Aid worker left earlier charity job after sex allegations
THE man at the centre of the Oxfam sex scandal left an earlier charity job after it was claimed he was involved in sex parties with young women in Liberia.
Roland van Hauwermeiren, 68, had been working in the West African country when a colleague became so alarmed by his behaviour that she reported him to her superiors.
Amira Malik Miller, a former aid worker, claims she alerted her bosses at the British medical emergency relief charity Merlin after serving with van Hauwermeiren there in 2004.
She said he agreed to resign after an investigation found senior managers had been using local sex workers.
He was recruited by Oxfam to work on a project some two years later in Chad, and last month became embroiled in claims he had sex with vulnerable young women while working for Oxfam in Haiti in 2011, the year after an earthquake devastated the country.
Ms Miller, who now works as a Swedish civil servant, said she was astonished he had managed to get to work for another charity. “Oh my God, he’s been doing this for 14 years,” she told IRIN, a website covering humanitarian news. “Someone should have checked properly.”
She alerted both Merlin and the Swedish government’s aid department, which went on to give nearly £540,000 towards Oxfam’s Chad mission, which van Hauwermeiren ran.
A source who worked for Merlin told IRIN that an investigation found four middle-aged charity managers were engaged in paying for sex in Liberia. Another source said van Hauwermeiren and his management team had acted as if their behaviour was “normal”.
It is understood that although van Hauwermeiren denied all the allegations against him, he agreed to resign.
Van Hauwermeiren worked as country director for Haiti in 2011 for Oxfam and was alleged to have used prostitutes at the charity’s rented villa.
After an investigation he was allowed to quit. Two other staff resigned and four were sacked. Van Hauwermeiren went on to work in Bangladesh for Action Against Hunger. He was unavailable for comment last night.
Ms Miller complained to IRIN that there was a “system failure” that meant vulnerable women were not protected.
However, she added that her experience of “whistle-blowing” had not been negative and she was happy with the way the charity dealt with her complaint and punished those she claimed had done wrong.