dental counsel, who heard from in the last episode. He
Speaker 1: remembers the meeting vividly because of where they met. He
Speaker 1: was attending a conference and Renee was willing to meet
Speaker 1: him in the hotel lobby. Doctor sin Tango remembers Renee
Speaker 1: trying to convince him that the DHO had gotten it
Speaker 1: wrong and to help her reopen, but that didn't fly
Speaker 1: with him. So asked you what other issue and said, oh,
Speaker 1: the districts have said, oh, if you did that to me,
Speaker 1: get the phone. So no, I get the phone. So
Speaker 1: I got the phone and I phoned. I founded, he
Speaker 1: told me. Doctor sin Tango put the DHOW on speaker
Speaker 1: phone to make sure that Renee could hear his explanation.
Speaker 1: He said that if I was handling letters, especially, they
Speaker 1: are not fit to manage and doctoral they taught them
Speaker 1: to defy the cases film in the hospital. You know
Speaker 1: the right deal for a good affection of contra and whatever.
Speaker 1: In the coming days, Dr sin Tango received calls from
Speaker 1: politicians asking if he would reconsider Renee's appeal. He doesn't
Speaker 1: remember exactly who called, he says, mostly because he didn't
Speaker 1: pay the much attention. They don't above mean the profession.
Speaker 1: But I think the politicians, say the local politicians. I
Speaker 1: don't remember a bit of advertise. Remember somebody, senior. I
Speaker 1: think there's some people fund me somewhere, the people fund
Speaker 1: me to the guest anything. But as you like, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, if you are not in the line of profession. Yeah,
Speaker 1: keep in mind this is a person in a position
Speaker 1: of authority saying this. He told Renee she would have
Speaker 1: to fix the problems at serving his children and sorted
Speaker 1: out with the d show before she could reopen. We
Speaker 1: don't know if Renee ever did that, but what we
Speaker 1: do you know from the court documents is that Renee
Speaker 1: solicited letters of support from some of the medical staff
Speaker 1: she had employed, including mudasik Uza, the clinical officer we
Speaker 1: heard from in the last episode. But when I showed
Speaker 1: him the letter bearing his signature, he said he didn't
Speaker 1: remember writing it. Later, a different official in Jinga, Henry
Speaker 1: Kombaini of the Allied Health Professionals Counsel, told me he
Speaker 1: remembered that months after the shutdown. Renee and another woman
Speaker 1: came to his office to inquire about registering a lab
Speaker 1: at serving his children, but he told them they needed
Speaker 1: a valid license first. Was this Renee trying to back
Speaker 1: channel the system in order to reopen or was it
Speaker 1: her trying to figure out how to reopen the right way.
Speaker 1: The person I thought would have the answer to that
Speaker 1: was the d HO or district Health officer, and we
Speaker 1: tried to speak with him multiple times. I even waited
Speaker 1: at his office for hours, but he refew is to
Speaker 1: talk with us. Even now, Renee considers the shutdown a
Speaker 1: personal hit job herself a victim of politics and Vendetta's
Speaker 1: rather than the overt reasons staring her in the face,
Speaker 1: including the government violations. Later, we were told, and you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have any evidence to this, but that the
Speaker 1: DJO was paid a bribe to come and close the center.
Speaker 1: So when he came, he really had no option. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, he had to come with a pretty serious
Speaker 1: aggression because you know, he was paid a decent amount
Speaker 1: of money to come and lead us to believe that
Speaker 1: we were being closed. Here's what we actually know about
Speaker 1: the series of events that led up to it. The
Speaker 1: d h O got a tip from those pediatricians at Malathania,
Speaker 1: but those pediatricians got a tip from inside the missionary world.
Speaker 1: I had been the person to who volunteered to compile
Speaker 1: all the evidence. I didn't have a lot of first
Speaker 1: hand evidence myself, which is kind of why I volunteered
Speaker 1: to do that, because I had her that I was
Speaker 1: a little bit less emotionally involved and less emotionally charged.
Speaker 1: Megan Parker didn't know Renee well. She had a reputation
Speaker 1: as something of an outsider in Ginger, running a bide
Speaker 1: family center, the NNGO she launched with Kelsey Nielsen in
Speaker 1: two I just couldn't understand how people could look at
Speaker 1: the same evidence we were looking at and come to
Speaker 1: such different conclusions. Sometime in early the evidence gathered by
Speaker 1: women like Ashley Laberty and Jackie Kramlike crystallized into a document.
Speaker 1: It included photos from Renee's blog trying to show Renee
Speaker 1: had violated patient privacy rights, a post where Renee seemed
Speaker 1: to be transfusing a girl that we now know as Patricia.
Speaker 1: There was a little bit of firsthand testimony contributed by
Speaker 1: Ashley two, but most of the evidence was cut and
Speaker 1: pasted from Renee's blogs, and that document started to make
Speaker 1: its way around Ginger. Elizabeth Nicholson made a copy and
Speaker 1: took it to the police. Another one went to Nalafa
Speaker 1: in You, and they even sent the material to the media.
Speaker 1: I think anything really came of that. No one communicated
Speaker 1: with us after that until the day that serving as
Speaker 1: shut down, and then obviously that was swirling all over town,
Speaker 1: and that's when we kind of were like, WHOA, I
Speaker 1: guess that did something. Renee described this document almost like
Speaker 1: a high school burn book, coupled together by her rivals.
Speaker 1: In order to ruin her reputation back, Kelsey and a
Speaker 1: couple of other women created a file of just different
Speaker 1: pieces of blogs, a couple of photos, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: when I read it later, it sounded like they were
Speaker 1: writing it for like a tabloid publication. It was like
Speaker 1: fairly catty. It was almost I mean, it wasn't because
Speaker 1: I was like a disaster at the time, but it
Speaker 1: was almost comical, you know, just this mean girl undertone.
Speaker 1: Later I did read the document, it didn't seem juvenile
Speaker 1: or frivolous or conspiratorial. Honestly, it read like an early
Speaker 1: draft of the court case, except without stories like twel allies.
Speaker 1: At the time, Megan and her colleagues believed they were whistleblowers,
Speaker 1: but soon they were treated like snitches. At vacation Bible camp,
Speaker 1: that very day, someone told me, people are really unhappy.
Speaker 1: They think your approaches were unbiblical and that you should
Speaker 1: never have gone to the authorities. You should have gone
Speaker 1: to the church elders if you had concerned. I went
Speaker 1: to missionary events and people would like refuse to speak
Speaker 1: to me, And I think again, like that was I
Speaker 1: was so like brigged out about that that I definitely
Speaker 1: overestimated how many people were against me versus on my side.
Speaker 1: Like the entire town was just split down the middle.
Speaker 1: After the shutdown, a group of religious leaders stepped in
Speaker 1: with a plan and to end the bad blood and
Speaker 1: determine once and for all, what if anything Renee did wrong.
Speaker 1: Nobody agreed on anything in this story except one thing.
Speaker 1: The church mediation was an unqualified disaster. You know, there
Speaker 1: were so many of us that were seeing the same story,
Speaker 1: giving the same narrative, and they just wouldn't listen or
Speaker 1: wouldn't believe it, and they were just so like help
Speaker 1: bent on standing up for Renee that it was just
Speaker 1: like it was shocking, that's Ashley, here's Renee. I feel
Speaker 1: very certain that Kelsey and everybody Jackie would say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the elders wanted to stick up for Renee. They just
Speaker 1: didn't even want to hear what we had to say,
Speaker 1: like they don't care. And I would probably say the
Speaker 1: same thing. I feel like they were verbalizing to me like, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to help this situation, like how can we
Speaker 1: support you? But I didn't feel supported or helped at all.
Speaker 1: I feel like they made my life more living. Count
Speaker 1: Patrick Draku was a Ugandan elder at the church. When
Speaker 1: I attended, I hoped to see humility this who thought
Speaker 1: they were right, said Luke. I humble myself, I see
Speaker 1: that I was wrong, and those who still think they're
Speaker 1: right to try to listen to the other site. I
Speaker 1: hoped for Christians behaving like much a Christians, not still infants. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Three mediators agreed to lead the process. A church elder
Speaker 1: named Jeremy Boone who led the church when I went
Speaker 1: to and to other elders from other churches in the community.
Speaker 1: But in the small world of Ginger, everyone already knew
Speaker 1: each other old allegiances or the perception of them torpedo
Speaker 1: the process before it began. None of them had ever
Speaker 1: experienced anything like this before, where there was so much
Speaker 1: like overwhelming brokenness. My perception of Jeremy was that he
Speaker 1: went in hoping to help heal a community, realized that
Speaker 1: the whole situation was way more complex than he perceived,
Speaker 1: and he was just in totally over his head. The
Speaker 1: mediators spoke about restoring peace, but they chose not to
Speaker 1: bring both sides together. Renee and her accusers came in
Speaker 1: separately for questioning, sitting down in plastic chairs below a
Speaker 1: shady grove of palm trees. Megan Parker and Ashley Laberty
Speaker 1: went together, and then they just tried using a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of scripture out of context, basically to demean and
Speaker 1: degrade Megan and I. It was very upsetting. I actually
Speaker 1: had to sit on my hands because I was shaking
Speaker 1: so badly. The mediators kept coming back to a part
Speaker 1: of Matthew eighteen about the value of handling conflicts neighbor
Speaker 1: to neighbor, Christian to Christian. I have a pastor daughter
Speaker 1: born and raised okay um so lasts among the believers.
Speaker 1: They're as this passage and first for instance, that if
Speaker 1: members of the church have grievances against one another, why
Speaker 1: would you go to a law that is an unrighteous
Speaker 1: law instead of the thing? It's the exact line. And
Speaker 1: we got really sort of heated because we're like, why
Speaker 1: are you unable to see that this isn't a church matter?
Speaker 1: And like why why would we have gone to the
Speaker 1: church elders or church leadership? Because this was not a
Speaker 1: biblical matter. This wasn't a church matter. It was a
Speaker 1: moral and legal matter. But Ashley and Jackie had tried
Speaker 1: for years to handle this inside the community, and now
Speaker 1: they felt like these spiritual leaders weren't even taking them seriously.
Speaker 1: Here's Jackie Kramlin. It was that whole thing that I'm like,
Speaker 1: was just like awakening to the insanity of the rules
Speaker 1: we followed as a community, you know that, like you
Speaker 1: could come forward with children dying, um now practice and
Speaker 1: neglect kind of thing negligence and be told like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but you know you just said it, so me and
Speaker 1: her feelings were really hurt. Let's all make a list
Speaker 1: and bring her some special thing every day because she
Speaker 1: feels so sad right now. They lost sight of like
Speaker 1: what the medication was because they were like, well, not
Speaker 1: our girls, because we're all in it involved, and the
Speaker 1: mediation team was all men. The mediation completely backfired. Ashley
Speaker 1: believed it could be a second chance for justice, a
Speaker 1: second chance to tell their stories, but by the end
Speaker 1: she felt like they were being asked to atone not Renee. Again.
Speaker 1: We're bringing up all these examples of the wrong that
Speaker 1: Renee had done. Yet somehow they wanted us to feel
Speaker 1: like we were the ones in the wrong. And it
Speaker 1: was just like a very dirty feeling. I wrote, hear
Speaker 1: me like a personal email, like getting all of like
Speaker 1: how this impact me, Like explaining to him that like
Speaker 1: you're not only just kind of like turning your eyes
Speaker 1: away from justice and child abused basically and um, even
Speaker 1: when there's really hard evidence in front of your face.
Speaker 1: But like in saying that she's fine, you're calling me
Speaker 1: a buyer. But the mediation failed in another even more
Speaker 1: significant way. The saga of serving his children was one
Speaker 1: that affected Ugandan families, but Ugandans were never involved in
Speaker 1: the process. The mediation would never address the actual issues
Speaker 1: at hand. If it did not address the victims first.
Speaker 1: In the end, the mediators wrote a letter commending Renee
Speaker 1: for her cooperation and concluded quote that Renee and her
Speaker 1: board saw their indiscretion and we're working hard to make
Speaker 1: sure they were legally compliant and above board prior to
Speaker 1: serving his children's clinic being shut down. But the letter
Speaker 1: also went on to condemn those who brought the allegations
Speaker 1: in the first place, and said, is that the criticisms
Speaker 1: were not put forward in a caring manner. Let me
Speaker 1: read you a line here. Harsh judgments concerning Renee's character
Speaker 1: and in one event, the destination of her soul did
Speaker 1: little to help bring facts to light. While it's understandable
Speaker 1: to be frustrated with a perceived disinterest of Renee in
Speaker 1: her board, it is never right to be presumptuous about
Speaker 1: such a grave matter a person's character or their soul.
Speaker 1: I just always remember thinking and even telling my mom Um,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, unless this gets into the media,
Speaker 1: like nothing is ever going to happen. She's just going
Speaker 1: to keep doing what she's doing. She's going to keep
Speaker 1: getting praised for it. People are still going to stand
Speaker 1: up for her. Um. As much as I sorry, wanted
Speaker 1: to put it behind me. There was still this part
Speaker 1: of me that like still wanted to see justice and
Speaker 1: like her, have to face the consequences of what she
Speaker 1: had done. Oh, I didn't think that I was the
Speaker 1: person to make that all happen. Um. I felt like
Speaker 1: I was never really going to be happy or like
Speaker 1: at at peace with this situation until that happened, if
Speaker 1: that ever happens. So what was your react? Go ahead, Yeah,
Speaker 1: take a minute. I've been trying to get in contact
Speaker 1: with Jeremy Boone for months. I left him voicemails, texts,
Speaker 1: and emails. I could tell he had seen my messages,
Speaker 1: but he never wrote back. Other folks in town told
Speaker 1: me it was a dead end. Jeremy was over at all.
Speaker 1: He'd put the whole thing behind him. He moved on
Speaker 1: and didn't want anything to do with it anymore. But
Speaker 1: then one day he responded, and a week later I
Speaker 1: was sitting cross legged on the floor of his living room.
Speaker 1: I wore the only button up shirt I packed, tucked
Speaker 1: into my jeans, trying to clean up the best I
Speaker 1: could for the church service that Jeremy was holding in
Speaker 1: his home. Goods. I'm thank you so much, Um, he
Speaker 1: and his wife started off leading a few songs. There
Speaker 1: were about forty people there, a mixed crowd of Ugandan's, Americans, kids, teens, adults,
Speaker 1: some who'd been there for decades and some who'd just
Speaker 1: gotten there a few weeks earlier. Yeah, so a few people.
Speaker 1: He's good to happen. Thank you very much for having
Speaker 1: very glad to hear he's a journalist. Actually he's went
Speaker 1: to du University and other of you care a lot
Speaker 1: here that so far, despite that fact, which is nice.
Speaker 1: The subject of that morning sermon was John seven Oddly
Speaker 1: residence John seven thirty seven. On the last and greatest
Speaker 1: day of the festival, Jesus stood and said, in a
Speaker 1: loud voice, let anyone who is thirsty come to me
Speaker 1: and drink. Whoever believes in me. Best scripture has said
Speaker 1: rivers of living model flowed with from it in them.
Speaker 1: By this, he meant the spirit with whom those who
Speaker 1: believed in him were later to receive so great. After
Speaker 1: the service and after the pot luck lunch, Jeremy and
Speaker 1: I made plans to do an interview the next day.
Speaker 1: He had things he needed to get off his chest
Speaker 1: about how everything went down, and the next day he
Speaker 1: came to my place. I offered him a glass of
Speaker 1: water and we took our seats in my living room. First,
Speaker 1: I just want to ask, like, what made you wanna
Speaker 1: say something about this? I'll be honest. I mean I'm
Speaker 1: still a little reluctant in some ways. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: people are going to form their own opinions and autother
Speaker 1: them form it when I've actually spoken, rather than people
Speaker 1: form it based on, you know, my silence. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted I could tell Jeremy was nervous. He
Speaker 1: gulped down the first glass of water quickly and got
Speaker 1: up every few minutes to refill his glass and catch
Speaker 1: his breath. He brought along a piece of notebook paper
Speaker 1: with him. Um, that's looking at so I want to
Speaker 1: notice it. And now I'm out this, So yeah, what
Speaker 1: don't I let you sort of lead it from here
Speaker 1: and then if I have questions, I'll jump off. That works. Um.
Speaker 1: So our jurisdiction was very limited. I mean, no one
Speaker 1: had to listen to anything we said. No one had
Speaker 1: to read our letters if they don't want to read
Speaker 1: our letters. Um, we volunteered to try to try to
Speaker 1: help to get to the truth and to help bring
Speaker 1: resolve if possible. Most people were pretty positive about us
Speaker 1: being involved. I can't say all and we're looking toward
Speaker 1: us to try to bring some light to the situation,
Speaker 1: and I think some even um hoping to find some
Speaker 1: level of understanding and resolve in the community. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't think that after the mediation letter was was written
Speaker 1: that people felt that way. I think probably people were
Speaker 1: probably discouraged and wondered why we were wherever involved, including myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I empathize with them. When our teams stepped into this
Speaker 1: whole story, I didn't think any of us could predict
Speaker 1: just how messy and confusing it all was. When you
Speaker 1: got two contradictory stories and the narratives kind of in
Speaker 1: a in a cycle, you know, and you're just hearing
Speaker 1: so many different accounts, it's really hard to know what
Speaker 1: the truth is, and hard to know how to love someone,
Speaker 1: and hard to know how to hold them accountable. I
Speaker 1: know we are committed to do in those things, but
Speaker 1: just knowing the truth and applying it it was the
Speaker 1: hard part. Um. If I had it to do over,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to do it again. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things I do different, but
Speaker 1: there are still a number of people to kind of
Speaker 1: feel very personal about how everything went down. And I
Speaker 1: mean specifically, I'm thinking about this what I've heard that
Speaker 1: people that were standing against Rene felt almost personally victimized
Speaker 1: by the process that they had a scripture like Matthew
Speaker 1: eighteen and about that process of handling things in a
Speaker 1: biblical fashion thrown at them. Um, I mean, can you
Speaker 1: speak to any of that? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't really have anything, man, Um, I don't have anything there. Man.
Speaker 1: Jeremy asked me to turn the recorder off, and by
Speaker 1: then a storm was passing through and made recording impossible.
Speaker 1: We decided to pick it up in the morning. When
Speaker 1: he came back, Jeremy was much more sure of what
Speaker 1: he wanted to say. I know that I hurt and
Speaker 1: disparaged people, that I didn't do it well, and whether
Speaker 1: it was ignorance or maybe some defensiveness or some self preservation.
Speaker 1: I'm always skeptical of my of myself, you know, always
Speaker 1: taking inventory to make sure my motivations are right and
Speaker 1: I'm doing things, you know well. And if it was
Speaker 1: a wrong that I did, you know, some information I
Speaker 1: should have had. I should have gotten, you know, a
Speaker 1: process I should have went, you know, went through that
Speaker 1: I didn't. That caused the hurt. Man. I'm sorry for it,
Speaker 1: you know, looking back on it. Here, you and I
Speaker 1: were sitting in here talking yesterday and a big storm
Speaker 1: came through and the wind was raging and leaves were
Speaker 1: blowing everywhere. We could hear a low rumble. It sounded
Speaker 1: kind of like a tornado in here, and um and
Speaker 1: we sort of invoked that as an image of what
Speaker 1: happened in the Ginger community. I felt swept up by
Speaker 1: a tornado, which I imagine a lot of people did.
Speaker 1: It felt really out of control, you know, out of
Speaker 1: my control. Uh, And it was causing chaos and really
Speaker 1: really hard to make sense of it, both when it
Speaker 1: was happening and even in the aftermath. Picking up the
Speaker 1: pieces has been, you know, been challenging, and I imagine
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people, you know, who share
Speaker 1: that with me, probably from both sides. In sixteen, Jeremy
Speaker 1: and the Mediators wrote a follow up letter apologizing for
Speaker 1: the role that they played in this whole process. They
Speaker 1: walked back their tacit support of RENEE and instead sided
Speaker 1: with medical authorities, with legal authorities and made strong suggestions
Speaker 1: for the changes that serving his children should make to
Speaker 1: their organization. Just before he left, Jeremy told me his
Speaker 1: story from his twenties. Uh, I was thinking this morning
Speaker 1: before I came to talk to you about sitting on
Speaker 1: a jury. One time, there was a man who was
Speaker 1: driving drunk and he had a young boy in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat, and he drove off and he had a
Speaker 1: utility pole. And so you know, we're sitting in on
Speaker 1: this journey and the prosecution wants to get the guy
Speaker 1: for a second degree murder and the defense is arguing
Speaker 1: for man slaughter, and um the difference what had everything
Speaker 1: to do with the mental state of the man who
Speaker 1: was driving the vehicle at the time. And we literally
Speaker 1: spent a week listening to one phone call to try
Speaker 1: to read between the lines and figure out what's the context?
Speaker 1: You know, was this guy malicious? Was he hateful? You know?
Speaker 1: Did he you know? What was really going on here?
Speaker 1: And I just remember feeling really small and really unqualified
Speaker 1: and not wanting to be in that position. And the
Speaker 1: court made a decision and I walked away wondered, and
Speaker 1: we make the right decision. I didn't even know. And
Speaker 1: twenty years later, I still look at that and say,
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure we made the right decision. But
Speaker 1: that metaphor, as earnestly as Jeremy offered, it summed up
Speaker 1: the whole problem with the mediation trying to address the
Speaker 1: intentions and motives of the people involved, Renee's intentions, her
Speaker 1: accusers intentions, rather than the actual issue at hand. Well,
Speaker 1: it costs Jeremy years of regret and some of his
Speaker 1: closest friends. It's the same problem that's dogged us every
Speaker 1: step of our reporting. People kept asking was Renee crazy?
Speaker 1: Did you get off on experimenting on kids? Or was
Speaker 1: her heart in the right place? But intentions have always
Speaker 1: been a very naive way to look at this. It
Speaker 1: didn't matter how here your heart was, how sorry you were.
Speaker 1: There were still children in coffins, families who wanted answers
Speaker 1: and systemic failures to account for. After all, what is
Speaker 1: it they say about the road to hell. For a
Speaker 1: couple of years, after things were quiet for serving his children,
Speaker 1: they stopped doing impatient medicine, and we're educating mothers on
Speaker 1: the complex issues of malnutrition. Renee's legacy had taken a hit,
Speaker 1: But now the organization was more bulletproof. They had partnered
Speaker 1: with the local government, and we're operating directly out of
Speaker 1: a public clinic. Serving his children two point oh was
Speaker 1: more by the book. There was one person to thank
Speaker 1: for making that happen. One of the doctors that Renee
Speaker 1: hired years earlier, dr Ibraham Gualuca, known by colleagues simply
Speaker 1: as Dr Ibraham. He had transferred to the Chigndolo area,
Speaker 1: and Dr Ibraham helped broker the meetings that led to
Speaker 1: the government partnership. He's the one who really presented the organization,
Speaker 1: presented the program proposal, got all of the approvals, got
Speaker 1: all of our m o us signed, and then helped
Speaker 1: set up all of our trainings and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and then monitored the program as a whole. But as
Speaker 1: we've seen in this episode and throughout the series, Serving
Speaker 1: his Children was a black hole for so many people
Speaker 1: who came close to it. Jeremy, Jackie, the government, regulators,
Speaker 1: the three of us working on this podcast. It seemed
Speaker 1: like everyone who lodged a complaint or tried to help
Speaker 1: or wanted to know why this happened and how ended
Speaker 1: up worse off for it, got caught up in a
Speaker 1: storm of accusations and rumors and what happened to dr
Speaker 1: Ibrahim Hammers this home doctor and his wife in India
Speaker 1: home in Indiaka. But he's so sta coming from the
Speaker 1: mountain the orange treat. The next thing the way who
Speaker 1: had was the blitz? In December, dr Ibraham drove to
Speaker 1: pick up his wife from work in Giner and returned
Speaker 1: home where two assassins were waiting for him. They fired
Speaker 1: shots through the windshield, striking dr Ibraham twice in the chest.
Speaker 1: His wife fled, managing to escape the gunmen on foot,
Speaker 1: while dr Ibraham died in a pool of his own blood.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem like a coincidence to some people siding
Speaker 1: against Renee. Shootings were not common in Uganda. Gun laws
Speaker 1: are strict, and we quickly heard that Dr Ibraham had
Speaker 1: a meeting with a government official scheduled for the week
Speaker 1: he was killed. He was going to blow the whistle
Speaker 1: on renew h And then those signing with Renee said,
Speaker 1: we had it all flipped around. Dr Ibraham was loyal
Speaker 1: to serving his children. He was going to march into
Speaker 1: that government office and vindicate Renee, and that's why he
Speaker 1: was killed. The trauma of a beloved doctor being killed.
Speaker 1: The screams you hear in that news footage, they were
Speaker 1: being exploited on both sides. We were supposed to believe
Speaker 1: that someone here was a monster capable of murdering in
Speaker 1: cold blood, only no one could back it up. But
Speaker 1: everyone thought it had to do with them, their struggle,
Speaker 1: their fight. Meanwhile, Dr Ibraham's murder remains unsolved. Next time.
Speaker 1: On the final episode of The Missionary, I was so
Speaker 1: sure that I was where I was supposed to be
Speaker 1: in life and doing what I was supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1: And now to like step back after so long and
Speaker 1: asked myself, like, did you just get it all wrong?
Speaker 1: Did you really help anyone at all? Because now, like
Speaker 1: people that you love so dearly are being blackmailed and threatened,
Speaker 1: and they're threatening my own children, And was it worth it?
Speaker 1: The Missionary is a production of I Heart Media. It's
Speaker 1: written and reported by Helema ge Condhi, Malcolm Burnley, and
Speaker 1: me Roger Goba. It's produced by Michelle Lands and Rhyan Murdoch.
Speaker 1: Mark Lotto is our story editor. Our executive producer is Mangi.
Speaker 1: Our fact checker is Austin Thompson.