Shakahola Horror: How children were forced to starve, 'prepared to meet Jesus'
At Shakahola, he said, children were the first to be starved, followed by women and the elderly. Burials were carried out secretly but celebrated as weddings, with the dead said to have wedded Jesus.
Dressed in a turquoise blue shirt and white trousers, a 10-year-old boy was told these were "the clothes he will be wearing when he meets Jesus". He had already watched two of his siblings starve to death and knew he was next.
That boy, now under protection, is among the youngest witnesses recounting harrowing memories of life inside Shakahola Forest, as the murder trial of preacher Paul Mackenzie and his 29 co-accused continues at the Mombasa High Court.
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The accounts, delivered before Lady Justice Diana Kavedza, pull back the curtain on the trauma endured by children in what has been described as one of Kenya’s darkest tragedies. More than 400 followers of Mackenzie’s Good News International Church died in the forest, including 191 children.
One survivor, identified as O.H, told the court he had been forced with his parents to abandon Islam and convert to Christianity before joining Mackenzie’s church in Nairobi.
He described how followers were taught sermons that condemned education and medicine, and were warned that registering for the Huduma Number was taking on “the mark of the beast.”
At Shakahola, he said, children were the first to be starved, followed by women and the elderly. Burials were carried out secretly but celebrated as weddings, with the dead said to have wedded Jesus.
He identified some of the accused who helped dig graves. He further testified that he and other children were forced to dig dams in Shakahola and went on to identify tools used for grave digging, along with CDs and pamphlets promoting Mackenzie’s teachings.
O.H. later escaped after slipping away to a nearby shopping centre, where a village elder connected him to children officers.
For another boy, J.N.K., the nightmare began when his mother pulled him out of school while in Standard Five after watching Mackenzie’s sermons on television.
In 2019, he was arrested and placed in a Malindi children’s home in 2020. His father later removed him from the institution and brought him back home, where J.N.K. realised that his mother and four siblings had disappeared. He eventually traced them to Shakahola after being taken there by his father.
At only 12 years of age, he was taken into the forest, where he was locked inside a hut with siblings and told to fast to death.
After a week without food, he tore through the roof and fled on his father’s bicycle. He rode into the night, finally reaching Kakuyuni village, where strangers offered him refuge. He would later lead police to his family’s home in Shakahola, known among followers as Judea.
Another 10-year-old witness, E.G.W, remembered not only his siblings’ deaths but also the moment he confirmed the identities of his deceased mother and brother through post-mortem and DNA reports presented in court. He was later rescued and taken to the hospital.
The trial of Mackenzie and his co-accused continues on Tuesday, with more survivors expected to tell their stories.
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