A senior children’s officer painted a harrowing picture in court this week of the abuse children suffered inside Shakahola Forest under the control of pastor Paul Nthege Mackenzie and his acolytes.
Principal Children’s Officer Sebastian Muli Muteti took the stand before Principal Magistrate Hon. Nelly Chepchirchir at Tononoka Court on Wednesday. In his emotional testimony, he described how Mackenzie’s cult isolated minors and subjected them to radical religious indoctrination, starvation, and brutal torture.
Muteti, the 29th prosecution witness in the ongoing case, told the court that his office began receiving distress calls between February and March 2023. Concerned residents of Shakahola alerted authorities to emaciated children bearing visible injuries and signs of severe neglect.
Acting swiftly, a team of children’s officers and police mobilized and traveled to the remote forest. Upon their arrival, the area chief and local elders received them and guided the team deep into the forest, where they suspected the children were being held.
Some children had already managed to flee the cult’s clutches and found refuge among sympathetic villagers, Muteti revealed. His rescue team split into groups and began combing the forest for more survivors.
While searching, the team encountered four extremely weak and traumatized children. Dressed in filthy, tattered clothes, the minors bore visible stroke marks on their arms and backs—clear evidence of prolonged physical abuse.
The children recounted chilling experiences of beatings and torture at the hands of Mackenzie’s security guards. According to their testimony, guards tied them up and kept them in solitary confinement as punishment for disobedience. The minors said Mackenzie’s men deliberately starved them and other followers, denying them food for days.
Those who attempted to flee faced even harsher consequences—some were severely punished in front of others to instill fear and obedience.
The children were clearly both physically and mentally scarred, Muteti said. His team rushed the survivors to a nearby hospital for urgent treatment and trauma counseling. Authorities then transferred them to a rescue center, where they continue to receive care and protection.
Muteti also revealed that the cult’s dangerous ideology had spread widely across Malindi long before Mackenzie moved his Good News International Ministries (GNIM) church from the Funzi area to Shakahola.
He described the scene inside Shakahola as one of the worst cases of child abuse and religious manipulation he had ever witnessed.
Parents Pulled Kids from School to Join Mackenzie’s Deadly Shakahola Sect
The trial has continued to expose shocking details about Mackenzie’s influence and its impact on vulnerable families. Testimonies this week revealed that some parents even pulled their children out of school to join the cult.
Two school heads testified how students mysteriously disappeared from their institutions, only to resurface as survivors of the Shakahola tragedy.
Mtopanga Secondary School Principal Omari M. Omari recounted the unexplained disappearance of a Form Two student in 2018. According to Omari, the student left without a transfer letter, and the mystery deepened until detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) visited the school following the Shakahola massacre. Investigators requested the student’s school records, as they sought to estabalish if the student was among the victims.
In a similar case, Kisauni-based private school head teacher Mathew Maroko Samoita told the court that a Grade 3 pupil was withdrawn by their parents under suspicious circumstances. He, too, received a visit from detectives seeking the child’s academic details.
Both educators submitted crucial documents as evidence, including admission forms, academic progress reports, attendance records, and birth certificates. These exhibits helped authorities piece together the trail of missing children who had become victims of Mackenzie’s manipulative practices.
The court heard that the two minors—along with more than 10 others—have since testified against their own parents and guardians. The accused now face serious charges including child cruelty, torture, and the denial of education rights.
As more survivors come forward and testify, the horrifying scale of the Shakahola cult’s impact continues to unfold—shedding light on how deeply religious extremism tore apart families and shattered the lives of innocent children.
