The case in which Kenyan preacher Gilbert Deya is being charged with multiple rape charges began today in London.
Deya who once set up a branch in Harare, was arrested in London last month after investigations were opened that he allegedly inappropriately touched a 14 year old girl. Other charges before this one were three counts of rape and one count of attempted rape against another female churchmember.
He appeared Friday morning at the inner London Crown court for a preliminary hearing.
The case comes at a time when his church was fast crumbling with numerous pastors deserting him in the past 8 years just as his case for child abduction flared up as Deya claimed that through prayer he could cause women to conceive and go into labour without the necessity of the biological act of intimacy being earlier performed.
Deya engages in the obsessive laying or sometimes pressing of the hands by the preacher to “transfer” healing powers to the person needing prayer which are often performed without the person’s consent and people are also forced into laborious processions which Deya claims will rid them of evil spirits. Another controversy is on the use of so called anointing oil which Deya instructs people to apply onto their bodies for protection from evil spirits. An uneducated man with no papers of writ, he rarely preaches from the Bible and relies on what he says is the Holy Spirit leading him. At the height of investigations into his miracle baby claims in 2005, Deya began claiming that he had discovered new books which must be regarded as scripture and added to the Bible.-zimeye
