How Could You? Hall of Shame-Gregory Dow UPDATED
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Gregory Dow, 60, “has been arrested and charged with sexually abusing children at an orphanage he founded in Kenya, federal officials said.”
Gregory Dow, 60, was taken into custody Friday at his home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He started a home for orphaned children in the east African nation in 2008, and allegedly abused the minors under his care for years, according to the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
He was indicted on four counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place.
The alleged abuse occurred between October 2013 and September 2017 at the facility he founded in the rural area of Boito. He took part in or tried to engage in illicit sexual conduct with four minors under his care at the home, authorities said. Investigators have said there may be more victims but tracking them down in Kenya has been a challenge.
“The defendant purported to be a Christian missionary who would care for these orphans who called him dad,”
the statement said. “But instead of being a father figure to them, he allegedly preyed on their youth and their vulnerability.”
The orphanage was home to dozens of children and closed in September 2017. Dow fled back to the United States after Kenyan authorities issued an arrest warrant for him, local media reported.
“It is one of the most heinous crimes, going out and actually sexually abusing young children,” FBI Special Agent Joe Bushner said.
There was no attorney listed for Dow. In December, he told the LNP newspaper in Lancaster he was innocent, and accused local residents of making up the allegations to get him kicked out of the area.
The case has dominated headlines in Kenya, with local television station NTV airing a documentary titled “Preying Missionaries” about the allegations. The media outlet talked to some of the girls he allegedly abused, who said they were implanted with birth control devices at the home.
The diaspora group Kenya Women in the US — which uses the acronym KWITU — has called for his arrest for months and started a petition demanding his prosecution.”
https://fox2now.com/2019/07/13/pennsylvania-missionary-arrested-for-allegedly-abusing-children-at-an-orphanage-in-kenya/
[Fox News 7/13/19 by CNN]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update:“A Pennsylvania man preyed on children under the guise of missionary work at an orphanage and asked them to call him ‘dad’ while he sexually abused them, a court has heard.
Gregory Dow, 61, of Lancaster has pleaded guilty to four counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor in a foreign place between October 2013 and September 2017 while running the Dow Family Children’s Home in Boito, Kenya.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced that he entered his plea Monday and he will be sentenced in a U.S. court on September 29.[2020]
He and his wife Mary Rose established the orphanage in 2008 after in 1996 he pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit sexual abuse in Iowa.
Dow was only given two years’ probation after the guilty plea and was made to register as a sex offender until 2006.
Then he and his wife sold their belongings and moved to the African country as a missionary from Lifegate Church in Elizabethtown.
The couple reportedly moved with Dow’s six children.
Prosecutors said that when the abuse started, two girls were 11, one was 12 and one was 13.
He fled to the US after Kenyan authorities issued an arrest warrant. But his wife Mary Rose was caught in a town nearby to Nairobi and was jailed for five months after in January 2018 she was found guilty on two counts of cruelty to a child.
Mary Rose aided the insertion of birth control for female child orphans.
In December 2018 Dow claimed to news outlets that he was innocent and that locals were telling lies to get him kicked out of the area.
Lifegate church pastor, Doug Lamb, initially said he thought Dow was innocent.
But Kenya Women in the US (KWITU) petitioned for his arrest and his ex-wife Janice Jenkins claimed he had sexually abused their eldest daughter decades ago.
KWITU argued he should be tried in the US as he had financial support from several Pennsylvania churches. Then in July 2019 he was taken into custody.
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,’ prosecutors said in the court filing after his arrest.
Dow ‘used force and coercion to perpetrate the most heinous of crimes, preying on vulnerable children for his own sexual gratification,’ prosecutors wrote.
‘Gregory Dow hid behind his supposed faith on the other side of the world, hoping no-one in the US would know or care about the children he abused. He was wrong,’ US attorney William McSwain.
The FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office conducted the investigation with assistance from Kenyan authorities and local law enforcement in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
LNP newspaper reported that during a teleconference hearing Monday, Dow told the judge that he acknowledged the truth of the prosecution’s allegations.
Under terms of his plea agreement, he would serve 15 years and eight months in prison and then have to register as a sex offender, the newspaper said. ”
[Daily Mail 6/16/2020 by Leah Simpson]
Update 2:“A Pennsylvania man was sentenced on Thursday to more than 15 years in prison for abusing four underage girls in Kenya, where he had operated an orphanage for about a decade before returning home, the authorities said.
The man, Gregory Dow, of Lancaster County, had “traveled halfway around the world to prey on incredibly vulnerable victims,” Jennifer Arbittier Williams, the acting United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. “His crimes are nearly incomprehensible in their depravity.”
In addition to the prison term, Mr. Dow was also ordered to pay $16,000 in restitution.
Lawyers for Mr. Dow, 61, did not immediately respond to email and telephone messages on Thursday evening.
Mr. Dow pleaded guilty in 2020 to four counts of abusing the girls over a four-year period, starting when the youngest victims were 11 years old. At that time, prosecutors said they were prepared to present evidence detailing Mr. Dow’s years of abuse.
In early 2008, Mr. Dow and his family moved to Kenya to start an orphanage, which became known as the Dow Family Children’s Home, in Comet County, prosecutors said. The orphanage operated until September 2017, when Mr. Dow left the country after allegations of sexual abuse came to light there, according to prosecutors.
As part of a plea agreement, Mr. Dow admitted to abusing four girls in multiple attacks from October 2013 to September 2017. Two of the victims were 11 when the abuse began; another was 12, and a fourth was 13, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Dow had sexually abused three of the girls knowing that his wife, who helped run the orphanage, had taken those victims and other girls at the orphanage to have birth control devices implanted into their arms, prosecutors said. That meant Mr. Dow “was able to perpetrate these crimes without fear that the abuse would result in pregnancy,” prosecutors said.
Michael J. Driscoll, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Philadelphia Division, said the authorities were dedicated to investigating the allegations against Mr. Dow.
“If he thought no one would care because these were underprivileged Black children he victimized, this investigation and today’s sentence have most emphatically proved him wrong,” Mr. Driscoll said in a statement on Thursday.
While living in Kenya Mr. Dow maintained connections to Pennsylvania, including keeping a bank account and twice renewing a commercial driver’s license in the state, prosecutors said. The orphanage also received money from people and organizations in the United States, including Mr. Dow’s church, LifeGate in Elizabethtown, Pa., The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., reported.
The investigation into Mr. Dow was conducted by various entities, including officials at the United States Embassy in Nairobi and the Kenyan Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, prosecutors said.
The four girls at the orphanage were not Mr. Dow’s first underage victims, prosecutors said, noting that he had pleaded guilty in 1996 to sexually abusing a minor in Iowa. Before he was sentenced, lawyers for Mr. Dow urged the court to honor the plea deal they had reached with prosecutors, who recommended that he be sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In a memo to the court, Mr. Dow’s lawyers said his “childhood was difficult, strewn with loss, violence, and neglect, which ultimately led to his placement in foster care.”
“These traumatic experiences undoubtedly impacted him well into adulthood,” they wrote.”
15-Year Sentence for Pennsylvania Man Who Abused Girls at Orphanage in Kenya
[NY Times 2/4/21 by ]
Recent Comments