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Kenya’s starvation cult left over 100 dead – a psychologist’s view on how to support people as they process tragedy

Kenya’s starvation cult left over 100 dead – a psychologist’s view on how to support people as they process tragedy

IN early April 2023, Kenyan police discovered a mass grave linked to a Pentecostal church in the coastal town of Malindi. By the end of the month, at least 110 bodies had been dug up from shallow graves in the area’s Shakahola forest. Author STEPHEN ASATSA, Counseling Psychologist, Catholic University of Eastern Africa A loss of this magnitude is traumatic and painful for the families and friends directly affected, and also for the public exposed to the details. The level of media attention, public backlash and judgement of the dead makes the experience of the loss even more difficult for…
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Inside a Kenyan starvation cult and its tragic end in a forest of death

Inside a Kenyan starvation cult and its tragic end in a forest of death

DUNCAN MIRIRI KENYAN cult leader Paul Mackenzie lived with hundreds of followers in makeshift homes of polythene sheeting and thatch in a remote forest camp that he divided into areas with biblical names like Jerusalem and Judea, relatives of his adherents say. He told them the world as they knew it was going to end on April 15 and Satan would rule for 1,000 years, according to the relatives and a senior police investigator. He ordered them to starve themselves and their children to death so they could meet Jesus in heaven ahead of that date, they said. "I heard…
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Inside Kenya’s death-by-starvation cult

Inside Kenya’s death-by-starvation cult

DUNCAN MIRIRI KENYAN cult leader Paul Mackenzie lived with hundreds of followers in makeshift homes of polythene sheeting and thatch in a remote forest camp that he divided into areas with biblical names like Jerusalem and Judea, relatives of his adherents say. He told them the world as they knew it was going to end on April 15 and Satan would rule for 1,000 years, according to the relatives and a senior police investigator. He ordered them to starve themselves and their children to death so they could meet Jesus in heaven ahead of that date, they said. "I heard…
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