A Kenyan pastor is being investigated for cult activities following reports that he and other church elders s*xually molested several women and girls, according to authorities.
The issue came to light after enraged neighbors destroyed Daniel Mururu’s church in Meru County, central Kenya, late last month.
Mururu of the East African Pentecostal Churches of Kenya, together with church leaders and ushers, are accused of indecent attacks such as stripping women n*ked, shaving their pubic hair, and having s*xual intercourse with them, according to a police report dated Monday.
According to the investigation, more than seven women and girls from 17 to 70 were allegedly molested, including a 17-year-old schoolgirl who became pregnant.
Police stated their early investigations revealed that Mururu was “running a cult” that had radicalized its members.
According to the police investigation, church members were enticed to engage in “indecent acts” because of fear of penalties such as “sickness and barrenness” if they disobeyed the pastor’s instructions.
Kenya, a devout and predominantly Christian nation, has struggled to oversee unscrupulous churches and cults that engage in criminal activity.
In a grisly case that shook the world, the head of a Kenyan doomsday starving cult was arrested in April of last year after dead were discovered buried in mass graves.
Rescuers spent months combing a lonely scrubland inland from the Indian Ocean resort of Malindi and discovered a total of 448 victims in shallow graves.
Autopsies revealed that the bulk of the victims died from hunger. However, others, including children, appeared to have been strangled, battered, or suffocated.
The horrible incident known as the “Shakahola forest massacre” prompted the authorities to highlight the necessity for greater control over fringe denominations.
President William Ruto’s commission to examine the killings and revise regulations controlling religious entities issued its report in July, recommending for a hybrid approach of self-regulation and government oversight.