June 19, 2020 • 37 mins
After a string of complaints and a leaked report, Serving His Children is forced to shut its doors. But Jinja’s problems are only beginning.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Previously on the missionary. I would assume that this is
a health facility with the trained health workers. My job
there was to show people the character in the nature
of Christ by just like acting out of love and
kindness and being so compassionate. Seeing how the community reacted
left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I
(00:22):
just was constantly asking myself every day, if this is
how Christians are supposed to act and treat one another.
There's no one I would say, but please, I want
to see your papas, but please waise your certificate displayed here.
There was no way I would ask that. Mal nutrition
(00:46):
season in Uganda is really like May through September because
of the rainy season in the way that the harvests
flow there, And so we had kind of geared up
for pretty high numbers in the summer. And yeah, we
had a lot of people that were just coming. We
had over twenty children because that is the time the
facility was overwhelmed. We had very many. It was above
(01:07):
the capacity. But then the morning came when a government
vehicle pulled up to the gate of serving his children unannounced.
It was March twelve. It was around eight I started
due to as you. So at ten we used to
take the vitals of these children. The babies would go
to sleep. I was sitting there after taking my vitals
(01:30):
and so the vehicle for the d H. When they
came the d H or they came in the car,
the guard opened the gates. I just saw some officials
coming out of the vehicle and welcome to him or
what you've been doing. You're killing children here this and
you're just for educating in the communities. Why are you
(01:50):
treating children? I supposed to children. I'm supposed to work here,
I said, I am a maddie and I'm not a boss.
They asked for the director. I was killing my friend's
thirteen children while she was on her honeymoon for two
and a half weeks. As soon as Renee called wind
of the raid, she found another babysitter and raced across town.
(02:10):
They went inside the office and the DHL stood there
and looked me in the face and said, you have
to get everyone out by five. And I said, well,
I don't know where we're going to send all these
kids because they all need really intensive care. And he said,
I don't care. You can send them home, you can
refer them to government facility, and I said, but sir,
these kids will die if we send them home, and
(02:32):
he said, you're right, they will die, but it's no
longer your problem, so get them out of here before
five o'clock or I'm taking you to jail. After that,
we saw any going in the boys quota and she
started crying. Then yes, hearing they have closed us down,
they have closed us down. She called it the stuff
(02:55):
and said the center has been closed. They could. The
driver packed up those mothers and took back the motherless
in their respective places, where they picked to them, women
on their knees, begging, please don't make us sleep, Please
aunt your name, please don't make us sleep. Our kids
are gonna die. And within three days, eight or nine
(03:15):
of those kids died in other facilities. In association with
I Heart Media, I'm Malcolm Burnley, I'm Roger Gola, I'm
Mega Condi. This is the Missionary episode seven Matthew eighteen.
(03:49):
If you compare the events of two thousand fifteen to
what is happening today with serving his children, it's a
bit like deja vu. For the first time, these quiet,
it simmering whispered complaints about what was happening inside the
facility started to get out and to be taken seriously
by people with actual authority. It was the first time
(04:11):
Renee was forced to answer questions on the record and
to be held accountable. The good Samaritan defense, the witch
hunt narrative, and the arguments that Renee was only dealing
with children under the watchful eye of Ugandan professionals. These
were all aired out five years ago. Two thousand fifteen
was the year that everything changed for serving his children
(04:34):
for Renee for Gina. Just weeks before the shutdown, to
pediatricians from non Lufenia Children's Hospital visited serving his children
and they were alarmed by certain conditions like the children
receiving intravenous fluids. When the pediatricians felt they didn't need
(04:55):
to so they took their concerns to Peter Joego Natamu,
the Strict Health Officer or d h O. We know
that the DHOW handed Renee an inspection notice bearing a
government insignia, which said in plain language why serving his
children was being shut down. The first violation was for
(05:17):
running a health facility with an expired license. What's weird
about this is that serving his children finally did get
a license in two thousand fourteen. They had passed a
government inspection and everything, but without renewal, the medical license
had expired by March two thousand fifteen. Renee says she
believed there was a grace period lasting several months where
(05:40):
they could operate without it as they waited to get
it renewed. I learned later that this was actually a
common misconception on the ground and that you gone and
officials are still trying to correct it. There is no
grace period. I mean, the realities is not that hard
to register. It's just a paperwork process, you know. Um
I really anyone who wanted to register a house center
(06:03):
probably could. I mean, the qualifications are not that heavy.
I mean the things that we put into place were
probably far stricter and more structured than what was required.
The obvious question here is that if it was so
easy to do, then why didn't she? For the record,
(06:24):
licensing is one of those issues that goes well beyond Renee.
A lot of Ugandan clinics have been shut down because
they didn't have active licenses. Regardless, it doesn't matter what
led the DHO to investigate that day elapsed a license
was all he needed to shut them down immediately because
it was illegal, and it wasn't all they found. The
(06:47):
d h O also wrote down that children with tuberculosis
or t B were mixed in with the rest of
the kids. Not only is t B an infectious disease,
it's also a potential cause of malnutrish in, which is
why there are strict standards for quarantining children with TB
from those who don't have it, because otherwise you could
(07:08):
be treating one problem while potentially infecting children with another.
The third violation was a bit broad. The d h
O noted that there were children in need of higher
level care than what serving his children could visibly provide
cases that shouldn't have been handled there. So at the
end of the day, the person who was ultimately responsible
(07:28):
for the shutdown was the person who was running the facility.
That was Renee back. What's more, we learned that Renee
had made multiple attempts to try to get serving his
children reopened without addressing any of those problems. These were
(07:49):
actually rumors that we had heard very early on during
our reporting, claims that Renee had gone to the capital
of Kampala to try to get reopened had done something fishy.
What we did learn was this She met with Dr
Cotumba sin Tango, the chief executive of Uganda's medical and
dental counsel, who heard from in the last episode. He
(08:09):
remembers the meeting vividly because of where they met. He
was attending a conference and Renee was willing to meet
him in the hotel lobby. Doctor sin Tango remembers Renee
trying to convince him that the DHO had gotten it
wrong and to help her reopen, but that didn't fly
with him. So asked you what other issue and said, oh,
(08:31):
the districts have said, oh, if you did that to me,
get the phone. So no, I get the phone. So
I got the phone and I phoned. I founded, he
told me. Doctor sin Tango put the DHOW on speaker
phone to make sure that Renee could hear his explanation.
He said that if I was handling letters, especially, they
(08:53):
are not fit to manage and doctoral they taught them
to defy the cases film in the hospital. You know
the right deal for a good affection of contra and whatever.
In the coming days, Dr sin Tango received calls from
politicians asking if he would reconsider Renee's appeal. He doesn't
remember exactly who called, he says, mostly because he didn't
(09:15):
pay the much attention. They don't above mean the profession.
But I think the politicians, say the local politicians. I
don't remember a bit of advertise. Remember somebody, senior. I
think there's some people fund me somewhere, the people fund
me to the guest anything. But as you like, yes,
(09:35):
you know, if you are not in the line of profession. Yeah,
keep in mind this is a person in a position
of authority saying this. He told Renee she would have
to fix the problems at serving his children and sorted
out with the d show before she could reopen. We
(09:57):
don't know if Renee ever did that, but what we
do you know from the court documents is that Renee
solicited letters of support from some of the medical staff
she had employed, including mudasik Uza, the clinical officer we
heard from in the last episode. But when I showed
him the letter bearing his signature, he said he didn't
remember writing it. Later, a different official in Jinga, Henry
(10:21):
Kombaini of the Allied Health Professionals Counsel, told me he
remembered that months after the shutdown. Renee and another woman
came to his office to inquire about registering a lab
at serving his children, but he told them they needed
a valid license first. Was this Renee trying to back
channel the system in order to reopen or was it
(10:44):
her trying to figure out how to reopen the right way.
The person I thought would have the answer to that
was the d HO or district Health officer, and we
tried to speak with him multiple times. I even waited
at his office for hours, but he refew is to
talk with us. Even now, Renee considers the shutdown a
(11:05):
personal hit job herself a victim of politics and Vendetta's
rather than the overt reasons staring her in the face,
including the government violations. Later, we were told, and you know,
we don't have any evidence to this, but that the
DJO was paid a bribe to come and close the center.
So when he came, he really had no option. So um,
(11:27):
you know, he had to come with a pretty serious
aggression because you know, he was paid a decent amount
of money to come and lead us to believe that
we were being closed. Here's what we actually know about
the series of events that led up to it. The
d h O got a tip from those pediatricians at Malathania,
but those pediatricians got a tip from inside the missionary world.
(11:51):
I had been the person to who volunteered to compile
all the evidence. I didn't have a lot of first
hand evidence myself, which is kind of why I volunteered
to do that, because I had her that I was
a little bit less emotionally involved and less emotionally charged.
Megan Parker didn't know Renee well. She had a reputation
as something of an outsider in Ginger, running a bide
family center, the NNGO she launched with Kelsey Nielsen in
(12:14):
two I just couldn't understand how people could look at
the same evidence we were looking at and come to
such different conclusions. Sometime in early the evidence gathered by
women like Ashley Laberty and Jackie Kramlike crystallized into a document.
It included photos from Renee's blog trying to show Renee
(12:34):
had violated patient privacy rights, a post where Renee seemed
to be transfusing a girl that we now know as Patricia.
There was a little bit of firsthand testimony contributed by
Ashley two, but most of the evidence was cut and
pasted from Renee's blogs, and that document started to make
its way around Ginger. Elizabeth Nicholson made a copy and
(12:56):
took it to the police. Another one went to Nalafa
in You, and they even sent the material to the media.
I think anything really came of that. No one communicated
with us after that until the day that serving as
shut down, and then obviously that was swirling all over town,
and that's when we kind of were like, WHOA, I
(13:17):
guess that did something. Renee described this document almost like
a high school burn book, coupled together by her rivals.
In order to ruin her reputation back, Kelsey and a
couple of other women created a file of just different
pieces of blogs, a couple of photos, and to be honest,
when I read it later, it sounded like they were
(13:40):
writing it for like a tabloid publication. It was like
fairly catty. It was almost I mean, it wasn't because
I was like a disaster at the time, but it
was almost comical, you know, just this mean girl undertone.
Later I did read the document, it didn't seem juvenile
or frivolous or conspiratorial. Honestly, it read like an early
(14:00):
draft of the court case, except without stories like twel allies.
At the time, Megan and her colleagues believed they were whistleblowers,
but soon they were treated like snitches. At vacation Bible camp,
that very day, someone told me, people are really unhappy.
They think your approaches were unbiblical and that you should
(14:21):
never have gone to the authorities. You should have gone
to the church elders if you had concerned. I went
to missionary events and people would like refuse to speak
to me, And I think again, like that was I
was so like brigged out about that that I definitely
overestimated how many people were against me versus on my side.
Like the entire town was just split down the middle.
(14:56):
After the shutdown, a group of religious leaders stepped in
with a plan and to end the bad blood and
determine once and for all, what if anything Renee did wrong.
Nobody agreed on anything in this story except one thing.
The church mediation was an unqualified disaster. You know, there
were so many of us that were seeing the same story,
(15:18):
giving the same narrative, and they just wouldn't listen or
wouldn't believe it, and they were just so like help
bent on standing up for Renee that it was just
like it was shocking, that's Ashley, here's Renee. I feel
very certain that Kelsey and everybody Jackie would say, oh, well,
the elders wanted to stick up for Renee. They just
(15:40):
didn't even want to hear what we had to say,
like they don't care. And I would probably say the
same thing. I feel like they were verbalizing to me like, hey,
we want to help this situation, like how can we
support you? But I didn't feel supported or helped at all.
I feel like they made my life more living. Count
(16:01):
Patrick Draku was a Ugandan elder at the church. When
I attended, I hoped to see humility this who thought
they were right, said Luke. I humble myself, I see
that I was wrong, and those who still think they're
right to try to listen to the other site. I
hoped for Christians behaving like much a Christians, not still infants. Yeah.
(16:26):
Three mediators agreed to lead the process. A church elder
named Jeremy Boone who led the church when I went
to and to other elders from other churches in the community.
But in the small world of Ginger, everyone already knew
each other old allegiances or the perception of them torpedo
the process before it began. None of them had ever
(16:49):
experienced anything like this before, where there was so much
like overwhelming brokenness. My perception of Jeremy was that he
went in hoping to help heal a community, realized that
the whole situation was way more complex than he perceived,
and he was just in totally over his head. The
(17:10):
mediators spoke about restoring peace, but they chose not to
bring both sides together. Renee and her accusers came in
separately for questioning, sitting down in plastic chairs below a
shady grove of palm trees. Megan Parker and Ashley Laberty
went together, and then they just tried using a whole
bunch of scripture out of context, basically to demean and
(17:35):
degrade Megan and I. It was very upsetting. I actually
had to sit on my hands because I was shaking
so badly. The mediators kept coming back to a part
of Matthew eighteen about the value of handling conflicts neighbor
to neighbor, Christian to Christian. I have a pastor daughter
(17:55):
born and raised okay um so lasts among the believers.
They're as this passage and first for instance, that if
members of the church have grievances against one another, why
would you go to a law that is an unrighteous
law instead of the thing? It's the exact line. And
we got really sort of heated because we're like, why
(18:16):
are you unable to see that this isn't a church matter?
And like why why would we have gone to the
church elders or church leadership? Because this was not a
biblical matter. This wasn't a church matter. It was a
moral and legal matter. But Ashley and Jackie had tried
for years to handle this inside the community, and now
they felt like these spiritual leaders weren't even taking them seriously.
(18:41):
Here's Jackie Kramlin. It was that whole thing that I'm like,
was just like awakening to the insanity of the rules
we followed as a community, you know that, like you
could come forward with children dying, um now practice and
neglect kind of thing negligence and be told like, yeah, okay,
(19:02):
but you know you just said it, so me and
her feelings were really hurt. Let's all make a list
and bring her some special thing every day because she
feels so sad right now. They lost sight of like
what the medication was because they were like, well, not
our girls, because we're all in it involved, and the
(19:22):
mediation team was all men. The mediation completely backfired. Ashley
believed it could be a second chance for justice, a
second chance to tell their stories, but by the end
she felt like they were being asked to atone not Renee. Again.
We're bringing up all these examples of the wrong that
Renee had done. Yet somehow they wanted us to feel
(19:45):
like we were the ones in the wrong. And it
was just like a very dirty feeling. I wrote, hear
me like a personal email, like getting all of like
how this impact me, Like explaining to him that like
you're not only just kind of like turning your eyes
away from justice and child abused basically and um, even
(20:06):
when there's really hard evidence in front of your face.
But like in saying that she's fine, you're calling me
a buyer. But the mediation failed in another even more
significant way. The saga of serving his children was one
that affected Ugandan families, but Ugandans were never involved in
(20:27):
the process. The mediation would never address the actual issues
at hand. If it did not address the victims first.
In the end, the mediators wrote a letter commending Renee
for her cooperation and concluded quote that Renee and her
board saw their indiscretion and we're working hard to make
sure they were legally compliant and above board prior to
(20:51):
serving his children's clinic being shut down. But the letter
also went on to condemn those who brought the allegations
in the first place, and said, is that the criticisms
were not put forward in a caring manner. Let me
read you a line here. Harsh judgments concerning Renee's character
and in one event, the destination of her soul did
(21:13):
little to help bring facts to light. While it's understandable
to be frustrated with a perceived disinterest of Renee in
her board, it is never right to be presumptuous about
such a grave matter a person's character or their soul.
I just always remember thinking and even telling my mom Um,
I was like, you know, unless this gets into the media,
(21:35):
like nothing is ever going to happen. She's just going
to keep doing what she's doing. She's going to keep
getting praised for it. People are still going to stand
up for her. Um. As much as I sorry, wanted
to put it behind me. There was still this part
of me that like still wanted to see justice and
like her, have to face the consequences of what she
(21:58):
had done. Oh, I didn't think that I was the
person to make that all happen. Um. I felt like
I was never really going to be happy or like
at at peace with this situation until that happened, if
that ever happens. So what was your react? Go ahead, Yeah,
(22:19):
take a minute. I've been trying to get in contact
(22:42):
with Jeremy Boone for months. I left him voicemails, texts,
and emails. I could tell he had seen my messages,
but he never wrote back. Other folks in town told
me it was a dead end. Jeremy was over at all.
He'd put the whole thing behind him. He moved on
and didn't want anything to do with it anymore. But
(23:03):
then one day he responded, and a week later I
was sitting cross legged on the floor of his living room.
I wore the only button up shirt I packed, tucked
into my jeans, trying to clean up the best I
could for the church service that Jeremy was holding in
his home. Goods. I'm thank you so much, Um, he
(23:31):
and his wife started off leading a few songs. There
were about forty people there, a mixed crowd of Ugandan's, Americans, kids, teens, adults,
some who'd been there for decades and some who'd just
gotten there a few weeks earlier. Yeah, so a few people.
(23:51):
He's good to happen. Thank you very much for having
very glad to hear he's a journalist. Actually he's went
to du University and other of you care a lot
here that so far, despite that fact, which is nice.
(24:15):
The subject of that morning sermon was John seven Oddly
residence John seven thirty seven. On the last and greatest
day of the festival, Jesus stood and said, in a
loud voice, let anyone who is thirsty come to me
(24:35):
and drink. Whoever believes in me. Best scripture has said
rivers of living model flowed with from it in them.
By this, he meant the spirit with whom those who
believed in him were later to receive so great. After
(25:01):
the service and after the pot luck lunch, Jeremy and
I made plans to do an interview the next day.
He had things he needed to get off his chest
about how everything went down, and the next day he
came to my place. I offered him a glass of
water and we took our seats in my living room. First,
I just want to ask, like, what made you wanna
(25:23):
say something about this? I'll be honest. I mean I'm
still a little reluctant in some ways. Um, but you know,
people are going to form their own opinions and autother
them form it when I've actually spoken, rather than people
form it based on, you know, my silence. And so yeah,
(25:44):
I just wanted I could tell Jeremy was nervous. He
gulped down the first glass of water quickly and got
up every few minutes to refill his glass and catch
his breath. He brought along a piece of notebook paper
with him. Um, that's looking at so I want to
notice it. And now I'm out this, So yeah, what
don't I let you sort of lead it from here
and then if I have questions, I'll jump off. That works. Um.
(26:09):
So our jurisdiction was very limited. I mean, no one
had to listen to anything we said. No one had
to read our letters if they don't want to read
our letters. Um, we volunteered to try to try to
help to get to the truth and to help bring
resolve if possible. Most people were pretty positive about us
(26:29):
being involved. I can't say all and we're looking toward
us to try to bring some light to the situation,
and I think some even um hoping to find some
level of understanding and resolve in the community. UM. I
don't think that after the mediation letter was was written
that people felt that way. I think probably people were
(26:52):
probably discouraged and wondered why we were wherever involved, including myself. Yeah,
I empathize with them. When our teams stepped into this
whole story, I didn't think any of us could predict
just how messy and confusing it all was. When you
got two contradictory stories and the narratives kind of in
(27:13):
a in a cycle, you know, and you're just hearing
so many different accounts, it's really hard to know what
the truth is, and hard to know how to love someone,
and hard to know how to hold them accountable. I
know we are committed to do in those things, but
just knowing the truth and applying it it was the
hard part. Um. If I had it to do over,
(27:34):
you know, I had to do it again. I'm sure
there are a lot of things I do different, but
there are still a number of people to kind of
feel very personal about how everything went down. And I
mean specifically, I'm thinking about this what I've heard that
people that were standing against Rene felt almost personally victimized
(27:56):
by the process that they had a scripture like Matthew
eighteen and about that process of handling things in a
biblical fashion thrown at them. Um, I mean, can you
speak to any of that? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I
don't really have anything, man, Um, I don't have anything there. Man.
(28:39):
Jeremy asked me to turn the recorder off, and by
then a storm was passing through and made recording impossible.
We decided to pick it up in the morning. When
he came back, Jeremy was much more sure of what
he wanted to say. I know that I hurt and
(29:01):
disparaged people, that I didn't do it well, and whether
it was ignorance or maybe some defensiveness or some self preservation.
I'm always skeptical of my of myself, you know, always
taking inventory to make sure my motivations are right and
I'm doing things, you know well. And if it was
a wrong that I did, you know, some information I
(29:23):
should have had. I should have gotten, you know, a
process I should have went, you know, went through that
I didn't. That caused the hurt. Man. I'm sorry for it,
you know, looking back on it. Here, you and I
were sitting in here talking yesterday and a big storm
came through and the wind was raging and leaves were
blowing everywhere. We could hear a low rumble. It sounded
(29:45):
kind of like a tornado in here, and um and
we sort of invoked that as an image of what
happened in the Ginger community. I felt swept up by
a tornado, which I imagine a lot of people did.
It felt really out of control, you know, out of
my control. Uh, And it was causing chaos and really
(30:10):
really hard to make sense of it, both when it
was happening and even in the aftermath. Picking up the
pieces has been, you know, been challenging, and I imagine
there are a lot of people, you know, who share
that with me, probably from both sides. In sixteen, Jeremy
(30:30):
and the Mediators wrote a follow up letter apologizing for
the role that they played in this whole process. They
walked back their tacit support of RENEE and instead sided
with medical authorities, with legal authorities and made strong suggestions
for the changes that serving his children should make to
their organization. Just before he left, Jeremy told me his
(30:52):
story from his twenties. Uh, I was thinking this morning
before I came to talk to you about sitting on
a jury. One time, there was a man who was
driving drunk and he had a young boy in the
driver's seat, and he drove off and he had a
utility pole. And so you know, we're sitting in on
this journey and the prosecution wants to get the guy
(31:14):
for a second degree murder and the defense is arguing
for man slaughter, and um the difference what had everything
to do with the mental state of the man who
was driving the vehicle at the time. And we literally
(31:34):
spent a week listening to one phone call to try
to read between the lines and figure out what's the context?
You know, was this guy malicious? Was he hateful? You know?
Did he you know? What was really going on here?
And I just remember feeling really small and really unqualified
(31:57):
and not wanting to be in that position. And the
court made a decision and I walked away wondered, and
we make the right decision. I didn't even know. And
twenty years later, I still look at that and say,
I'm not really sure we made the right decision. But
(32:17):
that metaphor, as earnestly as Jeremy offered, it summed up
the whole problem with the mediation trying to address the
intentions and motives of the people involved, Renee's intentions, her
accusers intentions, rather than the actual issue at hand. Well,
it costs Jeremy years of regret and some of his
(32:39):
closest friends. It's the same problem that's dogged us every
step of our reporting. People kept asking was Renee crazy?
Did you get off on experimenting on kids? Or was
her heart in the right place? But intentions have always
been a very naive way to look at this. It
didn't matter how here your heart was, how sorry you were.
(33:03):
There were still children in coffins, families who wanted answers
and systemic failures to account for. After all, what is
it they say about the road to hell. For a
(33:23):
couple of years, after things were quiet for serving his children,
they stopped doing impatient medicine, and we're educating mothers on
the complex issues of malnutrition. Renee's legacy had taken a hit,
But now the organization was more bulletproof. They had partnered
with the local government, and we're operating directly out of
a public clinic. Serving his children two point oh was
(33:47):
more by the book. There was one person to thank
for making that happen. One of the doctors that Renee
hired years earlier, dr Ibraham Gualuca, known by colleagues simply
as Dr Ibraham. He had transferred to the Chigndolo area,
and Dr Ibraham helped broker the meetings that led to
the government partnership. He's the one who really presented the organization,
(34:11):
presented the program proposal, got all of the approvals, got
all of our m o us signed, and then helped
set up all of our trainings and stuff like that,
and then monitored the program as a whole. But as
we've seen in this episode and throughout the series, Serving
his Children was a black hole for so many people
who came close to it. Jeremy, Jackie, the government, regulators,
(34:34):
the three of us working on this podcast. It seemed
like everyone who lodged a complaint or tried to help
or wanted to know why this happened and how ended
up worse off for it, got caught up in a
storm of accusations and rumors and what happened to dr
Ibrahim Hammers this home doctor and his wife in India
(34:57):
home in Indiaka. But he's so sta coming from the
mountain the orange treat. The next thing the way who
had was the blitz? In December, dr Ibraham drove to
pick up his wife from work in Giner and returned
(35:18):
home where two assassins were waiting for him. They fired
shots through the windshield, striking dr Ibraham twice in the chest.
His wife fled, managing to escape the gunmen on foot,
while dr Ibraham died in a pool of his own blood.
(35:40):
It didn't seem like a coincidence to some people siding
against Renee. Shootings were not common in Uganda. Gun laws
are strict, and we quickly heard that Dr Ibraham had
a meeting with a government official scheduled for the week
he was killed. He was going to blow the whistle
on renew h And then those signing with Renee said,
(36:04):
we had it all flipped around. Dr Ibraham was loyal
to serving his children. He was going to march into
that government office and vindicate Renee, and that's why he
was killed. The trauma of a beloved doctor being killed.
The screams you hear in that news footage, they were
(36:25):
being exploited on both sides. We were supposed to believe
that someone here was a monster capable of murdering in
cold blood, only no one could back it up. But
everyone thought it had to do with them, their struggle,
their fight. Meanwhile, Dr Ibraham's murder remains unsolved. Next time.
(36:56):
On the final episode of The Missionary, I was so
sure that I was where I was supposed to be
in life and doing what I was supposed to be doing.
And now to like step back after so long and
asked myself, like, did you just get it all wrong?
Did you really help anyone at all? Because now, like
(37:18):
people that you love so dearly are being blackmailed and threatened,
and they're threatening my own children, And was it worth it?
The Missionary is a production of I Heart Media. It's
written and reported by Helema ge Condhi, Malcolm Burnley, and
(37:40):
me Roger Goba. It's produced by Michelle Lands and Rhyan Murdoch.
Mark Lotto is our story editor. Our executive producer is Mangi.
Our fact checker is Austin Thompson.
Previously on the missionary. I would assume that this is
a health facility with the trained health workers. My job
there was to show people the character in the nature
of Christ by just like acting out of love and
kindness and being so compassionate. Seeing how the community reacted
left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I
(00:22):
just was constantly asking myself every day, if this is
how Christians are supposed to act and treat one another.
There's no one I would say, but please, I want
to see your papas, but please waise your certificate displayed here.
There was no way I would ask that. Mal nutrition
(00:46):
season in Uganda is really like May through September because
of the rainy season in the way that the harvests
flow there, And so we had kind of geared up
for pretty high numbers in the summer. And yeah, we
had a lot of people that were just coming. We
had over twenty children because that is the time the
facility was overwhelmed. We had very many. It was above
(01:07):
the capacity. But then the morning came when a government
vehicle pulled up to the gate of serving his children unannounced.
It was March twelve. It was around eight I started
due to as you. So at ten we used to
take the vitals of these children. The babies would go
to sleep. I was sitting there after taking my vitals
(01:30):
and so the vehicle for the d H. When they
came the d H or they came in the car,
the guard opened the gates. I just saw some officials
coming out of the vehicle and welcome to him or
what you've been doing. You're killing children here this and
you're just for educating in the communities. Why are you
(01:50):
treating children? I supposed to children. I'm supposed to work here,
I said, I am a maddie and I'm not a boss.
They asked for the director. I was killing my friend's
thirteen children while she was on her honeymoon for two
and a half weeks. As soon as Renee called wind
of the raid, she found another babysitter and raced across town.
(02:10):
They went inside the office and the DHL stood there
and looked me in the face and said, you have
to get everyone out by five. And I said, well,
I don't know where we're going to send all these
kids because they all need really intensive care. And he said,
I don't care. You can send them home, you can
refer them to government facility, and I said, but sir,
these kids will die if we send them home, and
(02:32):
he said, you're right, they will die, but it's no
longer your problem, so get them out of here before
five o'clock or I'm taking you to jail. After that,
we saw any going in the boys quota and she
started crying. Then yes, hearing they have closed us down,
they have closed us down. She called it the stuff
(02:55):
and said the center has been closed. They could. The
driver packed up those mothers and took back the motherless
in their respective places, where they picked to them, women
on their knees, begging, please don't make us sleep, Please
aunt your name, please don't make us sleep. Our kids
are gonna die. And within three days, eight or nine
(03:15):
of those kids died in other facilities. In association with
I Heart Media, I'm Malcolm Burnley, I'm Roger Gola, I'm
Mega Condi. This is the Missionary episode seven Matthew eighteen.
(03:49):
If you compare the events of two thousand fifteen to
what is happening today with serving his children, it's a
bit like deja vu. For the first time, these quiet,
it simmering whispered complaints about what was happening inside the
facility started to get out and to be taken seriously
by people with actual authority. It was the first time
(04:11):
Renee was forced to answer questions on the record and
to be held accountable. The good Samaritan defense, the witch
hunt narrative, and the arguments that Renee was only dealing
with children under the watchful eye of Ugandan professionals. These
were all aired out five years ago. Two thousand fifteen
was the year that everything changed for serving his children
(04:34):
for Renee for Gina. Just weeks before the shutdown, to
pediatricians from non Lufenia Children's Hospital visited serving his children
and they were alarmed by certain conditions like the children
receiving intravenous fluids. When the pediatricians felt they didn't need
(04:55):
to so they took their concerns to Peter Joego Natamu,
the Strict Health Officer or d h O. We know
that the DHOW handed Renee an inspection notice bearing a
government insignia, which said in plain language why serving his
children was being shut down. The first violation was for
(05:17):
running a health facility with an expired license. What's weird
about this is that serving his children finally did get
a license in two thousand fourteen. They had passed a
government inspection and everything, but without renewal, the medical license
had expired by March two thousand fifteen. Renee says she
believed there was a grace period lasting several months where
(05:40):
they could operate without it as they waited to get
it renewed. I learned later that this was actually a
common misconception on the ground and that you gone and
officials are still trying to correct it. There is no
grace period. I mean, the realities is not that hard
to register. It's just a paperwork process, you know. Um
I really anyone who wanted to register a house center
(06:03):
probably could. I mean, the qualifications are not that heavy.
I mean the things that we put into place were
probably far stricter and more structured than what was required.
The obvious question here is that if it was so
easy to do, then why didn't she? For the record,
(06:24):
licensing is one of those issues that goes well beyond Renee.
A lot of Ugandan clinics have been shut down because
they didn't have active licenses. Regardless, it doesn't matter what
led the DHO to investigate that day elapsed a license
was all he needed to shut them down immediately because
it was illegal, and it wasn't all they found. The
(06:47):
d h O also wrote down that children with tuberculosis
or t B were mixed in with the rest of
the kids. Not only is t B an infectious disease,
it's also a potential cause of malnutrish in, which is
why there are strict standards for quarantining children with TB
from those who don't have it, because otherwise you could
(07:08):
be treating one problem while potentially infecting children with another.
The third violation was a bit broad. The d h
O noted that there were children in need of higher
level care than what serving his children could visibly provide
cases that shouldn't have been handled there. So at the
end of the day, the person who was ultimately responsible
(07:28):
for the shutdown was the person who was running the facility.
That was Renee back. What's more, we learned that Renee
had made multiple attempts to try to get serving his
children reopened without addressing any of those problems. These were
(07:49):
actually rumors that we had heard very early on during
our reporting, claims that Renee had gone to the capital
of Kampala to try to get reopened had done something fishy.
What we did learn was this She met with Dr
Cotumba sin Tango, the chief executive of Uganda's medical and
dental counsel, who heard from in the last episode. He
(08:09):
remembers the meeting vividly because of where they met. He
was attending a conference and Renee was willing to meet
him in the hotel lobby. Doctor sin Tango remembers Renee
trying to convince him that the DHO had gotten it
wrong and to help her reopen, but that didn't fly
with him. So asked you what other issue and said, oh,
(08:31):
the districts have said, oh, if you did that to me,
get the phone. So no, I get the phone. So
I got the phone and I phoned. I founded, he
told me. Doctor sin Tango put the DHOW on speaker
phone to make sure that Renee could hear his explanation.
He said that if I was handling letters, especially, they
(08:53):
are not fit to manage and doctoral they taught them
to defy the cases film in the hospital. You know
the right deal for a good affection of contra and whatever.
In the coming days, Dr sin Tango received calls from
politicians asking if he would reconsider Renee's appeal. He doesn't
remember exactly who called, he says, mostly because he didn't
(09:15):
pay the much attention. They don't above mean the profession.
But I think the politicians, say the local politicians. I
don't remember a bit of advertise. Remember somebody, senior. I
think there's some people fund me somewhere, the people fund
me to the guest anything. But as you like, yes,
(09:35):
you know, if you are not in the line of profession. Yeah,
keep in mind this is a person in a position
of authority saying this. He told Renee she would have
to fix the problems at serving his children and sorted
out with the d show before she could reopen. We
(09:57):
don't know if Renee ever did that, but what we
do you know from the court documents is that Renee
solicited letters of support from some of the medical staff
she had employed, including mudasik Uza, the clinical officer we
heard from in the last episode. But when I showed
him the letter bearing his signature, he said he didn't
remember writing it. Later, a different official in Jinga, Henry
(10:21):
Kombaini of the Allied Health Professionals Counsel, told me he
remembered that months after the shutdown. Renee and another woman
came to his office to inquire about registering a lab
at serving his children, but he told them they needed
a valid license first. Was this Renee trying to back
channel the system in order to reopen or was it
(10:44):
her trying to figure out how to reopen the right way.
The person I thought would have the answer to that
was the d HO or district Health officer, and we
tried to speak with him multiple times. I even waited
at his office for hours, but he refew is to
talk with us. Even now, Renee considers the shutdown a
(11:05):
personal hit job herself a victim of politics and Vendetta's
rather than the overt reasons staring her in the face,
including the government violations. Later, we were told, and you know,
we don't have any evidence to this, but that the
DJO was paid a bribe to come and close the center.
So when he came, he really had no option. So um,
(11:27):
you know, he had to come with a pretty serious
aggression because you know, he was paid a decent amount
of money to come and lead us to believe that
we were being closed. Here's what we actually know about
the series of events that led up to it. The
d h O got a tip from those pediatricians at Malathania,
but those pediatricians got a tip from inside the missionary world.
(11:51):
I had been the person to who volunteered to compile
all the evidence. I didn't have a lot of first
hand evidence myself, which is kind of why I volunteered
to do that, because I had her that I was
a little bit less emotionally involved and less emotionally charged.
Megan Parker didn't know Renee well. She had a reputation
as something of an outsider in Ginger, running a bide
family center, the NNGO she launched with Kelsey Nielsen in
(12:14):
two I just couldn't understand how people could look at
the same evidence we were looking at and come to
such different conclusions. Sometime in early the evidence gathered by
women like Ashley Laberty and Jackie Kramlike crystallized into a document.
It included photos from Renee's blog trying to show Renee
(12:34):
had violated patient privacy rights, a post where Renee seemed
to be transfusing a girl that we now know as Patricia.
There was a little bit of firsthand testimony contributed by
Ashley two, but most of the evidence was cut and
pasted from Renee's blogs, and that document started to make
its way around Ginger. Elizabeth Nicholson made a copy and
(12:56):
took it to the police. Another one went to Nalafa
in You, and they even sent the material to the media.
I think anything really came of that. No one communicated
with us after that until the day that serving as
shut down, and then obviously that was swirling all over town,
and that's when we kind of were like, WHOA, I
(13:17):
guess that did something. Renee described this document almost like
a high school burn book, coupled together by her rivals.
In order to ruin her reputation back, Kelsey and a
couple of other women created a file of just different
pieces of blogs, a couple of photos, and to be honest,
when I read it later, it sounded like they were
(13:40):
writing it for like a tabloid publication. It was like
fairly catty. It was almost I mean, it wasn't because
I was like a disaster at the time, but it
was almost comical, you know, just this mean girl undertone.
Later I did read the document, it didn't seem juvenile
or frivolous or conspiratorial. Honestly, it read like an early
(14:00):
draft of the court case, except without stories like twel allies.
At the time, Megan and her colleagues believed they were whistleblowers,
but soon they were treated like snitches. At vacation Bible camp,
that very day, someone told me, people are really unhappy.
They think your approaches were unbiblical and that you should
(14:21):
never have gone to the authorities. You should have gone
to the church elders if you had concerned. I went
to missionary events and people would like refuse to speak
to me, And I think again, like that was I
was so like brigged out about that that I definitely
overestimated how many people were against me versus on my side.
Like the entire town was just split down the middle.
(14:56):
After the shutdown, a group of religious leaders stepped in
with a plan and to end the bad blood and
determine once and for all, what if anything Renee did wrong.
Nobody agreed on anything in this story except one thing.
The church mediation was an unqualified disaster. You know, there
were so many of us that were seeing the same story,
(15:18):
giving the same narrative, and they just wouldn't listen or
wouldn't believe it, and they were just so like help
bent on standing up for Renee that it was just
like it was shocking, that's Ashley, here's Renee. I feel
very certain that Kelsey and everybody Jackie would say, oh, well,
the elders wanted to stick up for Renee. They just
(15:40):
didn't even want to hear what we had to say,
like they don't care. And I would probably say the
same thing. I feel like they were verbalizing to me like, hey,
we want to help this situation, like how can we
support you? But I didn't feel supported or helped at all.
I feel like they made my life more living. Count
(16:01):
Patrick Draku was a Ugandan elder at the church. When
I attended, I hoped to see humility this who thought
they were right, said Luke. I humble myself, I see
that I was wrong, and those who still think they're
right to try to listen to the other site. I
hoped for Christians behaving like much a Christians, not still infants. Yeah.
(16:26):
Three mediators agreed to lead the process. A church elder
named Jeremy Boone who led the church when I went
to and to other elders from other churches in the community.
But in the small world of Ginger, everyone already knew
each other old allegiances or the perception of them torpedo
the process before it began. None of them had ever
(16:49):
experienced anything like this before, where there was so much
like overwhelming brokenness. My perception of Jeremy was that he
went in hoping to help heal a community, realized that
the whole situation was way more complex than he perceived,
and he was just in totally over his head. The
(17:10):
mediators spoke about restoring peace, but they chose not to
bring both sides together. Renee and her accusers came in
separately for questioning, sitting down in plastic chairs below a
shady grove of palm trees. Megan Parker and Ashley Laberty
went together, and then they just tried using a whole
bunch of scripture out of context, basically to demean and
(17:35):
degrade Megan and I. It was very upsetting. I actually
had to sit on my hands because I was shaking
so badly. The mediators kept coming back to a part
of Matthew eighteen about the value of handling conflicts neighbor
to neighbor, Christian to Christian. I have a pastor daughter
(17:55):
born and raised okay um so lasts among the believers.
They're as this passage and first for instance, that if
members of the church have grievances against one another, why
would you go to a law that is an unrighteous
law instead of the thing? It's the exact line. And
we got really sort of heated because we're like, why
(18:16):
are you unable to see that this isn't a church matter?
And like why why would we have gone to the
church elders or church leadership? Because this was not a
biblical matter. This wasn't a church matter. It was a
moral and legal matter. But Ashley and Jackie had tried
for years to handle this inside the community, and now
they felt like these spiritual leaders weren't even taking them seriously.
(18:41):
Here's Jackie Kramlin. It was that whole thing that I'm like,
was just like awakening to the insanity of the rules
we followed as a community, you know that, like you
could come forward with children dying, um now practice and
neglect kind of thing negligence and be told like, yeah, okay,
(19:02):
but you know you just said it, so me and
her feelings were really hurt. Let's all make a list
and bring her some special thing every day because she
feels so sad right now. They lost sight of like
what the medication was because they were like, well, not
our girls, because we're all in it involved, and the
(19:22):
mediation team was all men. The mediation completely backfired. Ashley
believed it could be a second chance for justice, a
second chance to tell their stories, but by the end
she felt like they were being asked to atone not Renee. Again.
We're bringing up all these examples of the wrong that
Renee had done. Yet somehow they wanted us to feel
(19:45):
like we were the ones in the wrong. And it
was just like a very dirty feeling. I wrote, hear
me like a personal email, like getting all of like
how this impact me, Like explaining to him that like
you're not only just kind of like turning your eyes
away from justice and child abused basically and um, even
(20:06):
when there's really hard evidence in front of your face.
But like in saying that she's fine, you're calling me
a buyer. But the mediation failed in another even more
significant way. The saga of serving his children was one
that affected Ugandan families, but Ugandans were never involved in
(20:27):
the process. The mediation would never address the actual issues
at hand. If it did not address the victims first.
In the end, the mediators wrote a letter commending Renee
for her cooperation and concluded quote that Renee and her
board saw their indiscretion and we're working hard to make
sure they were legally compliant and above board prior to
(20:51):
serving his children's clinic being shut down. But the letter
also went on to condemn those who brought the allegations
in the first place, and said, is that the criticisms
were not put forward in a caring manner. Let me
read you a line here. Harsh judgments concerning Renee's character
and in one event, the destination of her soul did
(21:13):
little to help bring facts to light. While it's understandable
to be frustrated with a perceived disinterest of Renee in
her board, it is never right to be presumptuous about
such a grave matter a person's character or their soul.
I just always remember thinking and even telling my mom Um,
I was like, you know, unless this gets into the media,
(21:35):
like nothing is ever going to happen. She's just going
to keep doing what she's doing. She's going to keep
getting praised for it. People are still going to stand
up for her. Um. As much as I sorry, wanted
to put it behind me. There was still this part
of me that like still wanted to see justice and
like her, have to face the consequences of what she
(21:58):
had done. Oh, I didn't think that I was the
person to make that all happen. Um. I felt like
I was never really going to be happy or like
at at peace with this situation until that happened, if
that ever happens. So what was your react? Go ahead, Yeah,
(22:19):
take a minute. I've been trying to get in contact
(22:42):
with Jeremy Boone for months. I left him voicemails, texts,
and emails. I could tell he had seen my messages,
but he never wrote back. Other folks in town told
me it was a dead end. Jeremy was over at all.
He'd put the whole thing behind him. He moved on
and didn't want anything to do with it anymore. But
(23:03):
then one day he responded, and a week later I
was sitting cross legged on the floor of his living room.
I wore the only button up shirt I packed, tucked
into my jeans, trying to clean up the best I
could for the church service that Jeremy was holding in
his home. Goods. I'm thank you so much, Um, he
(23:31):
and his wife started off leading a few songs. There
were about forty people there, a mixed crowd of Ugandan's, Americans, kids, teens, adults,
some who'd been there for decades and some who'd just
gotten there a few weeks earlier. Yeah, so a few people.
(23:51):
He's good to happen. Thank you very much for having
very glad to hear he's a journalist. Actually he's went
to du University and other of you care a lot
here that so far, despite that fact, which is nice.
(24:15):
The subject of that morning sermon was John seven Oddly
residence John seven thirty seven. On the last and greatest
day of the festival, Jesus stood and said, in a
loud voice, let anyone who is thirsty come to me
(24:35):
and drink. Whoever believes in me. Best scripture has said
rivers of living model flowed with from it in them.
By this, he meant the spirit with whom those who
believed in him were later to receive so great. After
(25:01):
the service and after the pot luck lunch, Jeremy and
I made plans to do an interview the next day.
He had things he needed to get off his chest
about how everything went down, and the next day he
came to my place. I offered him a glass of
water and we took our seats in my living room. First,
I just want to ask, like, what made you wanna
(25:23):
say something about this? I'll be honest. I mean I'm
still a little reluctant in some ways. Um, but you know,
people are going to form their own opinions and autother
them form it when I've actually spoken, rather than people
form it based on, you know, my silence. And so yeah,
(25:44):
I just wanted I could tell Jeremy was nervous. He
gulped down the first glass of water quickly and got
up every few minutes to refill his glass and catch
his breath. He brought along a piece of notebook paper
with him. Um, that's looking at so I want to
notice it. And now I'm out this, So yeah, what
don't I let you sort of lead it from here
and then if I have questions, I'll jump off. That works. Um.
(26:09):
So our jurisdiction was very limited. I mean, no one
had to listen to anything we said. No one had
to read our letters if they don't want to read
our letters. Um, we volunteered to try to try to
help to get to the truth and to help bring
resolve if possible. Most people were pretty positive about us
(26:29):
being involved. I can't say all and we're looking toward
us to try to bring some light to the situation,
and I think some even um hoping to find some
level of understanding and resolve in the community. UM. I
don't think that after the mediation letter was was written
that people felt that way. I think probably people were
(26:52):
probably discouraged and wondered why we were wherever involved, including myself. Yeah,
I empathize with them. When our teams stepped into this
whole story, I didn't think any of us could predict
just how messy and confusing it all was. When you
got two contradictory stories and the narratives kind of in
(27:13):
a in a cycle, you know, and you're just hearing
so many different accounts, it's really hard to know what
the truth is, and hard to know how to love someone,
and hard to know how to hold them accountable. I
know we are committed to do in those things, but
just knowing the truth and applying it it was the
hard part. Um. If I had it to do over,
(27:34):
you know, I had to do it again. I'm sure
there are a lot of things I do different, but
there are still a number of people to kind of
feel very personal about how everything went down. And I
mean specifically, I'm thinking about this what I've heard that
people that were standing against Rene felt almost personally victimized
(27:56):
by the process that they had a scripture like Matthew
eighteen and about that process of handling things in a
biblical fashion thrown at them. Um, I mean, can you
speak to any of that? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I
don't really have anything, man, Um, I don't have anything there. Man.
(28:39):
Jeremy asked me to turn the recorder off, and by
then a storm was passing through and made recording impossible.
We decided to pick it up in the morning. When
he came back, Jeremy was much more sure of what
he wanted to say. I know that I hurt and
(29:01):
disparaged people, that I didn't do it well, and whether
it was ignorance or maybe some defensiveness or some self preservation.
I'm always skeptical of my of myself, you know, always
taking inventory to make sure my motivations are right and
I'm doing things, you know well. And if it was
a wrong that I did, you know, some information I
(29:23):
should have had. I should have gotten, you know, a
process I should have went, you know, went through that
I didn't. That caused the hurt. Man. I'm sorry for it,
you know, looking back on it. Here, you and I
were sitting in here talking yesterday and a big storm
came through and the wind was raging and leaves were
blowing everywhere. We could hear a low rumble. It sounded
(29:45):
kind of like a tornado in here, and um and
we sort of invoked that as an image of what
happened in the Ginger community. I felt swept up by
a tornado, which I imagine a lot of people did.
It felt really out of control, you know, out of
my control. Uh, And it was causing chaos and really
(30:10):
really hard to make sense of it, both when it
was happening and even in the aftermath. Picking up the
pieces has been, you know, been challenging, and I imagine
there are a lot of people, you know, who share
that with me, probably from both sides. In sixteen, Jeremy
(30:30):
and the Mediators wrote a follow up letter apologizing for
the role that they played in this whole process. They
walked back their tacit support of RENEE and instead sided
with medical authorities, with legal authorities and made strong suggestions
for the changes that serving his children should make to
their organization. Just before he left, Jeremy told me his
(30:52):
story from his twenties. Uh, I was thinking this morning
before I came to talk to you about sitting on
a jury. One time, there was a man who was
driving drunk and he had a young boy in the
driver's seat, and he drove off and he had a
utility pole. And so you know, we're sitting in on
this journey and the prosecution wants to get the guy
(31:14):
for a second degree murder and the defense is arguing
for man slaughter, and um the difference what had everything
to do with the mental state of the man who
was driving the vehicle at the time. And we literally
(31:34):
spent a week listening to one phone call to try
to read between the lines and figure out what's the context?
You know, was this guy malicious? Was he hateful? You know?
Did he you know? What was really going on here?
And I just remember feeling really small and really unqualified
(31:57):
and not wanting to be in that position. And the
court made a decision and I walked away wondered, and
we make the right decision. I didn't even know. And
twenty years later, I still look at that and say,
I'm not really sure we made the right decision. But
(32:17):
that metaphor, as earnestly as Jeremy offered, it summed up
the whole problem with the mediation trying to address the
intentions and motives of the people involved, Renee's intentions, her
accusers intentions, rather than the actual issue at hand. Well,
it costs Jeremy years of regret and some of his
(32:39):
closest friends. It's the same problem that's dogged us every
step of our reporting. People kept asking was Renee crazy?
Did you get off on experimenting on kids? Or was
her heart in the right place? But intentions have always
been a very naive way to look at this. It
didn't matter how here your heart was, how sorry you were.
(33:03):
There were still children in coffins, families who wanted answers
and systemic failures to account for. After all, what is
it they say about the road to hell. For a
(33:23):
couple of years, after things were quiet for serving his children,
they stopped doing impatient medicine, and we're educating mothers on
the complex issues of malnutrition. Renee's legacy had taken a hit,
But now the organization was more bulletproof. They had partnered
with the local government, and we're operating directly out of
a public clinic. Serving his children two point oh was
(33:47):
more by the book. There was one person to thank
for making that happen. One of the doctors that Renee
hired years earlier, dr Ibraham Gualuca, known by colleagues simply
as Dr Ibraham. He had transferred to the Chigndolo area,
and Dr Ibraham helped broker the meetings that led to
the government partnership. He's the one who really presented the organization,
(34:11):
presented the program proposal, got all of the approvals, got
all of our m o us signed, and then helped
set up all of our trainings and stuff like that,
and then monitored the program as a whole. But as
we've seen in this episode and throughout the series, Serving
his Children was a black hole for so many people
who came close to it. Jeremy, Jackie, the government, regulators,
(34:34):
the three of us working on this podcast. It seemed
like everyone who lodged a complaint or tried to help
or wanted to know why this happened and how ended
up worse off for it, got caught up in a
storm of accusations and rumors and what happened to dr
Ibrahim Hammers this home doctor and his wife in India
(34:57):
home in Indiaka. But he's so sta coming from the
mountain the orange treat. The next thing the way who
had was the blitz? In December, dr Ibraham drove to
pick up his wife from work in Giner and returned
(35:18):
home where two assassins were waiting for him. They fired
shots through the windshield, striking dr Ibraham twice in the chest.
His wife fled, managing to escape the gunmen on foot,
while dr Ibraham died in a pool of his own blood.
(35:40):
It didn't seem like a coincidence to some people siding
against Renee. Shootings were not common in Uganda. Gun laws
are strict, and we quickly heard that Dr Ibraham had
a meeting with a government official scheduled for the week
he was killed. He was going to blow the whistle
on renew h And then those signing with Renee said,
(36:04):
we had it all flipped around. Dr Ibraham was loyal
to serving his children. He was going to march into
that government office and vindicate Renee, and that's why he
was killed. The trauma of a beloved doctor being killed.
The screams you hear in that news footage, they were
(36:25):
being exploited on both sides. We were supposed to believe
that someone here was a monster capable of murdering in
cold blood, only no one could back it up. But
everyone thought it had to do with them, their struggle,
their fight. Meanwhile, Dr Ibraham's murder remains unsolved. Next time.
(36:56):
On the final episode of The Missionary, I was so
sure that I was where I was supposed to be
in life and doing what I was supposed to be doing.
And now to like step back after so long and
asked myself, like, did you just get it all wrong?
Did you really help anyone at all? Because now, like
(37:18):
people that you love so dearly are being blackmailed and threatened,
and they're threatening my own children, And was it worth it?
The Missionary is a production of I Heart Media. It's
written and reported by Helema ge Condhi, Malcolm Burnley, and
(37:40):
me Roger Goba. It's produced by Michelle Lands and Rhyan Murdoch.
Mark Lotto is our story editor. Our executive producer is Mangi.
Our fact checker is Austin Thompson.
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