When it comes to an example of man’s inhumanity to man, it would be hard to beat the aid worker sent to a disaster zone who chooses to take his pleasures amid the pain. The Oxfam scandal, which gets worse by the day, makes any decent person feel sick. Witnesses talk of a luxury apartment complex with swimming pool in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, rented by the charity for £1,200 (Dh6,171) a month, where staff were apparently filmed “partying with prostitutes” at repulsive “young meat barbecues”.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti on Jan 12, 2010, was so devastating that up to 220,000 people lost their lives. An already poverty-stricken nation was on its knees. The morgues of Port-au-Prince were overwhelmed with tens of thousands of bodies, which had to be buried in mass graves. As far as I’m concerned, any desperate woman recruited for sex in the midst of that turmoil is not a “prostitute”. Perhaps hoping to get food or medicine for her family, she is a victim of cruel and cynical exploitation.
Aid agency vultures piled into Haiti for photo opportunities. Billions were donated, but little appears to have reached those most in need. Roland van Hauwermeiren, 68, who was Oxfam’s director there, gave an interview in which he lamented, “Too many donors from rich countries have pursued their own aid priorities”. It’s like the Scoutmaster situation writ large. Are bad men attracted to jobs where they can exploit vulnerable people? Or are well-meaning people corrupted by the power they wield when they work with the powerless? There is no easy answer to a question that essentially is about the dark currents in human nature. What we can say for certain is that Oxfam chose to cover up the disgusting, indeed, criminal behaviour in Catholic Haiti, where prostitution is illegal. Van Hauwermeiren and six other men left the charity after an investigation into using prostitutes, downloading “pornographic and illegal material”, bullying and intimidation.
Unconscionably, Oxfam then failed to warn other agencies about these rotten apples. Van Hauwermeiren should have been publicly shamed, if not handed over to the police. Instead, the Belgian pervert was allowed “a phased and dignified exit” and went on to pursue his aid priorities with Action Against Hunger. (The French charity was told nothing about his unethical conduct and received “positive” personal references from Oxfam colleagues.) According to a confidential internal report in 2011, sacking Van Hauwermeiren might have had “potentially serious implications” for Oxfam’s reputation and the ability to carry out relief work.
This was a double abuse. It betrayed those who had already been exploited while jeopardising others in the future. It was also a complete abdication of moral responsibility by a Left-leaning body that delights in delivering finger-wagging lectures to the rest of us flawed mortals. Oxfam fibbed. It told the Charity Commission just enough about sackings for “misconduct” to be able to claim it had reported the incidents without revealing anything too damning. That would be infamous, sly behaviour from a corrupt multinational, never mind a charity that receives £32 million annually from the British government and pounds 199 million from the public in the form of donations, legacies and sales in its shops.
There are obvious comparisons to be made here with the churches that played a poisonous game of Pass the Priest, transferring crooked clergy from one parish to the next to spare themselves embarrassment. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse will start hearings soon to examine the Church of England’s failure to protect vulnerable people. The Bishop of Bath and Wells warned members of the General Synod over the weekend that they would feel “a deep sense of shame”.
I wouldn’t count on it. One of the most flabbergasting aspects of such scandals is the ability of self-righteous groups to go on claiming they were acting for the greater good when what they were actually doing is covering their own bare backsides.
Which one of us who has donated to Oxfam will not now share the dismay of the fire-breathing Mildred (Oscar-nominated Frances McDormand) in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as she seeks justice from a complacent system for her raped and murdered daughter? When the town priest calls round, Mildred says she won’t listen to the representative of a church complicit in acts of sexual abuse against children. “You joined the gang, man,” Mildred thunders.
So did Oxfam and its senior managers when they decided to put the well-being of their organisation above honesty to the British people who unwittingly paid for those grotesque young meat barbecues. Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, has said that, without firm evidence of “moral leadership”, government funding to Oxfam would have to be cut. The resignation of deputy chief executive Penny Lawrence hardly suffices. Nor does the promise of more inquiries, doubtless chaired by the same self? regarding circle of the sanctimonia.
The entire stinking international charitable sector is crying out for root-and-branch reform. As is Britain’s commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product on foreign aid that, in too many cases, allows arrogant, unaccountable aid barons to splash precious money on political lobbying and fatuous reports, like the recent one from Oxfam, which claimed, against all the evidence I’ve seen, that capitalism had kept the Third World in poverty.
The government should withhold cash to Oxfam until the full extent of its misdemeanours is known. Public anger demands nothing less. Let us see a politically balanced management team and many more women out in the field. (They are less likely to try to have sex with “beneficiaries”.) A few bad apples is not the problem. A crime against humanity committed by hypocritical humanitarians is.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2018
Allison Pearson is a noted author and columnist.
