2018, saw #MeToo bring about debate and discussion surrounding sexual exploitation and abuse around the world. Intrinsically linked to #MeToo were the revelations about abuse and sexual exploitation by Chief Executives of Oxfam.
The first signs of the developing crisis for Oxfam emerged via Twitter on Thursday the 8th, February, 2018. Followed by a front page, news breaking article in the Times Newspaper the following morning. It was reported that in the wake of the 2010 earthquake, senior Oxfam staff regularly hired local young teenage girls to attend what were referred to as ’young meat barbecues’ parties that resembled ‘ A Caligula Org
While prostitution is widespread within Haiti, it is illegal, exploitative and psychologically scarring. When it involves vulnerable girls being hired for sex by foreign aid worker, paid ultimately by donors in the aftermath of a horrendous natural catastrophe, morale distaste rises to disgust (The Times, 2018).
Further compounded by allegations against Oxfam being guilty of covering up allegations of sexual exploitation, and abuse, which ‘contributed impunity to perpetrators and weakened accountability, eroding trust within the organisation and between Oxfam and its stakeholders’
Penny Mourdant, International Development Secretary stated that Oxfam:
Did not provide a full report to the Charity Commission, they did not provide a full report to prosecutors. In my view they mislead, quite possibly deliberately …I believe their motivation appears to be the protection of their organisations reputation. A complete betrayal of trust.
The charity’s’ overriding priority was protecting the Oxfam brand and reputation, to the extent that they allowed Senior Oxfam Executives to resign, and move to other positions of power and authority within the Aid sector.
This was not a case of one individual surrendering to temptation in a moment of weakness. This was a case of a group of privileged men abusing the misfortune of the people they were supposed to be helping. They did so repeatedly, in a premeditated way (The Times, 2018, p.1)
Abuse thrives under two conditions
· When victims are afraid to speak out
· When those in power fail to listen
Oxfam was guilty on both counts. Helen Evans Oxfam’s Global Head of safeguarding ‘begged senior staff, ministers and the Department for International Development to act, having identified sexual abuse claims both abroad and within the Charity shops at home’.
The Oxfam scandal is identified as being only ‘the tip of the iceberg’. Twenty years ago the UK’s National Criminal Intelligence Service warned that there were a great number of paedophiles working within the International Aid Sector, ‘Paedophiles and predatory sex abusers use the halo of charity work to get close to desperate women and children.
Fundamentally we all have a naïve belief in the ultimate good of others that ‘people who work for charities have more integrity or a stronger moral compass than those who do not’. Such perceptions and beliefs have allowed us to turn a blind eye, ignoring the true picture of the charity sector, both at home and abroad.
