US charity school in Liberia in rape scandal storm

MONROVIA: An acclaimed US charity operating in Liberia has admitted to major failings after girls at a school set up to save them from a life of sexual exploitation were systematically raped. “We are profoundly, deeply sorry,” the charity More Than Me said on its website on Saturday after US investigative media said girls at a pioneering school in a slum had been repeatedly abused by the charity’s co-founder, Macintosh Johnson.

Johnson eventually died of AIDS and there are fears that he infected some of his victims - who were aged as young as 10 - with the HIV virus which causes AIDS, the investigative site ProPublica said in a lengthy investigative piece co-published with Time. “To all the girls who were raped by Macintosh Johnson in 2014 and before: we failed you,” More Than Me said. “We gave Johnson power that he exploited to abuse children. Those power dynamics broke staff ability to report the abuse to our leadership immediately.

“Our leadership should have recognized the signs earlier and we have and will continue to employ training and awareness programs so we do not miss this again.” The assaults took place at a school at West Point, a notorious slum in the capital Monrovia. It opened in 2013 to a blaze of publicity, becoming the first of 18 schools that More Than Me opened in the impoverished West African state to empower girls. — AFP