Credit:  youtubentvkenya /   American Gregory Dow has pleaded guilty to engaging in Illicit sexual conduct with minors in the Republic of Kenya

By Gary Raynaldo     DIPLOMATIC TIMES

An American man plead guilty to engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors in the Republic of Kenya, the United States Department of Justice announced Monday.  Gregory Dow, 61,  from Lancaster, PA pleaded guilty to four counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, before U.S. District Court Judge Edward G. Smith. Sentencing is set for Sept. 29, 2020. Dow was accused of abuse from 2013 until 2017, when prosecutors say he fled back to the United States to avoid prosecution in Kenya. The Dow Family Children’s Home in Boito, in a rural area west of Nairobi, closed in September 2017. According to the plea agreement, Dow, an American citizen, traveled to the Republic of Kenya in 2008 to start an orphanage which came to be known as the Dow Family Children’s Home.  While running the orphanage with his wife, he sexually abused, on multiple occasions, four minor girls between October 2013 and September 2017.  During this time period, he maintained ties to the United States. The FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office conducted the investigation with assistance from Kenyan authorities and local law enforcement in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Under terms of his plea agreement, he could serve 15 years and eight months in prison and then have to register as a sex offender.

Prosecutors said that when the abuse started, two girls were 11, one was 12 and one was 13 

Dow “purported to be a Christian missionary who would care for these orphans. They called him ‘Dad.’ But instead of being a father figure for them, he preyed on their youth and vulnerability,” prosecutors said in the court filing.  Dow “used force and coercion to perpetrate the most heinous of crimes, preying on vulnerable children for his own sexual gratification,” prosecutors wrote.