INSIDE THE CALIGULA .ORGY APARTMENTS
Six bedrooms, a huge swimming pool and half naked girls in Oxfam T-shirts: How aid team partied like emperors in charity’s villa
From Daniel Bates in Haiti and Arthur Martin in London ‘They had girls up there all the time’
BOASTING a 7.6-metre swimming pool and a charming sun terrace, this is the luxury apartment block in Haiti where Oxfam aid workers cavorted with young prostitutes at a sex party likened to a ‘Caligula orgy’.
Terracotta walls, palm trees and floral arrangements give the gated complex the feel of a Mediterranean holiday villa.
The six-bedroom serviced complex, which can sleep 12, was rented to Oxfam for the equivalent of around €1,350 a month – an astronomical sum by Haitian standards.
Our correspondent found it in a rundown part of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince after three sources confirmed it was used for the alleged sex parties.
Each of the rooms comes fully furnished so that aid workers do not need to buy their own furniture.
The complex – known locally as ‘the whorehouse’ – has a living room with a flat screen TV and three comfy seats with plenty of space for entertaining.
It was here that video footage was said to have been filmed showing aid workers partying with prostitutes who wore Oxfam T-shirts.
One source said at least five half-naked girls were running around at a ‘full-on Caligula orgy’. Such gatherings were referred to as ‘young meat barbecues’.
The villa comes with an armed guard and a 3.6-metre security gate with barbed wire on top.
By contrast, some of the other houses in the area still bear the scars from the 2010 earthquake, which killed 220,000 and left 1.5million people homeless.
The hilly and chaotic streets are choked with pedestrians, traders and traffic. There are potholes everywhere and cars bounce around on the uneven surfaces.
On the street, the traders try to scratch out a living selling rice, eggs and beans from sacks supplied by aid agencies.
A Haitian woman wearing dirty jeans who was cooking meat on a grill in the street said: ‘I don’t think they should be doing that here. Oxfam were supposed to help people, not do this’.
Another local man added: ‘This shouldn’t have happened. This neighbourhood was really struggling after the earthquake.’
The villa sits in a densely populated neighbourhood called Delmas, which is home to 600,000. Locals said it was one of the worst affected places after the earthquake in 2010.
There was no electricity and the poor quality housing meant that more buildings collapsed than in other areas, causing more deaths.
Workers at the property confirmed that Oxfam staff used to stay there, as did a neighbour.
A former driver who used to work for Oxfam said: ‘I left before all this came out, but I heard there were lots of girls at these parties. They used to have girls up there all the time’.
Last night another source told the Mail: ‘This is where those Oxfam sex parties took place. They happened on more than one occasion and they weren’t very subtle about it.
‘I think they thought they could get away with anything. They nearly did.’
Another source added: ‘The aid workers lived in a guesthouse rented by Oxfam that they called the “pink apartments” – they called it “the whorehouse”. They were throwing big parties with prostitutes.
‘These girls were wearing Oxfam T-shirts, running around half-naked, it was a like a full-on
Caligula orgy. It was unbelievable. It was crazy. At one party there were at least five girls and two of them had Oxfam white t-shirts on.’
The group of aid workers was said to have control over the team of drivers hired by the charity to move staff.
A source said: ‘They said, “Listen, if you want your contract to be extended we need girls and you need to pick them up”.’ Oxfam’s country director there was Roland van Hauwermeiren, 68, a Belgium national who has worked for the charity for many years.
He admitted using prostitutes at a different villa – known as the Eagle’s Nest rented for him by Oxfam with charitable funds, according to a report.
After the allegations surfaced, investigators flew into Haiti and carried out covert surveillance on some suspects.
Contact was made with Oxfam-employed drivers used by the group to bring women to their house, and the prostitutes themselves.
Separately, three sources said they had concerns that some of the prostitutes were girls aged 14 to 16, below the age of consent in Haiti, which is 18.
Meanwhile, it emerged that senior Oxfam workers were using prostitutes in Haiti as far back as 2004 as part of a deep-seated ‘culture of entitlement’. A former employee at the charity said she once nearly walked in on two senior male staff arguing with prostitutes about the price for their services.
The incident happened at an Oxfam apartment in the Pétionville area of the capital. One of them men was said to be an Oxfam finance director and the other worked as programme officer. One was said to be French.
‘They had a culture of entitlement’
The former employee said: ‘I went to knock on their door one morning and I heard voices coming from inside so I asked the security guard.
‘He said that the men had come back drunk and bought some prostitutes. They apparently did not agree a price and the women were arguing about it with them now.
‘I went back to my car and called and texted them to say I was there because I did not want to go in and see that. I felt very uncomfortable.
‘They came out a little while later and seemed very relaxed as if nothing happened’.
The former employee did not speak up at the time because she felt intimidated because the men were senior to her.
She said: ‘Oxfam staff used to go to clubs that were really heavy, you could get drugs there and there were lots of women. One of them was called Jet Set.
‘They used to park outside with their vehicles which had Oxfam logos on them. They did not seem to care.
‘They had a culture of entitlement and there were many instances when they behaved inappropriately with Haitian females who worked alongside them.’
She said she had spoken to others who worked at Oxfam in 2010 around the time of the allegations about the orgy with prostitutes and they confirmed that it did take place.
Asked about Roland van Hauwermeiren, she added: ‘He was supposed to represent everything good about the charity but instead he did this. When you have this kind of behaviour going on for so long it just becomes part of the culture and people think they are entitled to it. It’s never going to change unless people speak out.’
Widza Bryant, who worked in human resources for Oxfam in Haiti from 2009 for three years, said she raised concerns and was ignored. ‘There was a lot of rumours on the ground about management and leaders exploiting the locals, sexually and in other ways, to get jobs and to have good standing,’ she told the BBC. ‘So these were ongoing rumours that would come to me through the drivers and other employees. So in many occasions I would share those rumours with my boss,’ Ms Bryant added.