May 22, 2020 • 41 mins
For years, a baby named Patricia was a Serving His Children success story. But a video sent to our team throws everything into question.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you hear in this podcast does not implicate any
individual or entity in any criminal activity. The views and
opinions are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
Renee Bach wants you to know something. Yes, she admits
a hundred and five children did die at her ng o,
(00:22):
but she did the best she could for them, hiring nurses, doctors,
bringing medical equipment from the US over to Uganda, even
paying for kids to go to private hospitals when things
got serious. We can't make a difference to everyone, but
we can't make a difference to some people. And just
because there are so many negative things happening, and people dying,
(00:42):
and you know, kids getting kidnapped, and when it seems
like the world is just kind of crashing down, that
doesn't mean that you can't make a difference for that
one person. Renee and her lawyer implored, instead of focusing
on those inevitable tragedies, why don't we take a look
at the good that they did in Uganda from two
thousand nine, eight hundred other children came in sick and
(01:06):
starving and went home happy and healthy. To drive that
point home, Renee's mother, Lorie told us about a little
girl named Patricia, one of serving his children's smiling success stories.
She came in with her body swollen from head to
toe and covered in boils. Weeks later, she was back
(01:30):
to a regular way, back to being a messy eater,
and back home with her family. I think she's just
like nine or ten now, and she goes to school.
And I mean they're a family because they thought help
if somebody would be able to help them. So I mean,
that's just a whole great story right there. And then
(01:52):
Lorie sent us a video. Oh no, it was an
interview with Patricia's father, James o'kello. Didn't he speaks in
the local language. But the subtitles underneath read this white
has helped us up to the time our daughter got well,
(02:13):
even up to date, we thank them. If you saw
the photos of Patricia on Rene's blog, swollen almost like
she was going to burst, you think it was nothing
short of a miracle. But the video also showed a
picture of Patricia now almost a teenager, and she has
a scar running down the side of her face, and
(02:33):
James says, we were told that the white lady is
being prosecuted for keeping the flesh of my daughter on
ice and eating it cannibalism. I can't say I have
that on my missionary bingo card in association with I
Heeart Media. I'm Roger Gola. I I'm Malcolm Burnley and
(02:59):
this is the mission An Area, episode four, the video.
Before we got this video, Patricia wasn't really on our radar.
She wasn't part of the court case, and she wasn't
(03:21):
one of the hundred and five children who died at
Renee's facility. But when we started looking into it, she
didn't seem like much of a success story either. The
first people who told me Patricia's story were Renee's former employees,
the ones that had written affidavits in the case against her.
Jacqueline at Him, one of Renee's former social workers, told
(03:43):
me that Renee gave Patricia a blood transfusion when she
came to serving his children. Real needed that transfusion without
cross matching the blood. I think she just went on
go to blood and started transfugient immediately, and this kid
was in critical condition. The blood had banned and that
girl has a very big ska. The transfusion of this
(04:06):
girl from my UK called Patricia was not good because
one whereas he was transfused. Was not Igenique. The place
was not looking good. Indeed, the girl reacted to the blood.
She almost died. She just survived by God is a mercy.
(04:27):
That's Charles o'waeny, Rene's former program manager, and he told
me if I wanted to get to the bottom of
Patricia's story, I needed to talk to the woman who
was actually there, who had seen all of it firsthand,
an American volunteer named Jackie Kramlick. Jacqueline Crumblin's was always
(04:48):
telling know what you're doing is wrong. Let the medical
people do it. If it was not Jacqueline Crumblin's, Patricia
would have died. Jackie Cramlick was a nursing student at
Jamestown College in North Dakota when she met Chris. He
(05:11):
was five years older and had just gotten back from
a rock where he served with the Army. We were
in acquired together at college, and then yeah, I knew
her older sister from high school, so so you just
kept asking me how my sister was doing, until finally
they hit it off right away. Chris is lean and athletic,
(05:32):
with the same stubbly beard and buzz cut. He got
in the army. He seems confident, impatient. Jackie's a little
shorter and just as cheery. They were both raised Christian
and held their faith close. Pretty soon they got married,
and when Jackie graduated and got her nursing degree, she
knew she could be useful abroad. That's when a friend
(05:55):
in Uganda told him about serving his Children and the
incredible woman running it, Renee. Without a second thought, Jackie
submitted a volunteer application, which we pulled from the court
files and asked them to read. We feel that the
size of serving His children maintains a sense of order,
while at the same time allows for God to move
and speak to the volunteer. We've been so encouraged by
(06:17):
the way Renee and other volunteers simply love Jesus and
love others. Serving His children is very to the point,
very biblical, and we think it is a perfect fit
for us. At the bottom of the application is a
little note. You don't have to be a licensed teacher
to teach, or be in the medical field to put
on band aids. You just have to have passion and
(06:39):
working knowledge in that area. The organization that Jackie and
Chris walked into was very different from the one that
Renee started back in two thousand nine. In less than
two years, Renee had transformed serving his children into a
full fledged rehabilitation center. She was shipping in medical equipment
(07:02):
from the States and buying more materials for in house treatments.
By the time I was there, there was kind of
two parts of the house, So it was like the
general kids who are just kind of generally you know, ill,
and they're going through this process of being refed, and
most of them had I V S in and things
like that, and then there were kids who have kind
of It was this little tiny bedroom off the side
(07:26):
um of her living room, and it was painted red,
and there were two beds in there, and that is
where kids would be hooked up to oxygen or be
on more intensive IVY therapy, have more close monitoring. So
the concept was not very different from what we would
(07:48):
consider you know, I See You in the sense that
kids who needed more intensive care went there. Renee called
this makeshift I See You the Red Room. The walls
were painted a deep red and were plastered with pictures
of children who had passed through the facility. One of
the first photos I saw Renee was actually taken in
the red room. In it, she stands with her head down,
(08:10):
arms stretched out, light filters in behind her, making a
halo around her whole body. As soon as I entered
in that room, it's when a lot of guesswork was
happening and a lot of actions that she was not
trained to do or happening. I was fit to like
provide medical care and whatever this is over my head,
(08:32):
like this is serious, serious, Nick, you take you walk care.
The list of medical procedures that Jackie says she saw
Renee perform reads like a med school curriculum, intramuscular injections
for moral artery puncture, blood transfusions, naso gastric tube insertion,
baby delivery, and the preparation of a dead body. In
(08:57):
terms of Ugandan's I don't know how you wouldn't enter
her as a doctor. I think the confusion live. And
did she ever say hello, my name is doctor Renee?
Absolutely not now, she never said that in my presence.
Did she wear a stethoscope around her neck and assens
children and did uban and call her mousau, which is
in Luganda word for a doctor or nurse, Yes, they did.
(09:20):
She's giving that offense. She's providing I VS. She's doing
blood transfusions, she's assessing children, she's diagnosing, she's prescribing. I
don't really know how you can call those things, and
then in the same breath claim I've never representing myself
as a medical healthcare provider. What else would I be doing.
(09:41):
In her affidavit, Jackie claims that when she asked Renee
how she was making clinical decisions, Renee said that she
used a medical handbook, relied on her gut feeling, and
that she felt God would tell her what to do
for a child. It kind of stems from disbelief of
like God a sovereign f anything that happens was supposed
(10:02):
to happen. So this is really common in the missionary community.
So for example, child would die and you know, Renee
would have her hysterics, and then people would be like,
Renee got a sovereign There's nothing you could have done.
Van would have prevented this, because if a child was
meant to die, child's going to die, and if God
(10:24):
wanted to prevent it, he would have prevented it. Despite
Jackie's training, she noticed that Renee would call friends in
the States or even ask less qualified volunteers for medical advice.
To Chris, it almost felt like everyone was just playing house,
(10:46):
but after a child died without explanation, it became almost
too real. The point I guess for me is when
I had to drive the van one night to take
this child's body back of the village um when Jackie
wrote along too, and I'm driving and we get out
to the village and people are waiting for us like
they're wailing and watching Charles or whoever carry out this
(11:09):
body wrapped in a sheet. That just brought back memories
of Iraq to me and seeing people get killed there,
and I was like, okay, yeah, this is I mean
to me that this was as real as a war
at that point, like there were people dying here. She
knew that the way serving his children operated it wasn't right,
(11:30):
but no matter how bad it got, Jackie just wouldn't
or couldn't speak up. I felt like I didn't have
a right to tell this person who was viewed as
a superhero Christian viewed as you know, mother Teresa and Carnate.
I felt like I didn't have a right to tell
her certain things because I didn't have the same spiritual weight.
(11:54):
I didn't have the same social weight as her, and
I just didn't know how to contet end with that.
But after a little girl left serving his children scarred
for life, Jackie knew she couldn't keep quiet any longer.
That entire case. There was so much about that case
(12:15):
and what went down that just was the absolute nail
in the coffin of me not being willing to give
her the benefit of the doubt anymore as to what
was happening. So then it becomes a whole different issue. Right,
This isn't just mistakes on other ignorance. This is mistakes
done attentional. That child's name was Patricia, it was fault
(13:02):
and Renee hadn't been to church in weeks. The red
room was overflowing with kids and she was exhausted. It
was supposed to be a day of rest and worship,
but just as a service began, her phone rang. It
was Mama Fatima, one of her employees at the facility.
There were two parents at the door and their baby
(13:23):
was in critical condition. Renee grabbed her bag and hopped
in the car. She raced across Ginger to get back
to Missess. On the outskirts of town. When Renee got
to her facility, a little girl was waiting there for her.
She was just nine months old. Her parents had been
trying to find help at different clinics for weeks, but
(13:44):
nothing was working. Serving his children was their last resort.
It was clear that she was very ill. She was
completely swollen from head to toe, and it's hard to
know by just looking at a kid. You know, you
really have to do some investigations. So we weren't really
sure what was going on, but just ran some initial tests.
The blood tests came back with bad news. Patricia was
(14:07):
positive for malaria and had a severely low humo globe.
Account At the time, Serving his children had a doctor
that would come in to make rounds a few times
a week. The doctor wasn't at the facility that day
because it was a Sunday. What was called and he said, yeah,
I should probably go ahead and start a blood transfusion,
So they started one pretty quickly, though Renee noticed something
(14:27):
wasn't right. Patricia space and neck were swelling up. Within
a few minutes, her throat was beginning to close, and
that's when Renee finally called Jackie. I get a call
from Renee on a Sunday and she's like, could you
come down to the house. There's this child there and
I think they're having in an anti flactic action, but
(14:49):
I don't know because Google says that they're supposed to
have a rash and they don't have rash, So like,
could you come see? Blood? Transfusions have become one of
the more contentious and confusing allegations that have been lodged
against RENEE, so Halima went out to a few hospitals
to get a closer look. In her blog, she constantly
(15:11):
wrote about this desperate search for blood for the children
at her facility. After visiting countless hospitals and health centers,
I learned that there was a national blood shortage in Uganda,
a crisis in fact. On one of my visits to
the children's hospital in Jina, I remember sitting outside of
the emergency room waiting for a doctor. As I'm waiting,
(15:35):
I see a nurse walk by and put the body
of an older child in a room in front of me,
and then I see the child's mother come out of
the room sobbing. Later, a doctor told me that that
family had been driving throughout the whole night searching for blood.
For their child. By the time they arrived in Ginger,
he was nearly dead. Months later, I reached out to
(15:58):
a malnutrition doctor to learn more about why blood transfusions
might have been used to treat severely malnourist kids at
serving his children and can you introduce yourself? What's your
name and where are you working now? Thank you very much.
My name is chi Yogo Sant. I'm walking at Embied
General Fido Hospital as a senior nutritionist and also I
(16:23):
Nevil as a regional nutritionist. Doctor Serage told me that
blood transfusions were incredibly risky procedures, especially for severely malnourist kids.
They were incredibly fragile and often have these other medical complications,
so even the slightest imbalances could result in death. That's
(16:43):
why only the most qualified experts or specialists to treat them.
They needed constant supervision. If someone is not trained any
nutrition and the management of the student, especially children with complications,
they will use or apply procedures that are not suitable
(17:06):
for them, that are suitable for other children, and this
would cause a lot of death in these children. Dr
Saraj said that in most cases, a child's hemoglobe account
would return to normal after a few days of close care,
but blood transfusions were an absolute last resort. The blood
(17:27):
itself causes complications, the transfusion would be very very dangerous
giving access with results to death of this CHILDE So
that was no one recommended. This is the sidious procedia,
the dangerous actually prosidia in these child is here, my god,
(17:51):
I started showing him photos that Renee had posted online
of children receiving blood transfusions at serving his children. Oh no, when, okay,
this is very well. Here he is getting your blood, franst. Wow.
And this child should should not be given a blood transfusion,
this one, I don't know for what reason, because the
(18:13):
child looks so stable and the child is well hydritten
because I can see look at the head, all these brains.
They shown that the child is okay. When the head
they appear is the eyes are bright, Charley is very stable.
Such a child should not be transfused. But I'm warning
(18:35):
from your perspective, um, you know, even if somebody is
very talented at putting in i VS, should people without
this experience, even medical professionals without nutrition expertise, be dealing
with these cases. No, no, no, no, you see, these
are sidious medical complications. It should be managed by pediatriction.
(18:56):
Four years before Serving his Children was opened, there was
a study done at Uganda's bigg Ast Hospital and Lago
and it looked at more than two hundred severely malnourished
children who had died there in The study concluded that
blood transfusions and i VS were the main risk factors
in their deaths. Over the years, Renee has gone back
(19:27):
and forth on whether there were ever blood transfusions done
at Serving his Children. In an interview with The Smith
Mountain Eagle, she said, we do a lot of blood transfusions,
but in her response to the lawsuit, Renee denies that
Serving his Children performed blood transfusions. They sent children to
medical facilities to have them done elsewhere. When I asked
(19:50):
her about it again and whether she was personally involved
in starting any transfusions, her answer was puzzling. You individually
didn't start any book intrusions, even to under the discretion
of a doctor or Serving his Children did. Yes, um,
and I was usually involved in that process. But I
(20:10):
didn't like say Okay, this kid needs a blood transfusion
and then go and do it. Um, so that's not
to say that I wasn't involved in the process. So
I'm sure that can be construed as doing it. I
started a lot of i VS for kids who got
blood transfusions, but I never carried out all of that
process on my own discretion. But at the end of
the day, it's an argument over the semantics of a
(20:32):
risky medical procedure. Patricia was given a blood transfusion at
serving his children and unlicensed and unrecognized medical facility without
a doctor present. I don't know why. She was like
very averse to me being involved in those situations. You
don't want me here. You need to be in the
(20:53):
center of this. That's what's very clear to me. It's like,
not it's not about saving kids. It's a out you
being someone who saves kids. That's what this is about.
So I walk in on this and I'm like, in
this really like horrific situation of like not knowing if
they're in a state of shock. Did they come in
(21:13):
wheezing and swollen? I don't know. Jackie knew this was
more serious than she could handle. Stop the blood, give
ben and drill um, and then she rushes the child
to camp Paula. Patricia needed more blood transfusions, but the
hospital in Kampala didn't have her type. The doctor asked
(21:36):
Rena if she'd be willing to give a blood sample
to see if she was compatible. The test came back
be positive, exactly what Patricia needed. It was almost too
good to be true. Patricia was given a transfusion with
Renee's blood and a few days later her condition stabilized.
She was discharged into Renee's care. But when they got
(21:59):
back to Ginger, Jackie noticed something strange. Slowly they settle,
bump appears on her cheek and it's like slowly creeping
down to her jugular like skin is like gaping off.
And I'm like going back and forth with the medical
team that I had in the States, trying to figure
out what they thought, what should we do. Renee took
(22:19):
photos of Patricia in this condition and posted them on
her blog. The skin on Patricia's cheek is black and
bloody and there's white puss around the edges. She has
plastic tubes running all over her body and looks like
she's barely hanging on. Jackie didn't know what the disease was,
but she knew she was running out of time to
figure it out. Every day, the wound was getting bigger
(22:42):
and deeper, making its way down to the blood vessels
and Patricia's neck. Fortunately, a group of nurses and doctors
from Alabama had just arrived in Ginger to volunteer for
a few weeks, and after days of desperation, the visiting
doctor recommended a new tree that plan. As the child
(23:03):
is recovering, I'm like sorting through the child's medical file
and I see on one of the papers from the
hospital it says necrotizing fasciitis question mark written in by
a doctor. That's medical speak for flesh eating disease. We
were searching for days, like, trying to figure out what
(23:24):
this was, how do we treat it. In the meantime,
this child's face was being eaten off. Okay, like you
saw this, you knew this was here, Like this child
had already been diagnosed. Before you discharge the child out
of the hospital, Why would you discharge them? And her
response was, well, yeah, they mentioned something about that, but
it just didn't sound like they knew what they were
(23:45):
talking about. Jackie didn't buy it. She thought there was
no way a hospital would have discharged the patient after
a diagnosis like that. I'm not going to say that, like,
you know, I can't imagine a world at or where
someone might say, okay, fine, take her home if you
want to. But I'm just saying it seems very bizarre
(24:08):
to me that it seemed to be happening to her constantly,
that doctors were just saying to her, you could do
a better job than we could do. For her part,
Renee admits that the discharged documents said that Patricia had
flesh eating disease, but she claims that the doctors in
Kampala told her it wasn't a big deal rooms um.
(24:29):
And the person that I spoke with was like, oh, yeah,
like I it's like not a big deal. I don't know,
you know. So the person that wrote her discharged papers,
you know, wrote his findings in his summary whatever. Um.
And to be honest, I didn't even really read those um.
I brought them back and gave them to her nurses
to put in her file. I know, Jackie says, well,
(24:50):
you know, Renee said she didn't know about that or
wasn't a big deal. But then on these papers, and yeah,
because I didn't read the papers, I just listened to
what I was told. If that was an oversight by
our nurses, then that was an oversight um. Not to
cast any blame on anyone. Of course, slowly Patricia's swelling
went away, the wound on her face began closing up.
(25:13):
As Renee wrote in her blog, the most important thing
about the days that came is that we saw God
move in huge ways. He literally performed a miracle before
our eyes. The pictures on Renee's blog show Patricia with
a small bandage on her face. Her mother is beaming.
Patricia is sitting in her lap wearing a yellow polka
(25:34):
dot diaper. In another picture, she's making a mess out
of a bowl of beans and rice. Patricia stayed at
serving his children for a few more weeks before going home,
but to this day she has a large scar running
down the side of her face where the disease ate
away at her There was no need for that child
to have permanent scarring at all. Now. Granted, I am
(25:57):
surprised that child survived at all, but I'm sure they
would have been fine in the hospital, if not clearly better.
It did away with any illusions Jackie might have had
about Renee that she was acting selflessly as a good
Samaritan would. A good Samaritan is walking down the street
and see somebody who falls over, and it's like, oh,
what do I do? I'm going to do my best.
(26:19):
It's a one off. It's probably the only time in
the entire life they find themselves in that situation. It's
not a good Samaritan. She created an e r in
her living room and then always happened to find herself
in an emergency. It's like, you don't get to place
yourself in an e er and then claim what was
an emergency. She wasn't a good Samaritan. She was a fraud.
(26:39):
Like that's the difference. Like if I were to walk
into an ear and just start like willing nearly treating
people because the line is long, you bet your butt,
I'd be like kicked out of there and arrested in
two seconds. That is not a good Samaritan. Law Today,
Renee admits that her memory of the whole Patricia saga
is a bit hazy. What you don't understand is that
(27:00):
I lived in Negana for ten years and Patricia is
one of like almost a thousand kids that was like this,
and so recounting her exact story and then being held
and bound by those details on record for the media
is really tough because then it kind of is that
he said, she said game. You know, Jackie's like, well, no,
Renee said this or Renee did this, And I'm like, honestly,
(27:23):
don't remember that happening, But if Jackie said it did,
it's probably true because she likely has a better memory.
What happened with Patricia is what happened eight times out
of ten with kids that walked into our front door.
And honestly, I know it's been said like, oh, she's
scarred for life from Renee or whatever, and Jackie's had
(27:44):
a lot of really negative things to say about that
instance and me in that situation, and I'd love to
say some really negative things about Jackie and the instituation,
but in all honesty, Jackie is the one that determined
the drug that stopped that flash eating bacteria, and so
if it weren't for Jackie, she could have died. Renee
(28:06):
denies all of Jackie's accusations entirely. She says she never
did any of the medical procedures that Jackie claims. She
says she trusted her local staff and that she only
assisted when asked by professionals. I was always encouraged and
led to believe that, like, yes, if someone else can't
meet this need and you have the know how, then
(28:29):
you should agree. You know, if someone said can you
start this I V and you know how? Like, well,
why would she not? And she denies wanting to push
Jackie away. Instead, she says that Jackie just couldn't handle
working at the clinic. Renee says she was too emotional,
wouldn't take advice from local nurses, and just wasn't ready
for Uganda. Any time you start a new job, everyone
(28:53):
who's been there longer than you was always going to
be like, you don't know anything. You're just such a newie,
you know. It's so definitely a part of me thinks like, oh,
come on, Jackie, like buss your heart. You haven't been
there that long, and your world was very sheltered while
you were there because you self admittedly like emotionally couldn't
handle the tough reality of being in a developing situation
(29:14):
like that. So I don't know that it's really fair
for you to say like what you would or wouldn't
have done in this situation. Renee also says that Jackie
never actually got a license to practice nursing in Uganda,
which means any medical work that Jackie did would have
been illegal, But Jackie says that she was told by
Renee's mother that a nursing license was unnecessary. Shortly after
(29:39):
Patricia went home, Jackie resigned from serving his children. She
wrote a letter addressed to the board of directors, made
up of a few church leaders from back in Virginia.
The letter was polite, but offered a stern warning of
what was going on and serving his children. I don't
wanted a letter to like be like, oh, you're undoubtedly
(29:59):
motivate it in an intelligent and blah blah blah, but
you're not trained. And the response is like, that's hurtful,
and like the fact that you find that hurtful, it's
really troubling. I don't know what you find hurtful about
the fact that you're not a trained professional. What you're
saying is it's hurtful to you to be told that
(30:19):
you're not believe you are like this fantasy of yourself.
Years later, Jackie would even help file a police report
against Renee. No one's going to call out a girl
who has like dropped her life and moved here and
is serving serving serving to be like, are you really
doing this right? Well, they look like a huge asshole now.
(31:06):
No White Saviors seized on Patricia's story. They shared Renee's
blogs and photos. The captions reminded followers quote Renee was
not a license or trained medical professional. Her center was
also not a licensed medical facility. Yet here they are
giving a blood transfusion to a critically ill child. There
(31:27):
was no doubt that Renee and Lorie were losing the
online battle. It looked like they were losing the ground
game too. No White Saviors had been canvassing Uganda for
families who had suffered injury or death at serving his children,
convincing them to join up in the cause. No White
Saviors even convinced former volunteers and employees to join the
(31:48):
lawsuit and put them in touch with journalists ourselves included.
But Lorie believed she had an ace in the whole.
A video testimony of Patricia's father, Laurie told me about it.
This is the child that No w Saviors is saying
that Renee just figured this child, and Renee did this,
(32:08):
and you know they're using it to crustify her. But
the family themselves actually are so thankful and are willing
to do whatever they can to the corney. That's just
like one of the kids. The questions appear on a
(32:29):
black title screen, and James Akello, Patricia's father, answers them
directly to the camera. He's speaking in his local language,
and English subtitles are pasted underneath. He speaks quietly and calmly,
but his eyes keep starting throughout such a James offered
(32:51):
a glowing review of the services his daughter had received.
He says that Renee paid for all of Patricia's hospital bills,
nearly a thousand dollars. He says he's grateful for Renee
and his eyes the woman who saved his daughter's life.
I have never seen the white lady treating my child,
but what I saw our local medics came in to
(33:13):
treat my child. But the next question, that's what this
video was really about and why we think Lorie shared
it with us in the first place. It goes like this,
will you briefly explain how you met the people who
are asking you to accuse the white lady, Renee Bach,
of chopping the meat off of your child. The first
(33:38):
time we went to serving his children, we met Joyce
aunt Jackie pastor who would always preach to console us
every time, and the black man who was the driver.
James goes on to say that earlier that year he
was approached by some of Renee's former employees. He says
they offered to pay his family to give testimony in
the civil suit that no white save years had helped
(34:00):
bring against Renee and Gina's High Court. That case is
still under deliberation. James said they wanted him to say
that Renee had cut off the skin of his daughter
and eaten it up. Dumbs mind. Cannibalism is a pretty
(34:27):
old trope in Africa. In colonial times, missionaries would write
stories about the man eating cannibals they had encountered in
the wild. In the seventies, Uganda's old dictator Idioman is
said to have told a reporter, I don't like human flesh.
It's too salty for me. The press needless to say,
ate it up. And if you remember hearing about Joseph
(34:49):
Coney in two thousand twelve, you might remember claims that
he made soldiers drink blood or eat human flesh. Even
these days it's not uncommon to see headlines in the
Uganda tabloid's about witch doctors in the village making potions
out of the body parts of children. If Renee's critics
wanted a headline that was sure to generate clicks and retweets,
(35:10):
what could be better than white savior eats black babies.
But in the video, James completely refutes that will do
the thing to yok and come each other. He goes
on to say, even for ten million shillings, I can't
take it and I cannot falsely testify accusing the woman
(35:32):
who treated my child. But the experience spooked James so
much that since then he has kept Patricia and hiding. Yeah,
we are afraid because the other people here cautioned me
that these people can come at any time to kidnap
and kill the child in order to change the case. Okay,
(35:55):
So as an attempt to clear Renee's name, the video
sort of falls short because the story James tells is
just so full of holes. First off, he makes no
mention of the flesh eating disease that nearly killed his daughter. Then,
when asked whether Renee ever performed medicine on Patricia, he
(36:16):
says he never saw any white person touches child, even
though Jackie Kramlick and a team of visiting doctors tended
to her for weeks. He even admits that he wasn't
around at the facility that much. It was his wife
who stayed by Patricia's side, so how could he speak
confidently about the care. Finally, No White Saviors, the former employees,
(36:38):
and the lawyers, none of them had ever accused Renee
of cannibalism. James was defending her from an allegation that
no one had made the purpose of the video seemed
less about Patricia as a success story and more about
smearing the other side for tampering with witnesses. It wasn't
(36:59):
the only time, and this happened, according to Renee, No
White Saviors was paying off Charles, the former program manager
at serving his children, and so I honestly feel like
he The NWS had already offered him an extensive amount
of money to take him to clients, and he was like, well,
if we sit down and you offer me more money
than I'll basically work for you and work for you
(37:22):
by not working for them. Did indicate that that's just
a personal hunch. Yeah. She also said that both Charles
and Jacqueline, the former social worker at serving his children.
We're going around town and swaying ex employees not to
speak up on behalf of Renee, often through extreme tactics,
(37:42):
because all of those guys, I think, said more than
once like oh, Renee's I mean, they said things like
Renee said she will kill herself if I testify against
her in court. Renee said she'll just commit suicide. So
they're they're saying all kinds of things like that. Renee
said She's going to burn down my house if I
(38:02):
testify against her court. And soon enough, Renee's camp wasn't
just accusing No White Saviors or the former employees of
tampering with the case. She was now starting to accuse
us of bribery and conspiracy. I'd spend time reporting with
and about No White Saviors, and Lorie would tell you
that I was working for them, even called me the
(38:23):
NWS journalist. I tried to explain, you were embedding as
a reporter, trying to see the world through their eyes.
Renee even asked me if you were dating Kelsey, which
was crazy. It was clear that they were trying to
drive a wedge between us. I even heard a rumor
in Ginger that I had been fired from the investigation
for bribing sources to give false testimonies. To me, this
(38:46):
felt like another window into Lorie and Renee's worldview. Again
and again they viewed these small, isolated events in their
lives as being part of some broader evil or a
broader grace. Lori and Renee's this whole case not as
one based on what actually happened at Serving his Children,
but as a campaign engineered by people with personal vendettas
(39:08):
against Renee. It was a version of the story where
Renee was the real victim. So yeah, to them, I
was just another conspirator. It seemed like every time our
team started investigating some part of this story, something would
come up to try to throw us off the scent
or distract us from our investigation, And each time that happened,
(39:32):
the truth of what actually went on at Serving his
Children all of those years ago got muddier and muddier.
The video and the cannibalism rumors were a message that bribes, intimidation,
and other criminal activities were happening in the backdrop of
our investigation. But was any of that real, or was
(39:54):
it an attempt to take the focus off of Renee
and put the blame on everyone, anyone but her. On
the next episode of The Missionary, we go beyond the
media frenzy and the rumors to try to find the
(40:15):
medical facts what happened. Now, I've got a story that
got me just I even wanted to just throw this
at somewhere for real. It got me so emotional, and
it's all about this fake ass, you know, white supremacist.
She ain't even a doctor. She didn't get children who
were fine from the villages, but she was getting children
(40:36):
from the villages who are the spirit to bring them
and how at least they for them to afford a
smile if they were readying those children who are dying
happy being attended to. Saw that video running, so she
wanted to know the issues to do that first. It
went down. Producer Primary Port The Missionaries produced an association
(41:11):
with iHeartMedia. It's written and reported by Roger Gola, Helene
mcge Coondi, and Malcolm Burnley. It's produced by Michelle Lands
and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto is our story editor. Our
executive producer is Mangish Thicketter, our fact checker. Is Austin Thompson,
mixing by Josh Rogisson and voice acting by Taylor Kaufman.
What you hear in this podcast does not implicate any
individual or entity in any criminal activity. The views and
opinions are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
Renee Bach wants you to know something. Yes, she admits
a hundred and five children did die at her ng o,
(00:22):
but she did the best she could for them, hiring nurses, doctors,
bringing medical equipment from the US over to Uganda, even
paying for kids to go to private hospitals when things
got serious. We can't make a difference to everyone, but
we can't make a difference to some people. And just
because there are so many negative things happening, and people dying,
(00:42):
and you know, kids getting kidnapped, and when it seems
like the world is just kind of crashing down, that
doesn't mean that you can't make a difference for that
one person. Renee and her lawyer implored, instead of focusing
on those inevitable tragedies, why don't we take a look
at the good that they did in Uganda from two
thousand nine, eight hundred other children came in sick and
(01:06):
starving and went home happy and healthy. To drive that
point home, Renee's mother, Lorie told us about a little
girl named Patricia, one of serving his children's smiling success stories.
She came in with her body swollen from head to
toe and covered in boils. Weeks later, she was back
(01:30):
to a regular way, back to being a messy eater,
and back home with her family. I think she's just
like nine or ten now, and she goes to school.
And I mean they're a family because they thought help
if somebody would be able to help them. So I mean,
that's just a whole great story right there. And then
(01:52):
Lorie sent us a video. Oh no, it was an
interview with Patricia's father, James o'kello. Didn't he speaks in
the local language. But the subtitles underneath read this white
has helped us up to the time our daughter got well,
(02:13):
even up to date, we thank them. If you saw
the photos of Patricia on Rene's blog, swollen almost like
she was going to burst, you think it was nothing
short of a miracle. But the video also showed a
picture of Patricia now almost a teenager, and she has
a scar running down the side of her face, and
(02:33):
James says, we were told that the white lady is
being prosecuted for keeping the flesh of my daughter on
ice and eating it cannibalism. I can't say I have
that on my missionary bingo card in association with I
Heeart Media. I'm Roger Gola. I I'm Malcolm Burnley and
(02:59):
this is the mission An Area, episode four, the video.
Before we got this video, Patricia wasn't really on our radar.
She wasn't part of the court case, and she wasn't
(03:21):
one of the hundred and five children who died at
Renee's facility. But when we started looking into it, she
didn't seem like much of a success story either. The
first people who told me Patricia's story were Renee's former employees,
the ones that had written affidavits in the case against her.
Jacqueline at Him, one of Renee's former social workers, told
(03:43):
me that Renee gave Patricia a blood transfusion when she
came to serving his children. Real needed that transfusion without
cross matching the blood. I think she just went on
go to blood and started transfugient immediately, and this kid
was in critical condition. The blood had banned and that
girl has a very big ska. The transfusion of this
(04:06):
girl from my UK called Patricia was not good because
one whereas he was transfused. Was not Igenique. The place
was not looking good. Indeed, the girl reacted to the blood.
She almost died. She just survived by God is a mercy.
(04:27):
That's Charles o'waeny, Rene's former program manager, and he told
me if I wanted to get to the bottom of
Patricia's story, I needed to talk to the woman who
was actually there, who had seen all of it firsthand,
an American volunteer named Jackie Kramlick. Jacqueline Crumblin's was always
(04:48):
telling know what you're doing is wrong. Let the medical
people do it. If it was not Jacqueline Crumblin's, Patricia
would have died. Jackie Cramlick was a nursing student at
Jamestown College in North Dakota when she met Chris. He
(05:11):
was five years older and had just gotten back from
a rock where he served with the Army. We were
in acquired together at college, and then yeah, I knew
her older sister from high school, so so you just
kept asking me how my sister was doing, until finally
they hit it off right away. Chris is lean and athletic,
(05:32):
with the same stubbly beard and buzz cut. He got
in the army. He seems confident, impatient. Jackie's a little
shorter and just as cheery. They were both raised Christian
and held their faith close. Pretty soon they got married,
and when Jackie graduated and got her nursing degree, she
knew she could be useful abroad. That's when a friend
(05:55):
in Uganda told him about serving his Children and the
incredible woman running it, Renee. Without a second thought, Jackie
submitted a volunteer application, which we pulled from the court
files and asked them to read. We feel that the
size of serving His children maintains a sense of order,
while at the same time allows for God to move
and speak to the volunteer. We've been so encouraged by
(06:17):
the way Renee and other volunteers simply love Jesus and
love others. Serving His children is very to the point,
very biblical, and we think it is a perfect fit
for us. At the bottom of the application is a
little note. You don't have to be a licensed teacher
to teach, or be in the medical field to put
on band aids. You just have to have passion and
(06:39):
working knowledge in that area. The organization that Jackie and
Chris walked into was very different from the one that
Renee started back in two thousand nine. In less than
two years, Renee had transformed serving his children into a
full fledged rehabilitation center. She was shipping in medical equipment
(07:02):
from the States and buying more materials for in house treatments.
By the time I was there, there was kind of
two parts of the house, So it was like the
general kids who are just kind of generally you know, ill,
and they're going through this process of being refed, and
most of them had I V S in and things
like that, and then there were kids who have kind
of It was this little tiny bedroom off the side
(07:26):
um of her living room, and it was painted red,
and there were two beds in there, and that is
where kids would be hooked up to oxygen or be
on more intensive IVY therapy, have more close monitoring. So
the concept was not very different from what we would
(07:48):
consider you know, I See You in the sense that
kids who needed more intensive care went there. Renee called
this makeshift I See You the Red Room. The walls
were painted a deep red and were plastered with pictures
of children who had passed through the facility. One of
the first photos I saw Renee was actually taken in
the red room. In it, she stands with her head down,
(08:10):
arms stretched out, light filters in behind her, making a
halo around her whole body. As soon as I entered
in that room, it's when a lot of guesswork was
happening and a lot of actions that she was not
trained to do or happening. I was fit to like
provide medical care and whatever this is over my head,
(08:32):
like this is serious, serious, Nick, you take you walk care.
The list of medical procedures that Jackie says she saw
Renee perform reads like a med school curriculum, intramuscular injections
for moral artery puncture, blood transfusions, naso gastric tube insertion,
baby delivery, and the preparation of a dead body. In
(08:57):
terms of Ugandan's I don't know how you wouldn't enter
her as a doctor. I think the confusion live. And
did she ever say hello, my name is doctor Renee?
Absolutely not now, she never said that in my presence.
Did she wear a stethoscope around her neck and assens
children and did uban and call her mousau, which is
in Luganda word for a doctor or nurse, Yes, they did.
(09:20):
She's giving that offense. She's providing I VS. She's doing
blood transfusions, she's assessing children, she's diagnosing, she's prescribing. I
don't really know how you can call those things, and
then in the same breath claim I've never representing myself
as a medical healthcare provider. What else would I be doing.
(09:41):
In her affidavit, Jackie claims that when she asked Renee
how she was making clinical decisions, Renee said that she
used a medical handbook, relied on her gut feeling, and
that she felt God would tell her what to do
for a child. It kind of stems from disbelief of
like God a sovereign f anything that happens was supposed
(10:02):
to happen. So this is really common in the missionary community.
So for example, child would die and you know, Renee
would have her hysterics, and then people would be like,
Renee got a sovereign There's nothing you could have done.
Van would have prevented this, because if a child was
meant to die, child's going to die, and if God
(10:24):
wanted to prevent it, he would have prevented it. Despite
Jackie's training, she noticed that Renee would call friends in
the States or even ask less qualified volunteers for medical advice.
To Chris, it almost felt like everyone was just playing house,
(10:46):
but after a child died without explanation, it became almost
too real. The point I guess for me is when
I had to drive the van one night to take
this child's body back of the village um when Jackie
wrote along too, and I'm driving and we get out
to the village and people are waiting for us like
they're wailing and watching Charles or whoever carry out this
(11:09):
body wrapped in a sheet. That just brought back memories
of Iraq to me and seeing people get killed there,
and I was like, okay, yeah, this is I mean
to me that this was as real as a war
at that point, like there were people dying here. She
knew that the way serving his children operated it wasn't right,
(11:30):
but no matter how bad it got, Jackie just wouldn't
or couldn't speak up. I felt like I didn't have
a right to tell this person who was viewed as
a superhero Christian viewed as you know, mother Teresa and Carnate.
I felt like I didn't have a right to tell
her certain things because I didn't have the same spiritual weight.
(11:54):
I didn't have the same social weight as her, and
I just didn't know how to contet end with that.
But after a little girl left serving his children scarred
for life, Jackie knew she couldn't keep quiet any longer.
That entire case. There was so much about that case
(12:15):
and what went down that just was the absolute nail
in the coffin of me not being willing to give
her the benefit of the doubt anymore as to what
was happening. So then it becomes a whole different issue. Right,
This isn't just mistakes on other ignorance. This is mistakes
done attentional. That child's name was Patricia, it was fault
(13:02):
and Renee hadn't been to church in weeks. The red
room was overflowing with kids and she was exhausted. It
was supposed to be a day of rest and worship,
but just as a service began, her phone rang. It
was Mama Fatima, one of her employees at the facility.
There were two parents at the door and their baby
(13:23):
was in critical condition. Renee grabbed her bag and hopped
in the car. She raced across Ginger to get back
to Missess. On the outskirts of town. When Renee got
to her facility, a little girl was waiting there for her.
She was just nine months old. Her parents had been
trying to find help at different clinics for weeks, but
(13:44):
nothing was working. Serving his children was their last resort.
It was clear that she was very ill. She was
completely swollen from head to toe, and it's hard to
know by just looking at a kid. You know, you
really have to do some investigations. So we weren't really
sure what was going on, but just ran some initial tests.
The blood tests came back with bad news. Patricia was
(14:07):
positive for malaria and had a severely low humo globe.
Account At the time, Serving his children had a doctor
that would come in to make rounds a few times
a week. The doctor wasn't at the facility that day
because it was a Sunday. What was called and he said, yeah,
I should probably go ahead and start a blood transfusion,
So they started one pretty quickly, though Renee noticed something
(14:27):
wasn't right. Patricia space and neck were swelling up. Within
a few minutes, her throat was beginning to close, and
that's when Renee finally called Jackie. I get a call
from Renee on a Sunday and she's like, could you
come down to the house. There's this child there and
I think they're having in an anti flactic action, but
(14:49):
I don't know because Google says that they're supposed to
have a rash and they don't have rash, So like,
could you come see? Blood? Transfusions have become one of
the more contentious and confusing allegations that have been lodged
against RENEE, so Halima went out to a few hospitals
to get a closer look. In her blog, she constantly
(15:11):
wrote about this desperate search for blood for the children
at her facility. After visiting countless hospitals and health centers,
I learned that there was a national blood shortage in Uganda,
a crisis in fact. On one of my visits to
the children's hospital in Jina, I remember sitting outside of
the emergency room waiting for a doctor. As I'm waiting,
(15:35):
I see a nurse walk by and put the body
of an older child in a room in front of me,
and then I see the child's mother come out of
the room sobbing. Later, a doctor told me that that
family had been driving throughout the whole night searching for blood.
For their child. By the time they arrived in Ginger,
he was nearly dead. Months later, I reached out to
(15:58):
a malnutrition doctor to learn more about why blood transfusions
might have been used to treat severely malnourist kids at
serving his children and can you introduce yourself? What's your
name and where are you working now? Thank you very much.
My name is chi Yogo Sant. I'm walking at Embied
General Fido Hospital as a senior nutritionist and also I
(16:23):
Nevil as a regional nutritionist. Doctor Serage told me that
blood transfusions were incredibly risky procedures, especially for severely malnourist kids.
They were incredibly fragile and often have these other medical complications,
so even the slightest imbalances could result in death. That's
(16:43):
why only the most qualified experts or specialists to treat them.
They needed constant supervision. If someone is not trained any
nutrition and the management of the student, especially children with complications,
they will use or apply procedures that are not suitable
(17:06):
for them, that are suitable for other children, and this
would cause a lot of death in these children. Dr
Saraj said that in most cases, a child's hemoglobe account
would return to normal after a few days of close care,
but blood transfusions were an absolute last resort. The blood
(17:27):
itself causes complications, the transfusion would be very very dangerous
giving access with results to death of this CHILDE So
that was no one recommended. This is the sidious procedia,
the dangerous actually prosidia in these child is here, my god,
(17:51):
I started showing him photos that Renee had posted online
of children receiving blood transfusions at serving his children. Oh no, when, okay,
this is very well. Here he is getting your blood, franst. Wow.
And this child should should not be given a blood transfusion,
this one, I don't know for what reason, because the
(18:13):
child looks so stable and the child is well hydritten
because I can see look at the head, all these brains.
They shown that the child is okay. When the head
they appear is the eyes are bright, Charley is very stable.
Such a child should not be transfused. But I'm warning
(18:35):
from your perspective, um, you know, even if somebody is
very talented at putting in i VS, should people without
this experience, even medical professionals without nutrition expertise, be dealing
with these cases. No, no, no, no, you see, these
are sidious medical complications. It should be managed by pediatriction.
(18:56):
Four years before Serving his Children was opened, there was
a study done at Uganda's bigg Ast Hospital and Lago
and it looked at more than two hundred severely malnourished
children who had died there in The study concluded that
blood transfusions and i VS were the main risk factors
in their deaths. Over the years, Renee has gone back
(19:27):
and forth on whether there were ever blood transfusions done
at Serving his Children. In an interview with The Smith
Mountain Eagle, she said, we do a lot of blood transfusions,
but in her response to the lawsuit, Renee denies that
Serving his Children performed blood transfusions. They sent children to
medical facilities to have them done elsewhere. When I asked
(19:50):
her about it again and whether she was personally involved
in starting any transfusions, her answer was puzzling. You individually
didn't start any book intrusions, even to under the discretion
of a doctor or Serving his Children did. Yes, um,
and I was usually involved in that process. But I
(20:10):
didn't like say Okay, this kid needs a blood transfusion
and then go and do it. Um, so that's not
to say that I wasn't involved in the process. So
I'm sure that can be construed as doing it. I
started a lot of i VS for kids who got
blood transfusions, but I never carried out all of that
process on my own discretion. But at the end of
the day, it's an argument over the semantics of a
(20:32):
risky medical procedure. Patricia was given a blood transfusion at
serving his children and unlicensed and unrecognized medical facility without
a doctor present. I don't know why. She was like
very averse to me being involved in those situations. You
don't want me here. You need to be in the
(20:53):
center of this. That's what's very clear to me. It's like,
not it's not about saving kids. It's a out you
being someone who saves kids. That's what this is about.
So I walk in on this and I'm like, in
this really like horrific situation of like not knowing if
they're in a state of shock. Did they come in
(21:13):
wheezing and swollen? I don't know. Jackie knew this was
more serious than she could handle. Stop the blood, give
ben and drill um, and then she rushes the child
to camp Paula. Patricia needed more blood transfusions, but the
hospital in Kampala didn't have her type. The doctor asked
(21:36):
Rena if she'd be willing to give a blood sample
to see if she was compatible. The test came back
be positive, exactly what Patricia needed. It was almost too
good to be true. Patricia was given a transfusion with
Renee's blood and a few days later her condition stabilized.
She was discharged into Renee's care. But when they got
(21:59):
back to Ginger, Jackie noticed something strange. Slowly they settle,
bump appears on her cheek and it's like slowly creeping
down to her jugular like skin is like gaping off.
And I'm like going back and forth with the medical
team that I had in the States, trying to figure
out what they thought, what should we do. Renee took
(22:19):
photos of Patricia in this condition and posted them on
her blog. The skin on Patricia's cheek is black and
bloody and there's white puss around the edges. She has
plastic tubes running all over her body and looks like
she's barely hanging on. Jackie didn't know what the disease was,
but she knew she was running out of time to
figure it out. Every day, the wound was getting bigger
(22:42):
and deeper, making its way down to the blood vessels
and Patricia's neck. Fortunately, a group of nurses and doctors
from Alabama had just arrived in Ginger to volunteer for
a few weeks, and after days of desperation, the visiting
doctor recommended a new tree that plan. As the child
(23:03):
is recovering, I'm like sorting through the child's medical file
and I see on one of the papers from the
hospital it says necrotizing fasciitis question mark written in by
a doctor. That's medical speak for flesh eating disease. We
were searching for days, like, trying to figure out what
(23:24):
this was, how do we treat it. In the meantime,
this child's face was being eaten off. Okay, like you
saw this, you knew this was here, Like this child
had already been diagnosed. Before you discharge the child out
of the hospital, Why would you discharge them? And her
response was, well, yeah, they mentioned something about that, but
it just didn't sound like they knew what they were
(23:45):
talking about. Jackie didn't buy it. She thought there was
no way a hospital would have discharged the patient after
a diagnosis like that. I'm not going to say that, like,
you know, I can't imagine a world at or where
someone might say, okay, fine, take her home if you
want to. But I'm just saying it seems very bizarre
(24:08):
to me that it seemed to be happening to her constantly,
that doctors were just saying to her, you could do
a better job than we could do. For her part,
Renee admits that the discharged documents said that Patricia had
flesh eating disease, but she claims that the doctors in
Kampala told her it wasn't a big deal rooms um.
(24:29):
And the person that I spoke with was like, oh, yeah,
like I it's like not a big deal. I don't know,
you know. So the person that wrote her discharged papers,
you know, wrote his findings in his summary whatever. Um.
And to be honest, I didn't even really read those um.
I brought them back and gave them to her nurses
to put in her file. I know, Jackie says, well,
(24:50):
you know, Renee said she didn't know about that or
wasn't a big deal. But then on these papers, and yeah,
because I didn't read the papers, I just listened to
what I was told. If that was an oversight by
our nurses, then that was an oversight um. Not to
cast any blame on anyone. Of course, slowly Patricia's swelling
went away, the wound on her face began closing up.
(25:13):
As Renee wrote in her blog, the most important thing
about the days that came is that we saw God
move in huge ways. He literally performed a miracle before
our eyes. The pictures on Renee's blog show Patricia with
a small bandage on her face. Her mother is beaming.
Patricia is sitting in her lap wearing a yellow polka
(25:34):
dot diaper. In another picture, she's making a mess out
of a bowl of beans and rice. Patricia stayed at
serving his children for a few more weeks before going home,
but to this day she has a large scar running
down the side of her face where the disease ate
away at her There was no need for that child
to have permanent scarring at all. Now. Granted, I am
(25:57):
surprised that child survived at all, but I'm sure they
would have been fine in the hospital, if not clearly better.
It did away with any illusions Jackie might have had
about Renee that she was acting selflessly as a good
Samaritan would. A good Samaritan is walking down the street
and see somebody who falls over, and it's like, oh,
what do I do? I'm going to do my best.
(26:19):
It's a one off. It's probably the only time in
the entire life they find themselves in that situation. It's
not a good Samaritan. She created an e r in
her living room and then always happened to find herself
in an emergency. It's like, you don't get to place
yourself in an e er and then claim what was
an emergency. She wasn't a good Samaritan. She was a fraud.
(26:39):
Like that's the difference. Like if I were to walk
into an ear and just start like willing nearly treating
people because the line is long, you bet your butt,
I'd be like kicked out of there and arrested in
two seconds. That is not a good Samaritan. Law Today,
Renee admits that her memory of the whole Patricia saga
is a bit hazy. What you don't understand is that
(27:00):
I lived in Negana for ten years and Patricia is
one of like almost a thousand kids that was like this,
and so recounting her exact story and then being held
and bound by those details on record for the media
is really tough because then it kind of is that
he said, she said game. You know, Jackie's like, well, no,
Renee said this or Renee did this, And I'm like, honestly,
(27:23):
don't remember that happening, But if Jackie said it did,
it's probably true because she likely has a better memory.
What happened with Patricia is what happened eight times out
of ten with kids that walked into our front door.
And honestly, I know it's been said like, oh, she's
scarred for life from Renee or whatever, and Jackie's had
(27:44):
a lot of really negative things to say about that
instance and me in that situation, and I'd love to
say some really negative things about Jackie and the instituation,
but in all honesty, Jackie is the one that determined
the drug that stopped that flash eating bacteria, and so
if it weren't for Jackie, she could have died. Renee
(28:06):
denies all of Jackie's accusations entirely. She says she never
did any of the medical procedures that Jackie claims. She
says she trusted her local staff and that she only
assisted when asked by professionals. I was always encouraged and
led to believe that, like, yes, if someone else can't
meet this need and you have the know how, then
(28:29):
you should agree. You know, if someone said can you
start this I V and you know how? Like, well,
why would she not? And she denies wanting to push
Jackie away. Instead, she says that Jackie just couldn't handle
working at the clinic. Renee says she was too emotional,
wouldn't take advice from local nurses, and just wasn't ready
for Uganda. Any time you start a new job, everyone
(28:53):
who's been there longer than you was always going to
be like, you don't know anything. You're just such a newie,
you know. It's so definitely a part of me thinks like, oh,
come on, Jackie, like buss your heart. You haven't been
there that long, and your world was very sheltered while
you were there because you self admittedly like emotionally couldn't
handle the tough reality of being in a developing situation
(29:14):
like that. So I don't know that it's really fair
for you to say like what you would or wouldn't
have done in this situation. Renee also says that Jackie
never actually got a license to practice nursing in Uganda,
which means any medical work that Jackie did would have
been illegal, But Jackie says that she was told by
Renee's mother that a nursing license was unnecessary. Shortly after
(29:39):
Patricia went home, Jackie resigned from serving his children. She
wrote a letter addressed to the board of directors, made
up of a few church leaders from back in Virginia.
The letter was polite, but offered a stern warning of
what was going on and serving his children. I don't
wanted a letter to like be like, oh, you're undoubtedly
(29:59):
motivate it in an intelligent and blah blah blah, but
you're not trained. And the response is like, that's hurtful,
and like the fact that you find that hurtful, it's
really troubling. I don't know what you find hurtful about
the fact that you're not a trained professional. What you're
saying is it's hurtful to you to be told that
(30:19):
you're not believe you are like this fantasy of yourself.
Years later, Jackie would even help file a police report
against Renee. No one's going to call out a girl
who has like dropped her life and moved here and
is serving serving serving to be like, are you really
doing this right? Well, they look like a huge asshole now.
(31:06):
No White Saviors seized on Patricia's story. They shared Renee's
blogs and photos. The captions reminded followers quote Renee was
not a license or trained medical professional. Her center was
also not a licensed medical facility. Yet here they are
giving a blood transfusion to a critically ill child. There
(31:27):
was no doubt that Renee and Lorie were losing the
online battle. It looked like they were losing the ground
game too. No White Saviors had been canvassing Uganda for
families who had suffered injury or death at serving his children,
convincing them to join up in the cause. No White
Saviors even convinced former volunteers and employees to join the
(31:48):
lawsuit and put them in touch with journalists ourselves included.
But Lorie believed she had an ace in the whole.
A video testimony of Patricia's father, Laurie told me about it.
This is the child that No w Saviors is saying
that Renee just figured this child, and Renee did this,
(32:08):
and you know they're using it to crustify her. But
the family themselves actually are so thankful and are willing
to do whatever they can to the corney. That's just
like one of the kids. The questions appear on a
(32:29):
black title screen, and James Akello, Patricia's father, answers them
directly to the camera. He's speaking in his local language,
and English subtitles are pasted underneath. He speaks quietly and calmly,
but his eyes keep starting throughout such a James offered
(32:51):
a glowing review of the services his daughter had received.
He says that Renee paid for all of Patricia's hospital bills,
nearly a thousand dollars. He says he's grateful for Renee
and his eyes the woman who saved his daughter's life.
I have never seen the white lady treating my child,
but what I saw our local medics came in to
(33:13):
treat my child. But the next question, that's what this
video was really about and why we think Lorie shared
it with us in the first place. It goes like this,
will you briefly explain how you met the people who
are asking you to accuse the white lady, Renee Bach,
of chopping the meat off of your child. The first
(33:38):
time we went to serving his children, we met Joyce
aunt Jackie pastor who would always preach to console us
every time, and the black man who was the driver.
James goes on to say that earlier that year he
was approached by some of Renee's former employees. He says
they offered to pay his family to give testimony in
the civil suit that no white save years had helped
(34:00):
bring against Renee and Gina's High Court. That case is
still under deliberation. James said they wanted him to say
that Renee had cut off the skin of his daughter
and eaten it up. Dumbs mind. Cannibalism is a pretty
(34:27):
old trope in Africa. In colonial times, missionaries would write
stories about the man eating cannibals they had encountered in
the wild. In the seventies, Uganda's old dictator Idioman is
said to have told a reporter, I don't like human flesh.
It's too salty for me. The press needless to say,
ate it up. And if you remember hearing about Joseph
(34:49):
Coney in two thousand twelve, you might remember claims that
he made soldiers drink blood or eat human flesh. Even
these days it's not uncommon to see headlines in the
Uganda tabloid's about witch doctors in the village making potions
out of the body parts of children. If Renee's critics
wanted a headline that was sure to generate clicks and retweets,
(35:10):
what could be better than white savior eats black babies.
But in the video, James completely refutes that will do
the thing to yok and come each other. He goes
on to say, even for ten million shillings, I can't
take it and I cannot falsely testify accusing the woman
(35:32):
who treated my child. But the experience spooked James so
much that since then he has kept Patricia and hiding. Yeah,
we are afraid because the other people here cautioned me
that these people can come at any time to kidnap
and kill the child in order to change the case. Okay,
(35:55):
So as an attempt to clear Renee's name, the video
sort of falls short because the story James tells is
just so full of holes. First off, he makes no
mention of the flesh eating disease that nearly killed his daughter. Then,
when asked whether Renee ever performed medicine on Patricia, he
(36:16):
says he never saw any white person touches child, even
though Jackie Kramlick and a team of visiting doctors tended
to her for weeks. He even admits that he wasn't
around at the facility that much. It was his wife
who stayed by Patricia's side, so how could he speak
confidently about the care. Finally, No White Saviors, the former employees,
(36:38):
and the lawyers, none of them had ever accused Renee
of cannibalism. James was defending her from an allegation that
no one had made the purpose of the video seemed
less about Patricia as a success story and more about
smearing the other side for tampering with witnesses. It wasn't
(36:59):
the only time, and this happened, according to Renee, No
White Saviors was paying off Charles, the former program manager
at serving his children, and so I honestly feel like
he The NWS had already offered him an extensive amount
of money to take him to clients, and he was like, well,
if we sit down and you offer me more money
than I'll basically work for you and work for you
(37:22):
by not working for them. Did indicate that that's just
a personal hunch. Yeah. She also said that both Charles
and Jacqueline, the former social worker at serving his children.
We're going around town and swaying ex employees not to
speak up on behalf of Renee, often through extreme tactics,
(37:42):
because all of those guys, I think, said more than
once like oh, Renee's I mean, they said things like
Renee said she will kill herself if I testify against
her in court. Renee said she'll just commit suicide. So
they're they're saying all kinds of things like that. Renee
said She's going to burn down my house if I
(38:02):
testify against her court. And soon enough, Renee's camp wasn't
just accusing No White Saviors or the former employees of
tampering with the case. She was now starting to accuse
us of bribery and conspiracy. I'd spend time reporting with
and about No White Saviors, and Lorie would tell you
that I was working for them, even called me the
(38:23):
NWS journalist. I tried to explain, you were embedding as
a reporter, trying to see the world through their eyes.
Renee even asked me if you were dating Kelsey, which
was crazy. It was clear that they were trying to
drive a wedge between us. I even heard a rumor
in Ginger that I had been fired from the investigation
for bribing sources to give false testimonies. To me, this
(38:46):
felt like another window into Lorie and Renee's worldview. Again
and again they viewed these small, isolated events in their
lives as being part of some broader evil or a
broader grace. Lori and Renee's this whole case not as
one based on what actually happened at Serving his Children,
but as a campaign engineered by people with personal vendettas
(39:08):
against Renee. It was a version of the story where
Renee was the real victim. So yeah, to them, I
was just another conspirator. It seemed like every time our
team started investigating some part of this story, something would
come up to try to throw us off the scent
or distract us from our investigation, And each time that happened,
(39:32):
the truth of what actually went on at Serving his
Children all of those years ago got muddier and muddier.
The video and the cannibalism rumors were a message that bribes, intimidation,
and other criminal activities were happening in the backdrop of
our investigation. But was any of that real, or was
(39:54):
it an attempt to take the focus off of Renee
and put the blame on everyone, anyone but her. On
the next episode of The Missionary, we go beyond the
media frenzy and the rumors to try to find the
(40:15):
medical facts what happened. Now, I've got a story that
got me just I even wanted to just throw this
at somewhere for real. It got me so emotional, and
it's all about this fake ass, you know, white supremacist.
She ain't even a doctor. She didn't get children who
were fine from the villages, but she was getting children
(40:36):
from the villages who are the spirit to bring them
and how at least they for them to afford a
smile if they were readying those children who are dying
happy being attended to. Saw that video running, so she
wanted to know the issues to do that first. It
went down. Producer Primary Port The Missionaries produced an association
(41:11):
with iHeartMedia. It's written and reported by Roger Gola, Helene
mcge Coondi, and Malcolm Burnley. It's produced by Michelle Lands
and Ryan Murdoch. Mark Lotto is our story editor. Our
executive producer is Mangish Thicketter, our fact checker. Is Austin Thompson,
mixing by Josh Rogisson and voice acting by Taylor Kaufman.
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