Suba North Member of Parliament (MP) Millie Odhiambo has urged religious leaders to maintain proper boundaries during prayers, condemning what she termed as inappropriate physical contact with women in the name of spiritual deliverance.
Speaking during a parliamentary sitting on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, Odhiambo said some pastors have crossed ethical lines by touching women’s private parts during prayers, a practice she described as both indecent and unspiritual.
“Stop touching women’s breasts and buttocks during prayers. There is nothing spiritual about that. Keep a distance. The spirit will work between you and the woman with the distance,” she stated.
She argued that such actions not only violate women’s dignity but also have nothing to do with spiritual power; instead, she warned, they can stir sexual excitement and blur moral limits within places of worship.
Odhiambo urged for professionalism, decency, and ethical conduct in churches and other religious institutions, adding that effective prayer does not need physical contact. She further referred to the Sexual Offences Act Amendment Bill that was meant to give better legal protection for women by criminalizing any indecent or non-consensual contact of a woman’s body.
“If that bill comes to the House and it’s made law, then I think pastors will not touch any breasts or buttocks of ladies, because that will not happen again,” Odhiambo added.
The legislator explained that her remarks were motivated by disturbing incidents in some churches, where pastors allegedly justify touching women as part of prayer rituals.
Odhiambo insisted that women must be secure and respected within religious spaces and faith leaders must stand out as models of integrity.
“There is no need to put a physical touch between you and a woman,” she said.
She called upon the clergy to command dignity through distances, to lead with integrity, and underlined that true spiritualism is about respect, not touch.
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