Calais charity boss told helper: I’ll drag you out by the hair
THE founder of the Care4Calais charity has quit – and admitted she once threatened to drag a volunteer out by their hair and used pepper spray on a refugee.
Clare Moseley, 52, a former accountant, set up the charity – which provides food, shelter, healthcare and legal support to Channel migrants in camps – in 2015 and was its public face.
Documents leaked to Third Sector, a news website for the charitable sector, revealed that in May 2020 the charity received a formal complaint from a volunteer who said Mrs Moseley had ‘threaten[ed] me with physical violence’ while helping in a camp in Calais. Mrs Moseley shouted at the volunteer: ‘I will drag you out by your f****** hair.’
Earlier in 2020, the charity investigated complaints that Mrs Moseley illegally used pepper spray on a refugee during an incident while distributing goods in Brussels, the leak also revealed. Yesterday Mrs
Moseley told the Mail she resigned from Care4Calais on May 6, three days before she was contacted by Third Sector about the incidents.
‘I resigned because it looked like the new CEO wants to take the charity in a new direction. Rather than try to argue, it was better for me to walk away,’ she said.
In relation to the volunteer who was threatened, she said: ‘This followed a period of issues with this volunteer. I acknowledge that the comment, made in the heat of the moment, was entirely inappropriate and I have apologised.’
Of the pepper spray incident, Mrs Moseley said it was ‘in self defence, as other witnesses have acknowledged’.
In 2017, despite Care4Calais’s strict ‘ no sex with refugees’ policy, it emerged that Mrs Moseley had a year-long affair with Mohamed Bajjar, then 27. He had claimed to be a Syrian refugee, but was in
‘Threatened me with violence’
reality a Tunisian market-stall trader married to another British woman.
The Charity Commission has been investigating Care4Calais since August 2020 after highlighting concerns about its financial accounts and governance. Mrs Moseley was its chief executive, but moved to the role of chairman of trustees in April this year.