BBC charity sacked six over sex
A BBC charity that received tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money sacked six staff for sexual misconduct but failed to tell the Government, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
BBC Media Action, the corporation’s international development charity, fired six workers “for sexual harassment or for watching pornography on work computers”.
The charity has been given £70million by the Department for International Development over the past five years but admitted last night that it did not disclose any of the incidents to ministers.
BBC Media Action is one of Dfid’s 192 partner charities which were given until Monday this week to disclose to officials breaches of child protection.
Ministers are likely to give an update in the House of Commons today.
The charity, formerly known as the BBC World Service Trust, trains journalists and produces programmes that are broadcast in some of the world’s poorest
places. It is run separately from the BBC and is not funded by licence fee payers, but is chaired by Fran Unsworth, the BBC’S director of news.
In a statement on its website, BBC Media Action said: “We have reviewed all cases in the last ten years involving or potentially involving sexual misconduct. Six such cases have been identified over this period…in two of these, no grounds were found to take any disciplinary action.
“In the remaining four, formal disciplinary action was taken. None involved beneficiaries and we are not aware of any child protection issues.
“A total of six people were dismissed for sexual harassment or for watching pornography on work computers.”
Pauline Latham, a Tory member of the International Development select committee, said: “This is as shocking as anything else I have heard. You would have thought that after what the BBC has been through with Jimmy Savile they would have cleaned up their act, and been much more wary of what is happening in anything with their name on it.”
A DFID spokesman said: “DFID does not have a record of any sexual misconduct allegations relating to BBC Media Action on our Counter Fraud and Whistleblowing system.”
Other charities also published details of misconduct. Voluntary Service Overseas, which organises gap years for students every year, said three staff had been dismissed for “sexual harassment against other colleagues” in the past 12 months.
Philip Goodwin, VSO’S chief executive, said the charity had “acted swiftly to dismiss the offenders”.
Christian Aid also disclosed that it had “dismissed two members of staff following investigations for sexual misconduct and disciplined two further members of staff ”.
A BBC spokesman said last night: “BBC Media Action’s valuable work supports and trains journalists in countries with underdeveloped media, helping tackle problems such as Ebola and the Rohingya refugee crisis. The charity’s work also helps promote British values of free speech, impartiality and effective democratic scrutiny around the world.
“The charity is not funded by the licence fee and has its own safeguarding policy in place. As an independent charity BBC Media Action has a governance process in place where cases of this nature are reported to its Trustees after being investigated by Management, which is the appropriate action.”