Watoto is a religious organization based in Uganda, founded in 1984 by Gary Skinner, an evangelical missionary born in Zimbabwe and raised in Canada, and his spouse Marylin. It has faced over a decade of anti-LGBTQIA+ and human rights abuse allegations. However, an investigation of its website and social media profiles conducted by the SGN discovered that the Watoto Children’s Choir has announced that it will again be performing free concerts as a “fundraising event” across the western US, starting with nine churches and a public high school in Washington state September 11–24, traveling by bus before moving on to stops in Oregon and then California.
In the online “Watoto Planning Packet: Better Days Tour West Coast 2025,” the organization requests its US hosts only provide “moderately priced” hotel rooms for its two drivers and team leader, asking that “10 host homes” be arranged for its child performers and other adults for lodging. The packet reports members of “Choir 120” by name: 13 adults and 11 children aged 7-13 years old, with 1-2 children assigned per one chaperone.
Photos of the choir, with the faces and names of all its members labeled, were posted on Watoto US’s Instagram account on August 5. The account also posted a video on July 14 promoting its upcoming tour, showing the choir together with a man appearing to be team leader Joel Kibalama, announcing, “We are very excited that we are coming to the USA, see you soon!”
On the “Guidelines for Host Homes” page of the “Watoto Planning Packet” (which requests that host organizations “please photocopy and distribute to hosts”), several instructions indicate how to accommodate the Ugandan children’s choir and adult members, including the following:
In the “Getting to Know You” section, it states that, for the children, “this is their first time leaving Uganda.”
In the “TV & Movies” section, it states, “The children in Watoto are not used to watching TV and videos except on rare occasions. What they do watch is generally of a Christian nature. We humbly ask that you limit TV viewing to no more than 1 hour and kindly use viewer discretion. ”
In the “Technology Use” section, it states, “Watoto adults and children are not permitted to use host home telephones, computers, or Wi-Fi connection. We request that you not offer these services to them.”
The “Team List & Accommodation Information” page requests that hosts “please ensure that you place the children in a safe environment and with families that you know well.”
It also does not appear that Watoto or its choir conducts its own background checks on the host families its members stay with on tour.
Hosts
The SGN reached out to Oak Harbor Public Schools for comment about Watoto’s first stop on its tour, at Oak Harbor High School. Communications Officer Sarah Foy reported that the school district had only approved the rental of its venue, with no affiliation to Watoto or the event beyond providing the space. She said she was unaware of the anti-LGBTQ+ allegations Watoto has faced in the past.
Oak Harbor Public Schools also fulfilled the SGN’s request to provide the “School Use Facility Application” for the event. The form was filled out on March 21 and submitted by Judy Lycksell and Pastor Jeff Spencer of Oak Harbor Lutheran Church.
The SGN also contacted Oak Harbor Lutheran Church, which confirmed that it was helping Watoto organize the event, setting up host families from its congregation, and that it had done so several times previously. The church stated that it has a “Watoto committee” that manages the visits, and that volunteers from its congregation host Watoto children and their adult chaperones in their homes.
These host home volunteers are reported to undergo child protection policy training and a background check run by the committee; it was unclear whether the background check involved reviewing the immigration status of the hosts.
The church also reported having an extensive history with Watoto. When asked if the church had sent “love offerings” (donations) to Watoto, it reported holding a yearly garage sale fundraiser for its programs, as well as sending its members to Uganda to work with Watoto in 2008 and 2010 at one of its clinic facilities. The church declined to provide comment on allegations of Watoto’s members supporting anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation.
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church is a member of the broader Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and its Northwest Washington Synod. ELCA Assistant to the Bishop Andy Yee did not respond to the SGN’s request for comment, and Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee was reportedly on vacation.
The SGN additionally reached out to all the other Washington host churches for comment. None had responded to the requests as of press time.
Watoto also did not respond to the SGN’s request for comment.
Tax documents
The SGN was able to obtain the IRS 990 “Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax” forms filed under “Watoto Child Care Ministry Inc,” a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, for the tax years 2022–24 tax years. The nonprofit reported a total revenue of $7.09 million in 2022, with $7.06 million coming from contributions and grants; $6.8 million total revenue with 5.2 million in contributions and grants for 2023; and $7.5 million in total revenue, with $7.3 million in contributions and grants, for 2024.
All three IRS 990 forms list the nonprofit’s “Sponsor a Life” program as its biggest expense: $4 million spent in 2022, $5.8 million in 2023, and $4.1 million in 2024. In these forms, it describes the program as a “sponsorship of babies, children and vulnerable women” that provides a “holistic model,” offering sponsors “physical care, medical intervention including HIV/AIDS treatment, education both formal and technical, trauma counseling, and spiritual discipleship.”
Only the nonprofit’s CEO, CFO, and director of development were listed on the tax forms as having received income all three years, in the range of $80,000– 130,000.
Watoto founder Gary Skinner is listed as “past president” in the 2022 form, and as a “director” in the 2023 and 2024 forms; he does not appear to have received funds during the 2022–24 time period. President Julius Rwotlonyo, also listed on all three forms, did not appear to receive funds either.
According to the Washington Department of Labor & Industries, all employers “hiring an actor or performer under the age of 18 to work in film, video, audio, or theatrical productions” are required to file and be granted a “Theatrical Minor Work Variance.” Because these Watoto children’s choir performances are “free events” and the members are not paid wages for their work, the nonprofit does not have to follow this regulation.
The SGN did put in a request with the Washington Department of Revenue, which confirmed that Watoto has not had a valid Washington business license since February 2023.
Previous controversies
The Watoto Children’s Choir last received Washington media attention during their 2014 tour. KING-5 reported on the organization’s ties to anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation in Uganda at the time.
In May 2025, the Gay City News reported on Watoto’s visit to a church in Brooklyn also drawing attention to its ties to Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” legislation, including two meetings the church hosted for the Family Life Network’s anti- LGBTQ+ conference in 2009.
The Watoto website also announced that one of its choirs will tour Australia during the same timeframe as the US West Coast tour. Multiple news sources in that country have also investigated Watoto, with the Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Mail Australia writing about MP Stuart Robert’s ties to Skinner and his support of anti- LGBTQ+ public figures in Uganda back in 2016.
The Times of India reported in 2016 about a Ugandan man, John Jogga Katamba, who claimed to have been forced by Watoto to donate his kidney at a hospital in India without his consent. The SGN interviewed an anonymous source who claimed to have had contact with the victim, after investigating their own dealings with Watoto stealing land from a family member in Uganda. The source provided to the SGN legal documents filed by Katamba against Watoto in both India and Uganda, alleging also that Watoto used US-raised funds to conduct the kidney transplant. The source stated that they attended Watoto’s children’s choir shows in the US, and expressed concern for the safety of its children on tour.
Stephen Langa, leader of the Family Life Network and Watoto Church elder, has been outspoken against LGBTQIA+ rights in Uganda over the last decade. He was a part of the 2014 lawsuit in defense of the first “Kill the Gays” law, which was eventually overturned.
Mother Jones in 2014 covered Langa’s connection to the anti-LGBTQ+ movement in Uganda and Scott Lively, a US evangelical crusader and author of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party. Videos of both Lively and Langa giving speeches at a conference hosted by the Family Life Network in Uganda were posted on Mother Jones’ YouTube channel alongside its article. Langa in his speech claimed that “[LGBTQ+ people] want to overthrow the marriage, family-based moral base of our society. They want to make it completely free, so that anyone can sleep with anyone, anyone can sleep with anything.”
Watoto’s X account shared a talk Langa did about the immorality of homosexuality in 2017. In a 2021 livestream of a church sermon by President Rwotlonyo on Watoto’s Facebook account, Langa leads a prayer asking God to guide Uganda through its “dark political times.” In February 2022, PowerFMUganda made a promotional post on Instagram with Langa as a guest to “speak on homosexuality and sexual perversion.”
In support of the 2023 “Anti-Homosexuality” bill, Langa led a “One Million Man March.” He also stood in defense of the legislation once it was challenged in court after its passage.
Langa has continued to play a role in the Watoto Church since the law was passed. On August 18, 2024, Family Life Network and Watoto Church held a joint event in Kampala celebrating Langa’s 70th birthday, as well as his 40th wedding anniversary. In a YouTube livestream of the event, President Rwotlonyo said during his introduction of Langa, “Especially at a time when family is under attack, today is a big testimony that family, God’s way, is the best way as we celebrate ‘Uncle Steven,’ as we call him, and ‘Auntie Beatrice.’”
Skinner and his wife reportedly stepped down from the Watoto organization in Uganda in February 2023, just a few months before the country’s current “Anti- Homosexuality” law was passed. He has also faced numerous accusations of anti- LGBTQ+ sentiments. In 2013, he was called “the most homophobic man in the world” by Frank Mugisha, a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Mugisha and SMUG also led both the 2014 and 2023 legal challenges to the “Kill the Gays” laws in Uganda. SMUG and Mugisha did not respond to the SGN’s multiple requests for comment.
An expert's perspective
Melanie Nathan is a Queer, South African–born human rights lawyer with over two decades of on-the-ground experience advocating for the rights of LGBTQIA+ Africans. She is also executive director of African Human Rights Coalition, a nonprofit providing services for refugees fleeing LGBTQ+-based violence in their home countries.
She recalled beginning her work in Uganda in 2009, saying that “the work started heating up around 2011 and then very much so around 2013–14, when the first Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed. President Museveni attested to it, [but] later that year, the Ugandan courts invalidated the law based on a technicality, in that there was no quorum in Parliament at the time of its passage, so they rendered the bill invalid. This context is important, because almost 10 years went by, and in 2023, a new Anti-Homosexuality Act, which in some respects was even more virulent, came into enactment, and it was attested to by President Museveni.”
Right before the 2023 law was passed, President Museveni spoke at an event hosted by the US evangelical organization Family Watch International — designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center — saying, “Africa should provide the lead to save the world from this degeneration and decadence, which is really very dangerous for humanity. If people of opposite sex [sic] stop appreciating one another, then how will the human race be propagated?”
The law, which is still currently in effect in Uganda, severely punishes its citizens for acts of what it deems “aggravated homosexuality.” The Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF), a Uganda-based nonprofit, “has documented 55 arrests under the law, three death penalty cases forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions, eight forced anal examination cases, 254 evictions of persons accused to be or associated with LGBTI people, and 202 other cases of actual or threatened violence,” during the first months of the new law, as reported by Amnesty International.
Nathan argues there are several risks of Watoto bringing its children’s choir into the US this September. Since Trump has taken office, foreign tourists have been getting detained and deported at US ports of entry. Speaking on this new heightened risk, she said, “We start from step one, which is actually entering the country. That’s their first problem in this current climate. They’re doing it [fundraising], risking these children, risking detention, and they’re risking deportation to places unknown, because the system is not working very well right now.”
Another risk is there have been numerous media reports of ICE detaining minors and separating them from their families. In Yakima, one stop on Watoto’s upcoming tour, there have been reports of ICE using the city's airfield for its flights.
Speaking to the precariousness of this situation, Nathan asked, “Have they [Watoto] checked the immigration status of the parties, in whose homes these kids are staying? What if ICE shows up at one of these homes while there’s this little African kid there? Think about it for a second. This is not a climate where you can do anything like this anymore. We’re living in very dangerous times. You just don’t bring children and dump then in homes that you don’t have the last A-to-Z knowledge about.”
But the scope of Trump’s policies have deeper impacts than just the safety of Watoto’s children in the US. Speaking on how her organization’s work is being negatively impacted by Trump’s austerity policies, she stated, “When President Trump took office, our work — and the lives of those we serve — were severely disrupted by the loss of USAID funding, key grants, and the US Refugee Program in several countries. Overnight, countless people who depended on these lifelines were left without critical services, accommodation, or protection. This sudden collapse triggered a devastating domino effect, even causing some who lost shelters to be arrested under false accusations of breaking immigration laws, and forcibly … deported back to Uganda, violating the 1951 Refugee Convention, effectively returned directly into the danger they had fled.”
Finally, Nathan pointed out that “it is an insidious societal oxymoron when one serves up useful, kind charity and violent human rights abuses on the same dinner plate. Gary Skinner used this tactic when founding and funding a ministry that supports Watoto Children’s orphanage. He became a hero for taking on the support of vulnerable orphans, attracting much funding, while using the very same platform and funds to directly participate in what has led to one of the greatest human rights violations of all time on Africa’s continent, Uganda’s ‘Kill the Gays Bill,’ which has led to immeasurable violence and forced displacement, dispersing Uganda’s LGBTQIA+ community across the world to seek protection and the right to live in freedom and safety.”
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