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Gregory Dow, 61, and his family traveled from Lancaster County to Boito, Kenya to start an orphanage known as the Dow Family Children’s Home, in 2008, according to Acting United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams.
The orphanage remained in operation for nearly a decade with financial support from donors in the United States, including churches and other faith-based organizations, Williams said.
In September 2017, when Kenyan authorities learned that Dow had sexually abused children in his care, he fled Kenya and returned to Lancaster County, Williams said.
Kenyan women living in the United States notified FBI officials of the allegations, to which an investigation ensued and uncovered that Dow had sexually abused at least four teenage girls between October 2013 and September 2017, Williams said.
Two of the girls were as young as 11 years old when the abuse began, Williams said.
Furthermore, Dow's wife transported the girls to a medical clinic to have birth control devices implanted into their arms to avoid pregnancy, Williams said.
Dow presented himself as a Christian missionary who cared for the children and asked them to call him “Dad," Williams said.
“Under the guise of faith-based charity work benefiting orphaned children, Gregory Dow traveled halfway around the world to prey on incredibly vulnerable victims,” said Williams.
“His crimes are nearly incomprehensible in their depravity. We thank the witnesses in this case for coming forward to report him, and our law enforcement partners in the United States and in Kenya for working diligently to bring him to justice. It is no exaggeration to say that the world’s children are safer with Dow behind bars.”
“Gregory Dow was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Michael J. Driscoll, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division.
“He presented himself as this big-hearted man who was living according to his faith, when all the while, he was sexually abusing girls placed in his care. These horrific crimes were a betrayal of an entire community’s trust.
"If Dow thought he could get away with it because he was in a different country, if he thought no one would care because these were underprivileged Black children he victimized, this investigation and today’s sentence have most emphatically proved him wrong. The FBI and our partners will never stop working to protect children from sexual predators, whomever and wherever they are.”
In July 2019, Dow was charged in a four-count indictment, in which he pleaded guilty to all four counts in June 2020.
Dow was sentenced to 15 years, and eight months in prison, a lifetime of supervised release, and ordered to pay $16,000 in restitution by United States District Judge Edward G. Smith.
The Dow 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.
The investigation was conducted by the FBI, with assistance from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, the Kenyan Office of Director of Public Prosecutions and Directorate of Criminal Investigations Anti-Human Trafficking & Child Protection Unit, and the Investigative Division of the Office of the District Attorney of Lancaster County.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Timothy Stengel and Department of Justice Trial Attorneys Lauren Britsch and Lauren Kupersmith of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).
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