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The Irish Sun
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
I'm the Machine Gun Preacher who Gerard Butler played in film – here's how I survived ISIS and 10 assassination attempts
A HOLLYWOOD star who gave up being a drug dealing bikie is now fighting ISIS through the dripping jungles of central Africa. The Machine Gun Preacher is on a mission to rescue child sex slaves on the continent - and is has come up against the notorious terror group. Advertisement 11 Sam Childers in South Sudan Credit: Caters 11 The Machine Gun Preacher is on a mission to save children Credit: Caters 11 Childers was played by Gerard Butler in the Hollywood film Credit: Alamy The priest, real name Sam Childers, is battling ISIS in the Congo as he continues his holy war to save abused children. He's famously known as being the inspiration behind the movie Machine Gun Preacher. The film starred an A-list cast of Gerard Butler as Childers, Michelle Monaghan as his wife, and Michael Shannon. Machine Gun Preacher told the story of how Childers came to be fighting in Africa after growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Advertisement Read more on world news Once a criminal, he found God, turned his life to charity work in Africa and dedicated himself to saving children. Machine Gun Preacher - the film - showed him battling Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army in 1997. Now he's released a self-made documentary - trying to raise money to take the fight to ISIS in Congo. He said: "I'm not worried about dying. I'm 62 years old. The last thing I worry about is dying. I worry more about living than dying." Advertisement Most read in The US Sun Exclusive Breaking After being hammered in the Middle East, ISIS turned to Africa and is now enslaving thousands of children as its militants rampage through impoverished areas. Childers has a network of orphanages, schools, and farms set up across the centre of the continent. I fought ISIS in Syria & I know bloodthirsty thugs are plotting comeback after fall of Assad - Europe must be ready, says Brit fighter But he's come into combat with ISIS as they have expanded into Congo. He said: "We don't want to see our children be kidnapped, sold in prostitution. Advertisement "We don't want to see none of that so I'm willing to do whatever I have to do... and I'm willing to answer for it. "They are murderers. They're killers. 11 ISIS has brutally used child soldiers to fight its was 11 Childers said he has battled other groups like M23 Credit: AFP Advertisement 11 ISIS in West Africa - where it is strongest in the continent "I'm not afraid of none of them." Some 5.4million people have been killed in Congo's ongoing conflicts since 1998 - but the wars have gone largely ignored in the West. Three children were beheaded by rebel fighters in February and dozens more killed when they took a village. Advertisement Childers' belief in God has given the preacher the strength to keep fighting - even against militant Christian groups. The Lord's Resistance Army raped and abducted girls, mutilated them, and enslaved boys into being child soldiers. He said: "I've been ambushed over 10 times. Been in over 10 major battles. They tried to assassinate me over 10 times. "That's just in the Kony War." Advertisement Despite the gun battles, Childers says that he was in more danger while a bikie and drug dealer in America. 11 Childers has been working in Africa since the 1990s Credit: Caters News Agency 11 Childers became a heroin addict and bikie in his youth but turned his life around Credit: Caters News Agency He said: "I fought in guerrilla warfare, or been in war over 25 years, and I never was shot in Africa. Advertisement "I was shot once and stabbed 3 times in America." Childers said the soldiering was a means to an end - supporting the good work his organisations do through orphanages and farms. "What you got to realize those rescues and to be active in stuff like that costs a lot of money. "I have a lot of children and orphanages and children's homes that got to be taken care of." Advertisement Now, he runs a private military company in Congo that works with local forces to try and save children. Childers said many of the children he rescued were severely mentally damaged by their time spent in captivity. He said: "They cannot be kept in a normal orphanage with other children until after one year. "That's if the people believe they're doing well. That's doing the mental evaluations." Advertisement 11 Childers and Butler -- who played him in the 2014 film Credit: Photoshot 11 Michelle Monaghan and Butler in the Machine Gun Preacher film Credit: Alamy 11 Childers first fought in East Africa against the Lord's Resistance Army Credit: Alamy But Childers revealed that he preferred to work with children rather than adults, saying they could work through the mental challenges they faced from being victims of rape or violence. Advertisement But it's not just ISIS that his charities are fighting, with disease and hunger also continuing to kill children. Childers said: "So then we feed over 10,000 meals a day. The majority of the children we feed only eat one meal a day, and that's the meal we're feeding them." Now, the preacher has released a new film trying to raise money for his work. "Our goal is to do a hundred 1,000 downloads by the end of this year and that money's used for children, man, you know. And so, instead of telling everyone, hey, send me $20. Advertisement "We're asking everyone. Look, you want to hear a good story. You want to hear a good story of redemption. You want to hear a good story of saving people's lives. You want to hear a good story of giving all." Becoming the Machine Gun Preacher Childers was born into a difficult household with a heroin addict mum and drunkard dad. They were always Christians, but in his teens Childers got in with the wrong crowd, he said. "I started doing what they were doing to fit in, smoking cigarettes, smoking marijuana. Advertisement "12 years old: drinking, eating pills. "13, 14 years old: snorting cocaine. "Then, at 15 years old, I woke up one morning, and here I got a heroin addiction. You know, I'm shooting up cocaine, shooting up heroin." Childers quit school and said he turned himself into one of the biggest drug dealers in Grand Rapids, running narcotics from all over the US. Advertisement He said: "The only good thing was my dad brought me and my brothers up to be hardworking people. "I always held a job, even though I was a cocaine addict heroin addict. "But I made a lot of money selling drugs." Childers said he always believed in God, but "I thought I had everything I needed. Advertisement "I had money. I had drugs, guns, women motorcycles." But then in his early 20s, Childers got into a bar fight that was so awful it changed the course of his life. "There were big guys, tough guys laying on the floor crying, holding their guts in. And I said that night, if I get out of here, I'm I'm done living this life." Advertisement His charity work has seen Childers honoured with the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice in 2013. What's happening in Congo? ISIS has extended its bloody grip in Africa to the Congo in recent years. The terror thugs are taking advantage of high levels of poverty and an already destabalised nation. ISIS formally announced its arrival in the country - which it calls the Central Africa Province - in 2019. It claimed another rebel group - the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) - as its affiliate in the Congo and neighbouring Uganda. The ADF, originally a Ugandan Islamist rebel group formed in the 1990s and had already established a stronghold in eastern Congo's North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The ADF rebranded to ISIS and adopted its jihadist rhetoric and tactics. The group began releasing propaganda via ISIS's media channels, portraying its local attacks—mainly against civilians, Congolese soldiers, and UN peacekeepers—as part of the global jihad. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in brutal raids, massacres, and bombings by the terror group. The Congolese army has launched several offensives to knock out ISIS - but has struggled to fully eliminate them.
Scottish Sun
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
I'm the Machine Gun Preacher who Gerard Butler played in film – here's how I survived ISIS and 10 assassination attempts
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A HOLLYWOOD star who gave up being a drug dealing bikie is now fighting ISIS through the dripping jungles of central Africa. The Machine Gun Preacher is on a mission to rescue child sex slaves on the continent - and is has come up against the notorious terror group. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 11 Sam Childers in South Sudan Credit: Caters 11 The Machine Gun Preacher is on a mission to save children Credit: Caters 11 Childers was played by Gerard Butler in the Hollywood film Credit: Alamy The priest, real name Sam Childers, is battling ISIS in the Congo as he continues his holy war to save abused children. He's famously known as being the inspiration behind the movie Machine Gun Preacher. The film starred an A-list cast of Gerard Butler as Childers, Michelle Monaghan as his wife, and Michael Shannon. Machine Gun Preacher told the story of how Childers came to be fighting in Africa after growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Once a criminal, he found God, turned his life to charity work in Africa and dedicated himself to saving children. Machine Gun Preacher - the film - showed him battling Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army in 1997. Now he's released a self-made documentary - trying to raise money to take the fight to ISIS in Congo. He said: "I'm not worried about dying. I'm 62 years old. The last thing I worry about is dying. I worry more about living than dying." After being hammered in the Middle East, ISIS turned to Africa and is now enslaving thousands of children as its militants rampage through impoverished areas. Childers has a network of orphanages, schools, and farms set up across the centre of the continent. I fought ISIS in Syria & I know bloodthirsty thugs are plotting comeback after fall of Assad - Europe must be ready, says Brit fighter But he's come into combat with ISIS as they have expanded into Congo. He said: "We don't want to see our children be kidnapped, sold in prostitution. "We don't want to see none of that so I'm willing to do whatever I have to do... and I'm willing to answer for it. "They are murderers. They're killers. 11 ISIS has brutally used child soldiers to fight its was 11 Childers said he has battled other groups like M23 Credit: AFP 11 ISIS in West Africa - where it is strongest in the continent "I'm not afraid of none of them." Some 5.4million people have been killed in Congo's ongoing conflicts since 1998 - but the wars have gone largely ignored in the West. Three children were beheaded by rebel fighters in February and dozens more killed when they took a village. Childers' belief in God has given the preacher the strength to keep fighting - even against militant Christian groups. The Lord's Resistance Army raped and abducted girls, mutilated them, and enslaved boys into being child soldiers. He said: "I've been ambushed over 10 times. Been in over 10 major battles. They tried to assassinate me over 10 times. "That's just in the Kony War." Despite the gun battles, Childers says that he was in more danger while a bikie and drug dealer in America. 11 Childers has been working in Africa since the 1990s Credit: Caters News Agency 11 Childers became a heroin addict and bikie in his youth but turned his life around Credit: Caters News Agency He said: "I fought in guerrilla warfare, or been in war over 25 years, and I never was shot in Africa. "I was shot once and stabbed 3 times in America." Childers said the soldiering was a means to an end - supporting the good work his organisations do through orphanages and farms. "What you got to realize those rescues and to be active in stuff like that costs a lot of money. "I have a lot of children and orphanages and children's homes that got to be taken care of." Now, he runs a private military company in Congo that works with local forces to try and save children. Childers said many of the children he rescued were severely mentally damaged by their time spent in captivity. He said: "They cannot be kept in a normal orphanage with other children until after one year. "That's if the people believe they're doing well. That's doing the mental evaluations." 11 Childers and Butler -- who played him in the 2014 film Credit: Photoshot 11 Michelle Monaghan and Butler in the Machine Gun Preacher film Credit: Alamy 11 Childers first fought in East Africa against the Lord's Resistance Army Credit: Alamy But Childers revealed that he preferred to work with children rather than adults, saying they could work through the mental challenges they faced from being victims of rape or violence. But it's not just ISIS that his charities are fighting, with disease and hunger also continuing to kill children. Childers said: "So then we feed over 10,000 meals a day. The majority of the children we feed only eat one meal a day, and that's the meal we're feeding them." Now, the preacher has released a new film trying to raise money for his work. "Our goal is to do a hundred 1,000 downloads by the end of this year and that money's used for children, man, you know. And so, instead of telling everyone, hey, send me $20. "We're asking everyone. Look, you want to hear a good story. You want to hear a good story of redemption. You want to hear a good story of saving people's lives. You want to hear a good story of giving all." Becoming the Machine Gun Preacher Childers was born into a difficult household with a heroin addict mum and drunkard dad. They were always Christians, but in his teens Childers got in with the wrong crowd, he said. "I started doing what they were doing to fit in, smoking cigarettes, smoking marijuana. "12 years old: drinking, eating pills. "13, 14 years old: snorting cocaine. "Then, at 15 years old, I woke up one morning, and here I got a heroin addiction. You know, I'm shooting up cocaine, shooting up heroin." Childers quit school and said he turned himself into one of the biggest drug dealers in Grand Rapids, running narcotics from all over the US. He said: "The only good thing was my dad brought me and my brothers up to be hardworking people. "I always held a job, even though I was a cocaine addict heroin addict. "But I made a lot of money selling drugs." Childers said he always believed in God, but "I thought I had everything I needed. "I had money. I had drugs, guns, women motorcycles." But then in his early 20s, Childers got into a bar fight that was so awful it changed the course of his life. "There were big guys, tough guys laying on the floor crying, holding their guts in. And I said that night, if I get out of here, I'm I'm done living this life." His charity work has seen Childers honoured with the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice in 2013.
5 days ago
- General
ICC appeals judges greenlight first in absentia hearing over Ugandan rebel leader
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court gave a final greenlight Tuesday for the tribunal's first in absentia hearing by allowing the next step in proceedings against notorious fugitive Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony. The Hague-based court has scheduled a so-called confirmation of charges hearing at which prosecutors will present evidence in September to back up charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Kony, despite his whereabouts being unknown. Kony, the leader of the brutal Lord's Resistance Army, faces dozens of counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, sexual enslavement and rape. The ICC's rules do not allow trials entirely in absentia but can in some circumstances move forward with a confirmation of charges even if the suspect is not in custody. Kony's court appointed lawyers had argued his fair trial rights would be violated if the proceedings continued without their client. Judge Erdenebalsuren Damdin said the court has 'adequately robust safeguards' for suspects to allow the confirmation of charges hearing to be held in absentia. The case had been seen as a trial balloon for the court moving forward with other cases where the suspect is not in custody, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, the Kony decision was limited to situations where the wanted person has fled ICC custody or cannot be found, says Luigi Prosperi, an international criminal law expert at the University of Utrecht. Kony 'is a very peculiar situation,' he told The Associated Press. Kony was thrust into the global spotlight in 2012 when a video about his alleged crimes went viral. Despite the attention and international efforts to capture him, he is still at large. The LRA began its attacks in Uganda in the 1980s, when Kony sought to overthrow the government. After being pushed out of Uganda, the militia terrorized villages in Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan. It was notorious for using child soldiers, mutilating civilians and enslaving women.
Al Arabiya
6 days ago
- General
- Al Arabiya
ICC to hear war crime charges against fugitive warlord Kony
International Criminal Court judges will hear the war crimes charges against fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony in September after the court Tuesday slapped down an appeal from his defense team. For the first time in ICC history, the so-called 'confirmation of charges' hearing on September 9 will be held in absentia, with Kony still on the run. He is suspected of 39 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, allegedly committed between July 2002 and December 2005 in northern Uganda. Former altar boy and self-styled prophet Kony founded and led Uganda's most brutal rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), in the 1980s. The LRA rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni saw more than 100,000 people killed and 60,000 children abducted in a reign of terror that spread to several neighbouring countries. Kony faces charges including murder, torture, enslavement, pillaging, sexual slavery, rape and forced pregnancy. During the confirmation of charges hearings, judges will decide whether there is sufficient evidence behind the accusations to proceed to trial. However, ICC rules do not allow for a trial to be held in absentia. ICC prosecutors hope that going ahead with the case will expedite any future trial if Kony were to be arrested and handed over to the Hague. Kony's defense team argued the court should not have set a hearing without the accused being present. But a separate appeals court dismissed this argument. 'The appeals chamber finds that the holding of confirmation of hearings in absentia, even without an initial appearance, is consistent with the object and purpose of the statute,' the court ruled. In 2021, the ICC sentenced Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan child soldier who became a top LRA commander, to 25 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Earlier this year, the court confirmed the award of 52 million euros ($59 million) to victims of Ongwen, whose nom de guerre was 'White Ant.'
CBC
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Otoniya J. Okot Bitek's novel maps the stories of Uganda's abducted children
Social Sharing WARNING: This story contains details of abuse. In the novel We, the Kindling, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek weaves together stories of women who were abducted as children by a rebel militia in northern Uganda. Through the writing, each powerful voice tells a haunting story of loss, survival, friendship and what it means to hold on to hope, no matter how small. Drawing from real-life accounts, Bitek used fiction to reckon with missing details and massage the horrific truth. "I respect stories so much that I wanted to be able to tell this story without further harming whoever is going to read it," she said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. Bitek, a poet and scholar born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, currently lives in Kingston, Ont. Her work includes poetry collections 100 Days, A is for Acholi, which won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Song & Dread. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize. The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is open April 1-June 1. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems. The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. Bitek joined Roach to talk about being Acholi in Canada, using facts to inform her fiction and exploring the cartography of Uganda through stories. Mattea Roach: In your poetry collection A is for Acholi, you consider what it means to be an Acholi woman living in Canada. You write that Acholi is an expansive way of being in the world. What does that expansive way of being in the world look like for you? Otoniya J. Okot Bitek: The daughter of the diaspora is what I would call myself. To claim an Acholi identity doesn't mean I live in Acholi, it means I live elsewhere. To claim an Acholi identity also doesn't mean I speak the language fluently or that I have all the cultural practices. It means that I have and I carry a memory, a sense of being, a way of being in the world. That is from northern Uganda, from the Acholi people, which is where my parents were, both born and grew up in. In We, the Kindling you weave together these stories of several Ugandan women who were abducted as children by a militia called the Lord's Resistance Army. Can you talk a bit about the history that you're exploring in this novel? The Lord's Resistance Army was formed in 1987. Before that, the government of Uganda was overthrown by the National Resistance Movement, which was led by Yoweri Museveni, who is still president, in early 1985. And immediately there was a lot of resistance by people in the North and there were groups that relented and there were groups that gave up. Among the groups that relented was one led by a woman called Alice Lakwena. And she led the Holy Spirit movement, but she was defeated. Out of that, many people who were in the Holy Spirit movement went on to form the Lord's Resistance Army, which was led by Joseph Kony in 1987. The government of Uganda was in this insane situation where they were fighting an army made of citizens and kids in their own country. But different from the other groups, which relied on people joining them intentionally, the Lord's Resistance Army relied on kidnapping kids, other people too, other grown people too, but mostly kids, and forcing them to join the army and fight. It went on for more than a couple of decades. So the government of Uganda was in this insane situation where they were fighting an army made of citizens and kids in their own country. In the case of We, the Kindling, you drew on real survivor accounts to craft these stories that we encounter in the novel. Can you talk a bit about how you put this together and the responsibility that you maybe feel to some of these survivors whose stories appear here? I was working as an academic doing a PhD teaching and studying how the importance of agency and and histories of violence in different spaces, trauma histories, the Holocaust and the generations that came after that, and what it means to be silent, what it means to have agency, what it means to be able to tell your own stories. Initially, I was working with professor Erin Baines from [the University of British Columbia]. She had all these transcripts of women who were told their stories and she asked me, what can we do with that? I initially started a project of a creative nonfiction story because I was interested in just having the exact story out there to be told. And then I realized that with creative nonfiction and other kinds of writing that rely on facts that can be proven that would mean that I could not write a lot of things, and also that would mean that I'd have to think about my own position right in telling it. What sorts of things do you think you wouldn't have been able to include had you written We, the Kindling as more of a creative nonfiction piece? For example, I write about rape — and the rapes happened. Rapes happened to a lot of people. But an accusation of rape usually means you have to have a victim, a date, a time, and those kinds of things. Those are not things I can prove. In fiction, I can do that. Also, these women who were girls at the time, they traversed so many different landscapes. Where on the map would I put those places? And so I'd have to leave that out. In fiction, I could do that. How are we meant to read this map of northern Uganda and South Sudan that you set up in this novel? I wanted to hark back to an unmapped territory, but I also wanted to think about the land as a storyteller. What you know about a place is how well you can read being there. I also wanted to think about haunting. I wanted to think about ghosts. I wanted to think about all other kinds of presences that we don't usually think about when we think about a map. So I wanted you to have the sense of having other presences with you on this territory that is not familiar. And I also really want to get away from the idea that we have to read stories that are relatable, right? Stories where we can see ourselves in. So many of us have been brought up in literatures in which we could not see ourselves. What you know about a place is how well you can read being there. But also, the experience of being abducted and taken to a foreign land is an experience of disorientation. So I do want the reader to feel disoriented and not to have a sure sense of where they are, but to pay attention to what's around them. If you were to create your own map of Uganda, the one that's in your memory and imagination, and that you've kind of continued to map out through your fiction writing, what would it look like? First of all, I would not, I'm not really interested in colonial borders, but I would say that I'm much more interested in my identity as an Acholi person. I'm interested in how people work together and live together and so that actually people are scattered across the world. There's a healthy community of Acholi people here in Toronto. So we don't need to be contained in a border that's defined, especially one that's defined by other people. But I would map it through stories. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Katy Swailes.
