American pleads guilty to sexually abusing girls at his orphanage in Kenya

American pleads guilty to sexually abusing girls at his orphanage in Kenya

An American man has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing four underage girls at a children’s home he and his wife had set up in Kenya’s Bomet County.

Gregory Dow, 61, from Lancaster in Philadelphia pleaded guilty on Monday to four counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor between 2013 and 2017 while running Dow Family Children’s Home which he established in 2008.

The prosecution told the Lancaster court that Dow “purported to be a Christian missionary who would care for these orphans. They called him ‘Dad.’ But instead of being a father figure for them, he preyed on their youth and vulnerability.”

“He used force and coercion to perpetrate the most heinous of crimes, preying on vulnerable children for his own sexual gratification,” the prosecution told the court as quoted by the LNP daily newspaper in Lancaster.

According to the Lancaster newspaper, the suspect pleaded guilty following a plea agreement that he would serve 15 years and eight months in prison and then have to register as a sex offender.

Dow, who arrived in Kenya in 2008, fled the country together with his wife in 2017 to avoid arrest and prosecution after he was allegedly caught defiling one of the girls at the orphanage.

The Dow’s Children’s Home was closed in 2017 after Dow fled the country together with his wife in 2017 to avoid arrest and prosecution after he was accused of defiling girls at the orphanage.

He had arrived in the country 2008 and set up the children’s home using financial support from churches and non-profit organisations in the US.

A tipster contacted the Lancaster County prosecutors’ office last year.

This started an investigation that produced the new charges that he violated a U.S. law against sexual contact with minors in foreign countries.

Dow and his wife would allegedly implant birth control devices on some the girls to prevent them from getting pregnant in the course of the sexual abuse.

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