Man raped children while posing as church missionary ‘spreading good news of Jesus’

Thomas Scheller, 74, has been sentenced to 81 years in prison for his crimes (Picture: DCI-Kenya)

A paedophile who posed as a church missionary trying to help children trafficked young boys and sexually abused them.

Thomas Scheller pretended to be ‘spreading good news of Jesus’ in Kenya while he raped three little kids, the youngest being just 10 years old.

The 74-year-old German national also filmed some of the abuse and sent the clips overseas, the Milimani Law Courts heard.

He was jailed for 81 years last month, after he was found guilty of seven charges which included defiling underage boys, child trafficking and posessing child abuse content.

Scheller claimed he had been trying to help the children and had permission to do so from their mums, local media reported.

He said these parents were attempting to ‘frame and fix him’ and prayed for mercy while in court.

The former engineer committed his heinous crimes in the city Kisumu, after fleeing from police in the coastal town of Kilifi.

The Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations announcing Scheller’s arrest (Picture: DCI-Kenya)

Between March and April 2020, Scheller raped a 13-year-old boy in one of Kisumu’s slum suburbs.

During this time, he also showed pornographic videos to at least two of the boys.

Scheller was eventually arrested in the capital of Nairobi, while with one of his victims outside the German Embassy.

He has been detained since 2020 because the prosecution convinced the courts he was a flight risk and should not be granted bail.

The child molester will likely die behind bars as he would have to live to be 155 years old to see the end of his sentence.

Magistrate Carolyne Muthoni Njagi said: ‘Courts are the custodians of children’s rights and will not sit and watch helplessly while the Kenyan children are being abused by the affluent western and eastern visitors who hide their true selves in the church.’

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This is just one of multiple stories about Western people using the guise of Christianity to abuse children on the continent.

US missionary Renee Bach is infamously accused of running a charitable treatment centre where at least 105 children died in Uganda.

The allegations, which led to a lawsuit being settled in July 2020, were that Ms Bach had given the impression she was a doctor while not having any medical training.

She has continuously denied any wrongdoing with her lawyer saying ‘the settlement was deemed by all parties to be in the best interests of all involved’.

The story will be explored in a new HBO docuseries called Savior Complex, airing on September 26.

Dr Andreana Prichard, an academic from the University of Oklahoma who has studied evangelical missions in Africa cites a ‘Western obsession with African orphans’ starting in the 1830s.

While the intention to honour the Bible’s call to ‘visit orphans and widows in their affliction’ may be real for many, the dynamic has always been a controversial and complicated one.

Writing for The Conversation, Dr Prichard gave an example of the ‘mission’ becoming problematic from all the way back in 1890.

She told how a famine pushed many children to seek help at an orphanage run by the Church Missionary Society in in Frere Town in Mombasa

When things improved and parents tried to take their children home they were reportedly refused, with missionaries ‘worried they would lose converts and donations for their work’.

Dr Andreana Prichard has studied evangelical missions in Africa (Picture: University of Oklahoma)

Kenya has recently taken significant steps to replace privately-run orphanages with family-based care.

The government is among several others on the continent that is working to end what has been called the ‘institutionalisation of children’.

In 2019, the then British high commissioner to Kenya, Nic Hailey, said: ‘Nothing is more important than protecting the children of Kenya; it’s heartbreaking to see adults from my country and also from other countries travelling to Kenya with an aim of coming to abuse children.’

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