Dan Mackenzie, who had initially defended his father, said at first he had struggled to understand the allegations against the cult leader, but came to realise the scale of the tragedy during the court proceedings.

“When I was 12, I was forced to fast for almost a week,” he says. He also remembers church members beating him for hours to make him attend a service as a child.

Now, he says he felt he had to report family members who still believe in the teachings in order to free his siblings. “I had to report my grandmother.”

The cult leader’s doctrine said that education was forbidden and modern medicine was “evil”.

“I left school when I was seven,” says Dan.

Now living in the coastal town of Malindi, Dan earns a living as a motorcycle taxi driver, supporting himself and his younger siblings.

He said some people in the town had been angry with him because of his father’s crimes, but others “had accepted him because he had distanced himself from that life”.

“I hope the verdict would bring some comfort to those who had lost friends and relatives,” Dan tells BBC’s Newsday.

Delivering her eight-hour judgment in the port city of Mombasa, Justice Diana Mochache said Mackenzie’s followers believed he was “Jesus’s mouthpiece”.

One of his co-accused told the court that Mackenzie had said anyone who resisted fasting must be forced to go to heaven “through kicks and blows”.

Burials in the forest where the cult was based were described as “weddings”, with those who died celebrated as having “wedded with Jesus”, the judge said.

Mackenzie and other cult leaders also face separate cases involving terrorism, radicalisation and denying children an education.

The murder verdict is the first ruling on the most serious charges against the pastor, who was arrested in 2023 after more than 400 bodies were discovered in shallow graves in Shakahola forest, near Kenya’s coast.

He is due to be sentenced on 6 November.

Additional reporting by Thomas Mukhwana