After retiring from a well-paying job as an engineer, a German national who flew to Kenya posing as a missionary only to turn out to be a child molester will now spend the next 81 years of his retirement in Kenyan prisons, Nation Media Kenya reports. If all factors remain constant, Thomas Scheller, now 74, will exit the Kenyan prison at the age of 155, after completing the sentence handed down to him by a magistrate who convicted him for defiling underage boys, child trafficking, and pornography. Scheller will serve his time at Kamiti Maximum Prison, where he has been detained since May 2020. The court had rejected his bail plea after prosecution stated that he was a flight risk since he had no known fixed abode in Kenya. Scheller was charged before Milimani Senior Resident Magistrate Carolyne Muthoni Njagi on May 27, 2020, after being trailed by police officers attached to the Child and Women Protection unit from Kilifi, Kisumu, and Nairobi Counties. Njagi who declined to free the accused on bond said on Tuesday while handing down the penalty “that children's rights must be safeguarded and protected jealously by courts and law enforcers against those who take advantage over them due to the social status.” Njagi said the accused turned against the innocent children whom he abused sexually, engaged in child porn by videotaping the minor whom he had induced to engage in sexual escapades, then wired those films to his overseas contacts who trade in them and find joy in watching dirty films. The court observed the accused who had posed as a missionary, turned out to be a molester of children and needs to be kept away from the peace-loving society. “Courts are the custodian of children's rights and will not sit and watch helplessly while the Kenyan children are being abused by the affluent western and eastern visitors who hide their true selves in the church,” ruled Njagi in her sentence after convicting the aging German national. Scheller was charged that between March and April 2020 at Nyalenda in Kisumu Central, he defiled a 13-year-old boy. He was also charged with two counts of showing pornographic videos to the young boy whom he later enticed with sweets to engage in sodomy. “On diverse dates between the months of March and April at Nyalenda in Kisumu, he unlawfully and intentionally exposed a child aged 13 years to an indecent audiovisual,” the magistrate stated. The accused was therefore convicted for intentionally and unlawfully recruiting, transporting, and harboring boys of tender ages for the purposes of exploiting them sexually. Further, the court convicted him on three counts of defiling three minors, the youngest being 10, by sodomizing them. Njagi convicted him on all seven counts of child abuse-related offenses although he (Scheller) had told the court in his defense that he has no interest in having sex with children adding that the minors are lying. It was his argument that he wanted to help the children and the mothers and or guardians had agreed, but “they have resulted to frame and fix him.” The accused, the court stated had escaped police in Kwale and fled to Kisumu where he committed the offences before shifting to Nairobi to further his interests, the court stated have been “vomited from the belly of hell.” In mitigation, the convict prayed for mercy saying he was framed and pleaded with court to consider his advanced age. The accused having been convicted and sentenced will be entered into the Sexual Offender’s record, the magistrate ruled. The accused has 14 days to appeal against the conviction and sentence.
