Fact-check: South Sudanese pastor bathing women in church? No, the photos are by a Ghanaian skitmaker

Writer: Wek Atak Kacjang

A Facebook post on the 7th of December purporting to be of a Pastor in South Sudan and suspected to be an ‘Atendior church‘ washing his congregation with water inside the church is false.

Mayom Paul Abol Lok, who has over 4,900 friends and 352 followers on Facebook, published the post, which received over 30 interactions and 12 comments.

From the people in the pictures to the comments made by some of his friends and followers, something didn’t look right about them.

But are these photos of a pastor in South Sudan washing church members real?

211 Check did a reverse image search on the pictures with the help of google lenses and realised the same pictures were used in Nigeria by a local online platform, Naira land, in January 2022 by ExAngel007. With the headline ‘Pastor strips Female Members, Bathe them during crossover’.

Other sites also had similar pictures with the same heading as seen here, here, and here,

But another site, Exclusive Base, did different research that was shared by other sites here and here. They found out that Mark Mensah, the CEO of Phens Multimedia in Ghana, made the pictures that were widely shared on social media.

People often call Mensah “Pastor Blinks,” but he is not a pastor; he makes skits. Here’s the rest of the story.

Conclusion:

The above evidence indicates that these photographs were not taken in South Sudan. They are Ghanaian in origin.

This fact-check was published as part of an assignment for the Empowering Fact-checking in South Sudan (EFiSS) Training Program by 211 Check.