Oxfam ex-director bemoans ‘lies’ — paper
UK tells charities: No more cash if you don’t come clean on abuse
The former Oxfam director at the heart of a sex abuse scandal has told a newspaper in his native Belgium that he did not deny all the allegations made against him but complained of “many lies and exaggerations”.
In his first public response to last week’s accusations of sex parties during his time running the charity’s operations in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, Roland Van Hauwermeiren was quoted as also telling De Standaard reporters who called at his apartment on the Belgian coast that his family had cut him off.
“I really don’t feel like commenting ... What I see being published everywhere, is hard to bear. It hurts,” the 68-yearold former soldier said of allegations published in Britain’s Times newspaper of his involvement with prostitutes.
“But you should know that a lot of people, including in the international media, will blush with shame when they hear my version of the facts,” he told De Standaard. “It is not that I deny everything. There are things which have been described correctly. But there are many lies and exaggerations.
“Parties every week? Fancy villas? Women paid with money from the organisation?” Van Hauwermeiren told the paper that he would respond further through a lawyer in due course, adding: “It is especially tough that my family no longer want to see me.”
Reuters could not reach Van Hauwermeiren for comment.
Haitian Justice Minister Heidi Fortune told Reuters on Wednesday that he had asked Belgium for help in starting legal action against Van Hauwermeiren, without specifying which laws he had broken.
Britain will stop funding overseas aid agencies if they fail to learn the lessons from Oxfam’s sex abuse scandal, and the government will discuss possible prosecutions with law enforcement, the British development minister said on Wednesday. Penny Mordaunt, the Secretary of State for International Development, told anti-poverty groups that Britain would cut funding if they could not show they were clear of the kind of abuse that has rocked Oxfam.