Renee Bach – White Missionary Savior or Murderer?

She was only 19 years old, when she says God told her to go and help vulnerable children in the East African country of Uganda. So in 2009 the home-schooled, white evangelical Christian teen from Virginia moved to the town of Jinja, 80km to the east of the capital Kampala. There she founded the charity organization Serving His Children (SHC), ostensibly to provide free meals to hungry children.

In ten years the organization grew to such an extent that at one time more than 900 children were registered in its care. But along the way, priorities changed. SHC became more than just a place to give meals to vulnerable children; it started giving the children medical care, with Bach personally involved.

The problem was Bach had no medical training at all, but she routinely ‘nonchalantly gave medicine injections and administered IV drips dangerously’, as an American registered nurse who went to work for the organization would testify. Bach herself admitted to depending on Google and her ‘gut feeling’ in treating the children. As a result, more than 100 children died under the care of NHS. So some parents of deceased children sued Bach and SHC.

The suit was filed in January 2019 by the Women's Probono Initiative on behalf of the parents of two of the children that died. The suit challenged Renee Bach and SHC’s actions of providing health services without licensure to unsuspecting vulnerable and illiterate mothers. It demanded that Court holds the respondents to account for operating a health facility that was not licensed and that led to the death of hundreds of children.

After a year of proceedings, a consent agreement was reached wherein Bach apologized to the mothers named in the suit, and agreed to pay a compensation of  10,000USD to each pair of parents. SHC was also deregistered in Uganda, and Ms Bach left the country for good.

But it did not end there. The fact that a white American woman with no medical training whatsoever and with very little formal education could run a medical facility brought cries of colonialism and white privilege. The specter of ‘white saviorism’ was once again raised.

“It is unacceptable, narcissistic behavior, for any one, black or white, rich or poor, missionary or angel to pass off as a 'medical practitioner' when they are not,” Beatrice Kayaga, a lawyer with the Women's Probono Initiative, was quoted as saying.

Some social media posts referred to Bach as the ‘angel of death’, and a ‘poster child for neo-colonialism’; but she was defended by other American missionary groups and organizations.

Last month, September, HBO started airing a 3-part documentary entitled ‘Savior Complex’, which attempts to get to the bottom of what really happened when Bach was in Uganda.

The documentary has been accused of trying to ‘white wash’ Bach’s actions, of painting her as misunderstood; and there were some calls for it not to be released. But the first episode aired on September 26th, with the other two the following night. It drew mixed reviews, although the film review website Rotten Tomatoes gave it an unprecedented 100% .

Time magazine wrote that what filmmaker Jackie Jesko ‘uncovers isn’t the individual malice of a typical true-crime psychopath. It’s something more frightening in its tenacity: the collective, racially charged hubris of well-meaning, white, often evangelical Americans in Africa’.

Another reviewer, Anne Brodie, wrote that ‘It’s offensive to Africans that they are used to satisfy white guilt, their need for heroism and attention. (Renee Bach) feels no remorse because she was following God’s mission, what she says He told her to do. …an appalling case of fundamentalist fervor and white privilege, a combination that has been at work in Africa for two hundred years.’

So, where is Renee Bach is now? She is back in her small hometown of Bedford, Virginia, population 6,000. She is said to be taking care of her two children, one of whom, ironically, she adopted from Uganda.