Workers for Oxfam ‘offered aid for sex’
BRITAIN: The Oxfam sex scandal deepened yesterday as the British charity’s former head of safeguarding disclosed that teenage charity shop volunteers had been abused and overseas staff had traded aid for sex.
In a series of allegations, Helen Evans accused Oxfam bosses of ignoring her evidence and pleas for more resources, saying it led to her resignation.
Evans, who spent more than six years with the charity, said overseas staff had been accused of rape, and abuse by shop managers against young volunteers was covered up.
Ten per cent of workers in some countries had been sexually assaulted by colleagues or had witnessed abuse, she added.
Earlier yesterday, Penny Lawrence, the charity’s deputy chief executive, resigned as the British government announced it would be setting up a unit to investigate sex abuse in the aid sector.
Evans claimed that volunteers in Britain were not subjected to criminal checks and that her complaints were dismissed by Oxfam bosses, the Charity Commission and the Home Office.
‘‘Behind Oxfam, there are thousands of committed staff. They put their lives at risk every day. In terms of the senior leadership team, I think they need to look back and say, did they do everything they needed to keep beneficiaries safe?’’ she said.
The latest allegations emerged amid calls for criminal charges to be brought against Oxfam executives and employees in Britain if they had turned a blind eye to abuse overseas.
Concerns were also raised over Oxfam’s use of public money. The charity’s board of trustees yesterday met Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, to assure her it could be trusted with the £32 million (NZ$61m) of public funding it receives.
Caroline Thomson, the chairman of trustees, said: ‘‘We recognise that we have some way to go to persuade her that we have the right moral leadership to be fully entrusted with public money.’’
Evans said Oxfam shop volunteers as young as 14 had alleged abuse, and she was concerned children were being left alone with volunteers who were not crimina -record-checked.
In Oxfam’s global operation, Evans said that in the course of one day in 2015, she received reports of ‘‘a woman being coerced to have sex in a humanitarian response by another aid worker, another case where a woman had been coerced in exchange for aid, and another one where it had come to our attention where a member of staff had been struck off for sexual abuse and hadn’t disclosed that ... and we were then concerned about what he might be doing’’.
– Telegraph Group