In August, 2004, the BBC's Face The Facts radio program broadcast an investigative report on on Gilbert Deya's so-called "miracle babies." [Transcript].
PA News wrote:
A disturbing world in which a religious guru convinces British women they are pregnant by God with a “miracle baby” was exposed today in a radio investigation.
The claims prompted fears of child exploitation and baby trafficking.
Both the Church of England and the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology have called on the Metropolitan Police to investigate the claims involving members of one of Britain’s fastest growing Evangelical churches – The Gilbert Deya Ministries.
Its head, the self-styled Archbishop Gilbert Deya, pronounces the women worshippers as pregnant “by Jesus”, according to the BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts investigation.
[...]
Medical evidence clearly showed that these women were not pregnant, according to Consultant Patrick O’Brien, from the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, who feared the pronouncements were exploiting would-be parents.
He said: “Childless couples are very vulnerable and so desperate that they would believe virtually anything. These are not miracle children but someone else’s children and the authorities should find out whose.”
There are 36,000 members of The Gilbert Deya Ministries in Britain which also boasts branches in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Archbishop Deya has been at the centre of controversy before when he was investigated in 2000 for allegedly exorcising demons from children.
But he remains unfazed by fears, prompted by the DNA evidence, that the “miracle” births are a scam.
He told the programme: “The ‘miracle babies’ which are happening now in our ministry is beyond a human imagination. It’s not something that I can say I can explain because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by human beings.”
His wife Mary describes the children as a “holy ghost baby” that “came through prayer, that was why the doctor could not find” them.
Archbishop Deya claims to have helped post menopausal women give birth – including a 56 year-old who has had 13 “miracle” babies in three years.
Worshippers cannot be shifted in their belief of the miracle babies are a genuine gift from God.
Funds have been flooding into the church in response to the so-called “miracles”.
Members, many of them middle class and well educated, are expected to contribute a tenth of their income. A new church building, worth a million pounds, is being built in south east London.
[...more...]
Deya, meanwhile, has denounced the trafficking charge:
Archbishop Gilbert Deya said he was not "involved in trafficking of any sort". Condemning his accusers as "evil, satanic and abnormal", Pastor Deya said: "I refute the evil allegations against me of trafficking children from Kenya to the United Kingdom."
He insisted that the "miracle babies" he claims to have produced for infertile and post menopausal women were "God's work".
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