Oxfam Sex Scandal: Investigating sexual misconduct in the humanitarian aid industry

deputy chief has resigned after a prostitution scandal involving aide workers it's the exact opposite of what you'd expect from an international aid agency and was accused of covering for staff who paid prostitutes in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake some is said to be underage the scandals already claimed Oxfam's deputy chief executive who quit after allegations of a cover-up threatened the NGOs funding it was revealed that charity had hired a country director in Haiti despite known concerns about his prior conduct in Chad but that country director Rowland van Hauer Marin had worked for a number of

charities in several countries even before chat or Haiti a former colleague first blew the whistle on his behavior in 2004 when he worked in Liberia for UK charity Merlyn where he allegedly organized sex parties with local young women that OSA failed to warn other NGOs about the allegations against his staff allowing some of the accused to get jobs at other aid agencies those details were reported this week by Ben Parker senior editor of the humanitarian news website Aaron I'm curious where all of this starts because you have allegations made by a woman allegations that date

back many years how do you go about corroborating all of that I needed to find her agreement to go on the record and I needed at least two other sources so through friends of friends and names that were dragged out of the past we were able to get together three different individuals who could all confirm the facts of this case what was interesting was that of many many stories floating around in the sort of me2 phenomenon this one and this individual she definitely wanted to say her piece on the record so she was able to

connect me with her colleague at the time through a mutual friend who didn't want to go on the record but at least was able to stand up the the basic outlines of where it got surprising perhaps was that the man who was sent to investigate her complaint from the head office in London also agreed to speak so that gave me a three-way confirmation story and we have seen sort of in the in the days since the man at the center of these allegations has denied in his words some of the more salacious parts of it

did you expect that I expected he would have to come out of hiding and I think what's what's happened is that something that appeared to be normal to him and some of his mates in these remote and troubled places doesn't appear normal in the light of day in 2018 and I think he is now struggling with how to line up his past with the expectations of the international media today what happens in the charity sector as a whole we're now seeing a reckoning we're seeing it impacting fundraising one group has said it will temporarily suspend

funding Oxfam product projects of course it's a charity that relies on people to send money what do you see that ripple effect being from the work that you're doing about the allegations being made and the ability these charities to continue doing the good work that they should be doing I think the charity sector the nonprofit sector probably don't have a much worse problem than any other sector when it comes to sexual abuse and sexual exploitation if you take oil and gas will you take security or you take even tourism you would expect to find this

kind of behavior by men traveling the world being sort of free of normal constraints being a little bit outside the law so what what's particularly outrageous about this is that because they work in the charitable sector they're betraying their principles and the principles which the public have come to trust them for and it's take advantage of the very vulnerable people that they claim to be helping so this double this double ethical slam is what's going to hurt them in the public imagination Ben Parker thanks very much