I think I was about a year into the Rome we were putting in place new reporting procedures training and the allegations started to come in and at that point we realized they'd been quite systemic under reporting and I became concerned about our you know whether we had the resource in place to to tackle the the number of allegations that we were getting in by 1314 it was 39 and it increased significantly after that you went off from maternity leave and when you came back in 2014 the number of allegations concerning Oxfam staff overseas really escalated
didn't they say tell us about the sense of scale so when I came back from maternity leave my maternity cover had been out to a number of countries in South Sudan and we'd been doing confidential surveys 120 staff and the results were very very concerning we will get in people reporting that they'd either witnessed or experienced rape or attempted rape by Oxfam Biosystems representatives and in in one country program that was 7% of staff were saying that and across the program's so three in total we had about one in ten saying they'd experienced unwanted I
wanted sexual touch Jim you know sexual assault this was staff on staff we hadn't even gone out to beneficiaries who receiving aid from us I was extremely extremely concerned by those survey results and I asked to take that to the the leadership team and was offered the opportunity to present that report to the leadership team and about an hour before I was due to present I was told I was no longer needed I was extremely concerned about that and I wrote the chief executive to ask why I hadn't had the opportunity to present those findings
and the opportunity to discuss there concerns that I had and the response I had back was that they felt that everything that needed to be said have been said in my report in her email to Oxfam's current chief executive Mark Goldring at the end of 2014 Helen Evans said having a concern discussed at leadership team with feedback from the chief executive can go a long way to effecting positive change as the Horn East and Central Africa report indicates we are increasingly gathering data that points to a culture of sexual abuse within some Oxfam offices mr.
Goldring responded you were right that this is a serious issue leadership team recognized this but felt that there was nothing as a group that we could actually add to the situation which was clearly laid out on the paper and the individual incidents are truly shocking him and I'm thinking of the email that you wrote to your line manager in February 2015 where you talked about three new allegations in a single day do you remember those allegations yes very much so there was one of a woman being coerced to have sex in humanitarian response by another
aid worker this was a woman who was receiving Oxfam yeah another case where a woman had been coerced to have sex in exchange for aid and another one where it had come to our attention that a member of staff had been struck off from sexual abuse and hadn't disclosed up and we were then concerned about what he might be doing and that was here three allegations in one day miss Evans raised concerns about the lack of resources Oxfam was putting into safeguarding in February 2015 she warned that Oxfam's failure to resource its safeguarding function is
a failure to protect its beneficiaries and young volunteers if we don't have resource to safeguard those we are meant to help from harm caused by our own representatives then how can we justify the work we do the deputy chief executive responded pledging to carry out a strategic review of Oxfam's approach to safeguarding as soon as was practicable in your emails you repeatedly make the case that you on your own couldn't deal with the scale in the allegations you needed more resources how did Oxfam respond to that yet so it was me initially working on this
four days a week and then I had three days a week of admin support and I asked repeatedly we need more source we need more resource for this and it wasn't forthcoming and it was just a continual fight to try and get more resource and I just found that so frustrating because I felt that our failure to adequately resource was but in people at risk but it sounds like they didn't take those allegations seriously that women getting harassed assaulted raped didn't really sort of register with the senior team I struggled to understand why they didn't
respond immediately for that call for additional resource I really struggle and I still struggle with that and it wasn't only the actions of Oxfam staff abroad which was causing concern the charity stores in the UK take on volunteers as young as 14 years old some have alleged they've been abused the 2013 to 2014 annual safeguarding report states that in 2012 to 13 there were five allegations specifically categorized as inappropriate conduct with children in trading this figure was seven in 2013 to 14 you're also disclosing today that young volunteers in Oxfam shops in the UK have
you're alleging being abused can you tell us the case that most troubled you the allegation that most troubled yeah so there was one case of an adult volunteer assaulting a child volunteer that went school and that troubled me because I knew that Oxfam was not conducting the criminal record checks that it needed to conduct that children were being left alone with adults who hadn't been coming record checked and that is something that afterwards I took to the Charity Commission I took to the Children's Commissioner I took to the Home Office and at that time the
Home Office and the Charity Commission was saying that because it was retail it was okay not to have those checks it's an extraordinary loophole extraordinary Oxfam and all the charity shops people trusts they trust them because their charities and the point I made repeatedly our parents our trust in these organizations to keep their children safe when they volunteer these are 14 year old children and if parents knew that those adults were not checked they would not be sending those children into those shops in your documents you suggest that the shop manager put pressure on the
young volunteer not to go to the police what happened to that shop manager they were ultimately dismissed my concern there was how did that happen it shouldn't have been the case that the shop manager did that there was a lot of learning from that case and I'm swiftly were they dismissed I mean did the senior team take on the seriousness of this particular case I think at the time I felt frustrated and whilst they were dismissed ultimately it was I felt it's challenging to get the right outcome well let's talk about the Charity Commission you
reported to them in 2015 what was their response when I went to them I I assumed they'd want to make contact with me they didn't ask to meet with me they didn't ask to speak with me I had limited email exchanges and I pushed and pushed and pushed and they stopped replying to me and to say I felt displeased just these are meant to be the people that you go to when you know in these circumstances and I trusted them and I just didn't understand why they didn't take action Commission did carry out an inquiry
after some allegations appeared in the press in December last year and that inquiry said quote many of the allegations were not substantiated so they did do a thorough check at that point and found that a lot of it didn't stack up in their view how do you respond to that yeah so you know that is a matter for public record that with any allegations there will be some that are proven and some are not proven and that wasn't the point that I took to them my concern was the extent to which we were not adequately
resourced and the safeguarding function and you never think we could do to safeguard our beneficiaries and child volunteers I think on that the point is in the press there's been a lot of coverage about Oxfam and how shocking and surprised and this is it isn't I went in 2015 to the Charity Commission I went back again in 2017 everything I'm saying today the Charity Commission knew so why is the government saying this is a surprise do you think Oxfam can survive this I do there are behind Oxfam thousands of committed dedicated incredible staff absolutely the
things they do they put their lives at risk every day they are amazing people in terms of the senior leadership team I think there are some people there you need to think look back what's happened in the last few years and think did they do everything they needed to do to keep the beneficiaries safe Helen Evans talking to me earlier well in a statement the Charity Commission told us we took the concerns miss Evans raised very seriously and engaged with Oxfam on a formal regulatory basis to address them the charity told us that its approach
to safeguarding was improving but the charity has not been sufficiently open with us about safeguarding incidents she did not raise concerns about specific incidents with us at that time we met miss Evans in 2017 and we opened a formal regulatory compliance case with the charity which has been ongoing this including the issuing of a formal action plan to the charity and this program has discovered the Oxfam's current head of safeguarding has also stead down and the charity is advertising for an interim replacement or will be now as the organization's chief executive Mark Goldring who met
the government today mr. Godwin you will heard Helen Evans there saying that she repeatedly raised her concerns with you with your deputy with the trustees and she doesn't understand why she didn't get the response that she believes her allegations deserved can you explain that now I think Helen underestimates the impact that she actually had on Oxfam so a few months after she left she had been repeatedly requesting more resources we imported a very senior retired police superintendent to oversee our safeguarding work in the UK so that the kinds of incidents in shops were being properly
investigated and indeed prevented we also extended the criminal records check the DBS check not just to shop managers where we already had it and she'd introduced but actually to the senior volunteers who were left in positions of supervision we doubled the resources in that team and we've continued to extend them we also extended the work in in the last few months again because of the pressure of it okay but why so late she'd been making her concerns known to you and a number of other senior people in the organization since 2012 she raised it her
maternity cover raised it in 2013 in 2014 she said we need more resource and it isn't forthcoming in the end December 2014 she got one extra member of staff well the number has increased significantly since then through 15 and 16 but also the other thing that Helen needs to take credit for herself is that the reason for the increase in number of cases was the establishment of a whistleblowing line which she helped set up and deliberate encouragement for people to come forward many of the incidents in shops actually were perpetrated by members of the public
not by Oxfam staff but it's absolutely right that we would report them and we take them seriously why did you take sorry to interrupt but why didn't you take her concern seriously from the start I mean she tried to present her concerns to the senior leadership team and her contribution was canceled and now as notice why was that well the reason that her contribution was canceled there was that her the concern she was raising was specific to eastern central Africa so I asked her to talk first to the program's director to actually explore them and
come back with us with some detail of how we could respond our leadership team is the broad-based team and what this needed was really forensic examination and commitment to act and we did act so based on the concern she raised and those horrible figures that she rightly described we actually sent training teams to places like South Sudan to really drive home our expectations and the accountability that went with it to make sure there was no uncertainty whatsoever about what was acceptable behavior we did not do well enough and we have steadily increased resources since and
we continue to do that but Helen started a lot of that work we should have invested more resources earlier but during that 15 16 17 we've actually done that so do you apologize to helen Evans tonight for failing to take her concerns seriously enough when she raised them starting from 2012 I certainly apologize for not acting fast enough I think we did take them seriously and we responded on many different fronts the wreck was checking was one of them the training was another the promotion of the helpline was another she did some great great work
but what I recognize now with the severity of issues as they've emerged is that we should have resourced that team up faster as we now have indeed done do you also recognize that you should have been carrying out criminal record checks on staff working with young vulnerable volunteers in UK charity shops we started a program of first checking all the new managers we extended it in 2015 to all previously serving managers and then we carried on extending it to all volunteers who are in supervisory positions so that is in place we have 23,000 volunteers many
of them themselves miners and so we don't do checks we do references but we don't do records checks on every volunteer but we do on every volunteer who's left in charge in a supervisory position shouldn't be shouldn't you be checking all volunteers though who are working with young vulnerable teenagers there are actually legal restrictions on who we can check on but we have extended it to make sure that anybody who is likely to be left unsupervised with young people is checked if you've got your house in order now why is the current head of safeguarding
quitting I sure she's taken a major new job in Europe outside the UK I also think the pressure of the system over the last few months with that public focus has been very intense she she's made her own decision we would have liked her to stay she's done the job for a number of years and she's done it very well it's not to do with levels of resourcing I believe but you accept that she has felt under pressure in that role in recent months yes in recent months and even you know even over this last
weekend as there's been publicity the number of reports coming in have increased we've been proactive over many years in encouraging people to report and encouraging line managers to both drive the training and the compliance that's put greater pressure on the safeguarding team and that's why we've resourced it further and we're committed to do so more we were too slow to start scaling up in 2013 but we've done significantly since given our allegations tonight and the fact that concerns were raised repeatedly with you yourself shouldn't you be considering your position as well as your deputy who's
quit well firstly I wasn't in my position in 2011 when these events happened I believe that my trustees and staff want me to stay in my posts and actually lead the organisation through this I saw amazing being delivered by those very staff and volunteers that Helen describes I also recognized that in Helens written statement she describes substantial progress being made in the last couple of years but if our board turn around and say actually you're not the right person to lead forward then I of course will would resign immediately you
