Children’s charity to face formal inquiry

ONE of world’s most famous children’s charities is being formally investigated over whether it covered up allegations of misconduct and harassment against senior executives.

The Charity Commission announced last night that it was opening a statutory inquiry into Save the Children over its handling of the allegations between 2012 and 2015. The Commission launched a similar inquiry into how Oxfam handled allegations that some of its workers had paid for prostitutes in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010.

Save the Children admitted in February that Justin Forsyth, its former chief executive, had made “unsuitable and thoughtless” comments to women in 2011 and 2015. Mr Forsyth left the charity and joined Unicef as its deputy executive director in early 2016. But he left that post a few days later, saying he did not want coverage of his past to “damage” the charity.

Brendan Cox, a friend of Mr Forsyth and a former chief strategist at Save the Children, left the charity in 2015 after separate allegations of sexual misconduct. Mr Cox, the widower of Jo Cox, the MP who was murdered in 2016, admitted at the weekend that he had caused “hurt and offence”.

The Charity Commission said it was ordering the inquiry after concerns over “whether the charity adequately reported the full extent and nature of allegations to the Commission in 201516”. The regulator had also “received an anonymous complaint about the charity’s response to further allegations against senior staff members”.

Michelle Russell, the Commission’s investigations and enforcement director, said: “Opening a formal investigation does not necessarily mean that we have concluded that there has been wrongdoing by the trustees of the Save the Children Fund.

“However, we do have questions that must be answered, and we need to hold the charity formally accountable for providing them in a clear and timely manner.”

Peter Bennett-jones, the chairman of Save the Children UK, said: “If mistakes were made they will be fully acknowledged and properly addressed.”