UK official warns Oxfam to hand over all info on
sexual misconduct scandal in Haiti
Associated
PressMore from Associated Press
Published: February 11, 2018
The British government is reviewing
its relationship with Oxfam in the wake of sex allegations against some of the
charity's staff.Nick Ansell / PA via AP / Files
LONDON — Sex predators are targeting
aid organizations because of the chaotic environments in which they work,
Britain’s top development official warned Sunday as she threatened to pull
public funding from Oxfam unless it came clean about a sexual misconduct
scandal in Haiti.
Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt
excoriated the leadership of Oxfam for its handling of allegations that some of
the anti-poverty charity’s staff in Haiti used prostitutes, including Haitians
who might have been minors at the time.
Oxfam
demonstrated a “failure of leadership” when it failed to fully inform
authorities and because it didn’t prevent the alleged perpetrators from going
to work for other charities, she said.
Mordaunt made clear that all aid
agencies must show “moral leadership” in tackling sex abuse or risk losing
their taxpayer funding.
“What
is so disturbing about Oxfam is that when this was reported to them, they
completely failed to do the right thing,”
Mordaunt told the BBC on Sunday. “That’s what we need to focus on, and that’s
what ultimately will stop predatory individuals from being able to take
advantage of vulnerable people.”
Oxfam announced seven measures
Sunday designed to strengthen its handling of sexual abuse allegations. The
package includes improving the vetting of employees, creating an external
complaint line for whistleblowers and working with other charities to overcome
the “legal difficulties” that kept them from sharing information on sexual
misconduct cases.
“We
will continue to address the underlying cultural issues that allowed this
behaviour to happen,” Caroline Thompson, the chair of
Oxfam Great Britain’s board of trustees, said in a statement. “We also want to
satisfy ourselves that we do now have a culture of openness and transparency
and that we fully learn the lessons of events in 2011.”
The Times of London reported last
week that seven former Oxfam staff members who worked in Haiti after the 2010
earthquake that devastated the country were the subject of misconduct
allegations that included the use of prostitutes and downloading pornography. Oxfam’s investigation into the charges
was hampered by a “determination to keep it out of the public eye,” the
Times said.
The newspaper’s sister publication,
the Sunday Times, said the problem goes beyond Oxfam. More than 120 people
working for British charities were accused of sexual abuse in the past year,
the newspaper reported, though it did not specify the exact dates or the source
of the information.
Oxfam had 87 cases, the largest
number of any charity, but the Times also mentioned Save the Children, the
British Red Cross and Christian Aid.
In response, Save the Children said
it investigated 31 cases of sexual harassment last year, which resulted in 16
people being fired and 10 being referred to police or other authorities. None
of the cases involved children and all of them occurred abroad, the charity
said.
The British Red Cross said it hasn’t
dismissed staff members working overseas for sexual abuse, harassment or
pedophilia in at least the past five years. There were a “small number” of
sexual harassment cases last year in the U.K., and the Red Cross said that
“appropriate was taken” in all cases, though it did not specify what the
actions were.
Christian Aid said it investigated
two sexual misconduct cases in the last 12 months, resulting in the dismissal
of one worker and less severe disciplinary action in the other.
Oxfam has said it dismissed four
people and allowed three others to resign after an internal 2011 investigation
revealed that sexual misconduct, bullying, intimidation and a failure to
protect staff hampered the charity’s Haiti operation. Allegations that staff
members had sex with minors were “not proven,” it said.
The charity said it reported the
findings to Britain’s charity regulator and to major donors, including the
Department for International Development, the department Mordaunt heads. The
department gave Oxfam 31.7 million pounds ($43.8 million) last year.
Mordaunt took issue with the notion
that her department had been fully informed, saying the charity didn’t disclose
that the Haiti case involved sexual misconduct. Oxfam also incorrectly told the
government that no aid beneficiaries were harmed, she said.
When asked by BBC interviewer Andrew
Marr whether the statement about no harm coming to Haitians was “a lie,”
Mordaunt replied: “Well, quite.”
She said she would meet Oxfam
leaders Monday to discuss the case.
“If
they do not hand over all the information they have from their investigation
and subsequently to the relevant authorities,… then I cannot work with them
anymore as an aid delivery partner,”
Mordaunt said.