Charity workers raping homeless children

MPS told that girls as young as 14 are routinely abused by aid employees who film sessions on their phones

CHARITY workers raped homeless children while serving in stricken countries, MPS have been told.

Corinna Csaky, a development consultant who previously worked for Save the Children, revealed girls as young as 14 were being abused by groups of men at peacekeeping camps, with some filming them on their mobile phones.

The children are often “on the edge of society”, said Ms Csaky, whose research has suggested significant levels of abuse of boys and girls by aid workers and peacekeepers occurred in emergencies. “These children are often alone,” she said. “They are separated from their families. They are living in extreme poverty.

“Without the protection and support from families, many are using transaction sex just to survive.”

Ms Csaky investigated the sexual exploitation and abuse of children by humanitarian staff and peacekeepers in 2008, interviewing victims from Haiti, South Sudan and the Ivory Coast.

Speaking to the Commons international development committee, she shared testimonies from victims with MPS as part of an inquiry into sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector.

Testimony from victims included that of 14-year-old boy, who said: “We are all working at the peacekeeping camp. We go there to earn money to help support our families. Sometimes they ask us to find girls, especially our age. Often between eight and 10 men will share two or three girls. They also use their mobile phones to film the girls.”

The majority of abuse is unreported, MPS heard. “Children and communities are scared of retaliation,” Ms Csaky said. “Some children are scared they might be killed by the abuser. People are also fearful of the stigma associated with this abuse.

“In South Sudan, some girls fear speaking out because they may be forced to marry their abuser.”

Kevin Watkins, the chief executive of Save the Children, told MPS that the organisation and other charities had “under-invested” in child safeguarding.

Of the 341 people interviewed by Ms Csaky, only “a handful” could recall an incident being reported. She gave an example of a rare reported case: “One of those was in South Sudan and the response from the local government was to go to the parents of the victim [who had died] and they said, do not take any action because we are worried the humanitarian assistance will go. The advice was, do not speak out.”

She said the problem was with both local staff as well as workers from abroad: “Abusers are both foreign and national staff. Some come from overseas but many more are local people employed by international humanitarian organisations. It is certainly not the case of a few white Western men coming in an abusing children.”

Ms Csaky called on the Government to invest in children’s rights and local child protection structures.