2005:
THE wife of Archbishop Gilbert Deya, the controversial British-based evangelist who claims he can make women pregnant through the power of prayer, has been arrested hours after claiming to have given birth to a boy in the latest twist in Kenya’s “miracle babies” investigation.
…Yesterday, Archbishop Deya said the baby was proof he was able to help infertile women conceive. His wife arrived at a hospital in Nairobi on Saturday, carrying a new-born baby, a handful of blood-stained clothes and a placenta.
2011:
The wife of self-proclaimed miracle worker Gilbert Deya on Friday pleaded for forgiveness as she started a three-year jail term for stealing a baby boy.
…The court heard that Mrs Deya stole the baby from Kenyatta National Hospital on September 10, 2005. She alleged she gave birth to the baby miraculously.
…The magistrate did not agree with defence lawyer Mr Elisha Ongoya that a child, which the wife of UK-based evangelist is said to have given birth to, was exchanged between Nairobi and Kenyatta National hospitals.
Mary Deya was previously jailed for a related offence in 2007; I first blogged on media reports about the “miracle babies” way back in 2004, and in April 2010 I was depressed to note that Gilbert Deya was still in the UK, despite an extradition request from Kenya. He remains in the UK even now – and his nephew Paul Deya was recently jailed for life for murdering his own son in 2009:
A south London church worker has been found guilty of the murder of his three-year-old son after a trial at the Old Bailey.
Paul Deya, 32, of Bermondsey, slit his son Wilson’s throat in November 2009, six months after having a dream about killing children, the jury heard.
…Mrs [Jackline] Deya told the court: … “We didn’t seek advice, we just prayed over it.”
Mrs Deya said her husband became calm after these prayers, but she believed it was at this point that he formed a plan to kill Wilson.
“Paul was angry and that is why he killed my Wilson,” she said.
“He was not mentally ill.”
Gilbert Deya’s influence was cited by Paul Deya’s defence lawyer:
Baroness Kennedy QC, defending, said the church to which the couple belonged was “strange” and “cult-like”.
“This was a tight-knit religious community run by a charlatan,” she said.
There are several other pastors associated with Gilbert Deya Ministries, although the organisation as a whole does not appear to maintain links with the wider neo-Pentecostal “scene”. (1)
(1) Alongside his son Pastor Amos Deya, pastors associated with his ministry include Pastor Brazz Bakka, Pastor Souzie Balosa, Pastor John Ezedom, Pastor Giovanni Ghidotti, Pastor Femi Emmanuel Hezekiah, Pastor Gabriel Idowu, Pastor Godwin YB Kwawu, Pastor James Munga, Pastor Jerry Mukobo, “Pastor Shelly”, and Sister Mucha Zungunde. There are English-language and French-language services, and churches in Birmingham, Feltham, Leicester, London (Hackney and Walthamstow), Liverpool, Luton, and Manchester. Ghidotti runs a congregation for “people born in Europe, with a European upbringing and mentality, irrespective of race or colour”; his website does not mention Deya by name anywhere, although his congregation meets at a a GDM church in London.
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