I have been warming Born again Christians in Uganda about Pastor Manjeri’s confusing world. Now we seem to have a clue at last. This scandal is a shame to Pastor Irene Manjeri, although she is protected by the powers that be. Imagine!!! A pastor, who claims to make the lame walk, has enabled a guard to maim a young girl. Why has Manjeri refused to defend her self in media??? We have waited for her story but to no, avail. Shame upon you Pastor Manjeri. The name of the Lord is blasphemed among the gentiles because of pastors like you. You preach liberty but you are a servant of corruption.REPENT. It is not Prosperity but sin, it is not earthly vanities, but eternal verities
Pastor Irene Manjeri quizzed over assaulted girl
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/13/648083
Peace Muhindo
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Peace+Muhindo+&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
Pastor quizzed as paralysed orphan blames her for woes
Ephraim Kasozi, Claire Nabwire & Walter Wafula
Daily Monitor, News | September 5, 2008
Kampala
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/Pastor_quizzed_as_paralysed_orphan_blames_her_for_woes_71024.shtml
Life for Peace Muhindo on the streets was challenging but it became worse when a pastor took her into an orphanage, apparently to give her the comfort the streets could not offer.
Currently admitted at Mulago Hospital, the 15 year-old-girl is so thin that her bed has swallowed her up. She owns nothing but a uniform she acquired while at Butabika Hospital.
She is paralysed below her waist and she can not move her lower abdomen. In spite of her illness, it is evident in her speech and manner that she is a brilliant girl and full of life.
Ironically, Peace has never had peace, right from birth. She was orphaned before she turned three. According to her birth certificate, she was born to Francis Byamukama and Lillian Tumusiime. (The certificate also shows that she is called Dorcus Asiimwe).
She was then adopted and raised by Ivan Atoru and Benetta Logua, a couple living in Adjumani. At the age of 10, the only parents she knew decided to take her to Mbarara to find her real relatives.
“They left me at a police station in Mbarara,” Muhindo recollects. Announcements were made over radio for her relatives to pick her. Mr Johnson Kisembo of Nsambya Police barracks in Kampala came claiming to be her father.
He failed to prove the claim and he was sent away but he returned days later insisting Peace was his child. The Police finally relented and let him take the child. Little did they know that this would mark the start of the girl’s journey into misery and suffering.
It is Mr Kisembo who renamed her Peace Muhindo and enrolled her at a primary school in Fort Portal in Primary Six. Kisembo’s mother took care of her in Fort Portal. Much as she had performed well and had been promoted to Primary Seven, Peace had to drop out of school because Mr Kisembo claimed he could not afford her fees.
“His relatives put me on a bus and sent me to Kampala. When I got to Nsambya, he began mistreating me, called me a costly liability and eventually threw me out of his house,” she told Daily Monitor.
It was while on the streets in 2005 that Peace was picked by Pastor Irene Nalongo Manjeri of Bethel Healing Centre on Entebbe Road. She took her to an orphanage called Bethel in Kitovu-Kajjansi, Wakiso District.
The orphanage, with incomplete buildings and heaps of sand in the compound, is owned and administered by the pastor.
Muhindo says Pastor Manjeri took her and four other girls to enrol at Sacred Heart Nalubadde Primary School. But according to Mr Justus Masaba, the headmaster, Muhindo was stubborn and was relocated to Tuzukuke Primary School.
According to Muhindo, her woes in the orphanage began on October 11, 2007. She says as they prepared for school, a guard and fellow orphans trapped her in the dormitory and beat her.
“The girls said God had revealed to them in a dream that I’m not an orphan and so they were going to beat me until I confessed my sin and repented!” she narrated, adding that the caretakers were party to the violence. She says she was battered into unconsciousness.
It took the intervention of neighbours and local council officials to save her. They rushed her to the nearby Kajjansi police post. “When the pastor was called by the Police at Kajjansi, she refused and instead went to Wandegeya Police Station the following day.
A policewoman from Wandegeya and the pastor took me to Mulago Hospital for treatment,” Muhindo said. “The policewoman, who I remember was called Nalongo, was joined by another woman with whom they had previously resolved to take me to Butabika Hospital, claiming I was mentally unstable.” Nurses and doctors at Butabika examined Muhindo but established that she was sane. The doctors handed her over to the hospital’s social workers.
“When she was brought to me, I had no reason to doubt her sanity,” Mr Justus Twesigye, a senior social worker at Butabika, said. He said he could not take Muhindo back to the orphanage, instead sending her to Mr Kisembo, who denied her.
With no place to go, she was kept at the hospital.
“She was supposed to do her PLE and I took her to the school where she had registered. She did her exams and passed with 18 aggregates, emerging the best in the school,” Mr Twesigye said.
For months, Muhindo lived at Butabika Hospital; a healthy 14-year-old among thousands of mentally ill people.
Nine months later, Butabika administration decided take Muhindo back to Kajjansi police post.
“She was brought here and we took her back to the orphanage,” an officer from the child and family protection unit at the police post said.
Muhindo says Pastor Manjeri was angry when she found her in the dorm that evening. According to Muhindo, the pastor who threatened to kill her, said she was a curse and was bringing bad omen to the orphanage. Pastor Manjeri ordered a guard to beat her and push her out of the orphanage.
“He used his gun to beat me until I could not move,” Muhindo said. “He kicked me several times and hit me on the back with the gun. He then pulled and threw me out of the gate where sympathisers came to my rescue and called the local council officials.”
She says that the local leaders took her to Kajjansi police, who in turn took her to Katwe Police Clinic. “I spent two nights in pain until I was brought here to Mulago Hospital but I am paralysed. I can not know when I am urinating or how many times,” she narrates with pain written all over her face.
Doctors have advised her against eating solid food because she can not pass out faeces. “I can not sit, nod my head nor stand up. The people who take care of me are sympathisers who met me here,” she says.
And on Wednesday, the Police summoned Pastor Manjeri over Muhindo’s case. The pastor, who had refused to share her side of the story with the press, was quizzed for hours at Kajjansi Police Station over her involvement in the torture of Muhindo.
“She has recorded a statement and was released on police bond,” the Kampala Extra Police spokesman, Mr Simeo Nsubuga, said.
“Police opened a case file number SD: 37/24/06/08 against Pastor Manjeri. She is expected to be summoned again at an unspecified date as investigations into the beating of teenage girl proceed.” As the Police proceed with the case, children rights activists have also been sucked in. Ms Barbara Babweteera, a lawyer with Fida, says the group has taken up the matter.
“While on the fact finding mission, social workers at Mulago informed us that they had approached many organisations but nothing had come through,” Ms Babweteera says.
According to Ms Babweteera, Fida intends to use the name and shame strategy to expose Muhindo’s tormentors, besides instituting a court process to bring them to book. “We intend to effect arrest through the office of the Inspector General of Police. We call for any assistance for Peace through human rights activists,” she appealed.
But as these appeals are made and the Police continue with investigations, Muhindo lies in the hospital bed, in pain, hoping that justice can be done.
Next Article on the same issue
City pastor cited in child abuse case
http://www.newvision.co.ug/detail.php?newsCategoryId=12&newsId=646553
New Vision,Tuesday, 26th August, 2008
By Fortunate Ahimbisibwe
PEACE Muhindo is helpless and paralysed on the left side thanks to a spinal cord injury. She writhes in pain on her Ward 2B bed at Mulago Hospital where she was dumped and has been admitted since June 26.
The 15-year-old former street child was only helped when FIDA, an association of women lawyers came to her rescue earlier this month and took over her medical bills.
FIDA lawyer Barbra Bawetera said her organisation was tipped by a Good Samaritan. Now the Police are investigating Pastor Irene Manjeri Nalongo whom the girl accused of assault.
However, two months after the incident, the Police are yet to make any arrests.
The head of the professional standards unit, John Ndungutse, said detectives were investigating the way the case has been handled.
The pastor, according to Muhindo, instructed her guards to beat her up so as to “cast out demons” from her.
Manjeri is the founder of Bethel Healing Centre Ministries, which owns a string of churches and orphanages. She is a senior pastor at the church located in Kitovu, Kanjjansi, off Kampala-Entebbe highway. She runs a branch at the former Pride Theatre on Namirembe Road.
Muhindo had lived in Manjeri’s Bethel Orphanage where she had been admitted since 2005.
The girl said after the beating, she was dumped at Butabika Mental Hospital on October 17, 2007, where she lived for nine months.
Muhindo told the Police she was forcefully taken to the hospital on Manjeri’s orders.
In support of this, Butabika’s senior medical social worker, Justus Twesigye, said Muhindo has never been mentally unstable.
“Instead, she was physically abused and dumped in Butabika.”
The Police, he said, insisted that Muhindo must be admitted. “We assessed her and found she was not mentally sick.”
In a reaction, Manjeri told Bukedde, a New Vision sister paper and leading Luganda daily, that Muhindo fought with two other children in 2007 and got “severely injured”.
After treatment, Manjeri added, Muhindo was taken to Butabika when she showed signs of “mental instability”.
She said Muhindo’s father, Simon Kisembo, a Police officer, lives in Nsambya Barracks.
Muhindo, Manjeri said, sneaked back to the orphanage but later “disappeared”.
The pastor said nothing about the assault.
However, a Mulago medical social worker, John Baptist Ebaat, said when Manjeri discovered that Muhindo was back in the orphanage, she ordered the guard to beat her up.
“The guard beat her until she was unconscious.”
She was taken to Katwe Police Station, which referred her to Mulago.
Katwe district Police commander Aggrey Nshekanabo yesterday said the girl went to the station to look for her father but the officers failed to find him.
Muhindo, he said, went away but later in the day, came back “claiming she had been beaten”.
Manjeri’s husband Dr. Vincent Katongole admitted his wife had talked to him about the girl but placed the responsibility on the guard and his employer.
“The lawyers of the security company where the guard comes from are handling the case,” he said.
“The guard was employed by a private security firm and they take responsibility.”
Mulago spokesman Elifaz Sekabira said although Muhindo was “completely paralysed”, she had received death threats.
The hospital, he added, had consequently asked for Police protection.
