In brief
Dan Mackenzie, the eldest son of the convicted cult leader Paul Mackenzie, claims that he and his five younger siblings were still being starved two weeks before the trial. The children were rescued by police and taken to a relief centre. Mackenzie himself survived severe abuse, including forced fasting and beatings, and has begun working as a motorcycle taxi driver in Malindi. He hopes the verdict will bring some relief to families who suffered under the cult’s doctrines that banned education and modern medicine.
Dan Mackenzie, aged 27, told BBC Newsday that he and his five younger siblings were still being forced to fast as recently as two weeks before his father Paul Mackenzie’s trial. Police, acting on Dan’s tip, rescued the children from their grandmother’s house and took them to a community rescue centre.
‘They were basically forcibly fasted because they were denied food for almost three days,’ Dan said, describing the brutal conditions he had endured from the day he was 12. The cult’s doctrine forbade education and labelled modern medicine as ‘evil’, leading Dan to drop out of school at the age of seven.
On Monday, the High Court in Nairobi found Paul Mackenzie guilty of murdering 190 people, including children that starved to death in Shakahola forest. He now faces sentencing on 6 November for the conviction, with additional charges for terrorism and radicalisation.
Dan now works as a motorcycle taxi driver in Malindi to support himself and his siblings. ‘I hope the verdict will bring some comfort to those who lost friends and relatives,’ he says, noting that while some locals still view him unfavourably, others accept his distance from his father’s legacy.
Police and community leaders have called the sentencing a long‑awaited moment of justice for the families who suffered under a cult that preached that only fasting and abandonment of modern medicine could lead to a promised afterlife with Jesus.
