Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent Amazon region, Brazil · 2013

Warren Scott Kennell: 58-year federal sentence for abusing Amazon indigenous children while planting a church

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

New Tribes Mission missionary and church planter

Organization

New Tribes Mission (now Ethnos360)

Spiritual nexus

Kennell was a New Tribes Mission missionary in the process of establishing a church among an isolated Amazon indigenous community when he produced child-sexual-abuse images of two children from that community. The record is core because his access to the children flowed directly from his role as the outside religious authority introducing Christianity to a newly contacted or recently contacted indigenous group -- a relationship in which the missionary's spiritual and material authority over the community was, by New Tribes Mission's own model of unreached-people-group evangelism, total and unmediated by any competing local institution.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2013-08-19 · federal conviction and sentence

U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Kennell was convicted and sentenced to 58 years in federal prison for producing child pornography involving two minor victims, members of an isolated Amazon indigenous community in Brazil where he was establishing a church as a New Tribes Mission missionary, between December 2008 and August 2011.

Documented coercion mechanisms

missionary's role establishing a church among an isolated indigenous community
foreign-national status and outsider technological/material advantage over the community
position as the religious authority introducing Christianity to the tribe

Primary record

Sources

prosecuting authority sentencing report U.S. Attorney's Office, Middle District of Florida, 'Sanford Missionary Sentenced To 58 Years For Production Of Child Pornography' (2013).: The prosecuting authority records Kennell's role as a New Tribes Mission missionary establishing a church among an isolated Amazon indigenous community in Brazil, the production of child-pornography images of two minor tribal members, and the 58-year sentence.
international press sentencing context South China Morning Post, 'US missionary jailed for 58 years for abusing Amazon children in Brazil' (2013).: Reports Kennell's identity as a New Tribes Mission missionary in Brazil and the discovery of over 940 child-pornography images on his devices at a U.S. airport search.
national press sentencing context Indian Country Today, 'Missionary Convicted of Child Pornography Involving Indigenous' children (2013).: Corroborates Kennell's missionary role and the indigenous identity of the two child victims in the Brazilian Amazon.

Related record

Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts

← Explore all cases