Oxfam sexual misconduct scandal involving aid workers in Haiti

[Pogue Mahone]

it would be worse if you were using charity money to fly to columbia and snort cocaine than, say, doing it in your own house with your own wages

How about if I fly to Columbia to work there as an aid worker and use some of my wages to buy a gram that I want to take on a night out at the end of the working week?

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Did they actually divert funds to pay prostitutes though or was that that they just used the rented property? There is a significant difference.
If they can be proven to have used underage ones then of course they should face justice. There is a lot of hearsay in both the story and this thread, so getting any charges to stick might be tricky.

Confusingly, the quote in the OP about the alleged brothel isn’t in the article linked in that same post.

 

[Silva]

Did they actually divert funds to pay prostitutes though or was that that they just used the rented property? There is a significant difference.
If they can be proven to have used underage ones then of course they should face justice. There is a lot of hearsay in both the story and this thread, so getting any charges to stick might be tricky.

the property was for charity use, not to be run a brothel, it's not only a slap in the face for people who donated their own money but it also breaks sex tourism laws that are meant to prevent UK citizens going abroad to buy sex illegally

There is growing evidence that child sex abuse is happening in aid so why are we not prosecuting?

We have sex tourism laws that apply overseas and those laws should be applied. As for Oxfam their actions were and are woeful.

How about if I fly to Columbia to work there as an aid worker and use some of my wages to buy a gram that I want to take on a night out at the end of the working week?

the executive used his allowances to pay for sex

 

[JPRouve]

How about if I fly to Columbia to work there as an aid worker and use some of my wages to buy a gram that I want to take on a night out at the end of the working week?

I'm under the impression that it's what the Oxfam scandal is about. Individuals organizing sex parties with their wages and assaulting co-workers. At least that's what I understood.

 

[Jippy]

Confusingly, the quote in the OP about the alleged brothel isn’t in the article linked in that same post.

Ah, yeah. I assume they have updated the original article several times and the original part of the story has been abridged.

Bit of a rookie error, if so though. If there is a significant development in a story, you create a new article and link back to the old one to try and squeeze a bit more traffic out of it.

 

[Silva]

I'm under the impression that it's what the Oxfam scandal is about. Individuals organizing sex parties with their wages and assaulting co-workers. At least that's what I understood.

they used their allowances

and the abuse is woefully underreported in favour of the more salacious brothel story, the same executive had been reported to authorities to have been groping young women/girls who were looking for aid in Chad as early as 2004

 

[JPRouve]

they used their allowances

and the abuse is woefully underreported in favour of the more salacious brothel story, the same executive has been reported to authorities to have been groping young women/girls who were looking for aid in Chad

What do you mean by their allowances? And I know about the rest, I'm not defending Oxfam, their actions are despicable.

 

[Denis79]

Especially given she's describing an atmosphere as much as anything, without having experienced it.

I don't use prostitutes personally, but each to their own, with the obvious exceptions.

People get really moral about prostitution, but happily wear sweatshop child labour made clothing and trainers, post on here with their iPhones manufactured in a Chinese factory with suicide nets or happily take drugs, the trade in which has resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths.

That is true and is just as wrong to consume when you know the damage it causes but that's a different discussion. No one sane would defend the use of child labour just to get cheaper shirts and the same should go for human exploitation in any form including prostitution.

 

[Silva]

What do you mean by their allowances? And I know about the rest, I'm not defending Oxfam, their actions are despicable.

they have a set amount of money they can claim from the charity while working, but it's meant to be used to buy food and drinks rather than sex

 

[Jippy]

the property was for charity use, not to be run a brothel, it's not only a slap in the face for people who donated their own money but it also breaks sex tourism laws that are meant to prevent UK citizens going abroad to buy sex illegally



the executive used his allowances to pay for sex

Playing devil's advocate, they'd have had the property regardless, so that in itself doesn't prove malfeasance with funds.
Surely when abroad you're subject to local law, eg we can fly to Amsterdam and bang away if it's legal.

It's distasteful sure, given the circumstances, but the exec can use his allowance to do what he wants, within the law.
Would you block the benefits of someone on the dole if they used a chunk to use hookers?

 

[JPRouve]

they have a set amount of money they can claim from the charity while working, but it's meant to be used to buy food and drinks rather than sex

You mean allegedly because I only saw one guy who called and said that he did it in Bosnia, the articles that we have don't mention allowances, as far as I can tell.

 

[JPRouve]

Playing devil's advocate, they'd have had the property regardless, so that in itself doesn't prove malfeasance with funds.
Surely when abroad you're subject to local law, eg we can fly to Amsterdam and bang away if it's legal.

It's distasteful sure, given the circumstances, but the exec can use his allowance to do what he wants, within the law.
Would you block the benefits of someone on the dole if they used a chunk to use hookers?

Yes.

 

[Silva]

Playing devil's advocate, they'd have had the property regardless, so that in itself doesn't prove malfeasance with funds.
Surely when abroad you're subject to local law, eg we can fly to Amsterdam and bang away if it's legal.

amsterdam has pseudo legalised prostitution and isn't a disaster area, whereas it's wholly illegal in haiti

It's distasteful sure, given the circumstances, but the exec can use his allowance to do what he wants, within the law.

it's not within the law, it breaks local law and is in breach of the contracts they've signed with multiple large donors and their laws

 

[Jippy]

That is true and is just as wrong to consume when you know the damage it causes but that's a different discussion. No one sane would defend the use of child labour just to get cheaper shirts and the same should go for human exploitation in any form including prostitution.

It is a different discussion, agreed, but our outrage slips away when we order our $1,000 iPhone made by workers driven to suicide.
The odd hierarchy of outrage.

 

[Silva]

You mean allegedly because I only saw one guy who called and said that he did it in Bosnia, the articles that we have don't mention allowances, as far as I can tell.

I've lost the link now but I read somewhere he had argued that his allowance was basically his wage, which it isn't

 

[JPRouve]

I've lost the link now but I read somewhere he had argued that his allowance was basically his wage, which it isn't

The Bosnia guy? Because it's a different story to this thread, I'm not even sure if he was working for Oxfam.

 

[Jippy]

amsterdam has pseudo legalised prostitution and isn't a disaster area, whereas it's wholly illegal in haiti


it's not within the law, it breaks local law and is in breach of the contracts they've signed with multiple large donors and their laws

It's a grubby story admittedly and Oxfam needs to act to restore faith in the charity. Still think the fact it's a disaster zone is an odd argument, albeit I can obviously see the risk of exploitation. You still have said risk in the richest countries though.

Not sure donors will have clauses about shagging hookers. Probably a broader one on bringing the organisation into disrepute.

 

[Jippy]

Yes.

Really? People leap on you if you suggest unemployed folk shouldn't spend their benefits on say booze and fags though.

 

[JPRouve]

Really? People leap on you if you suggest unemployed folk shouldn't spend their benefits on say booze and fags though.

To be fair, I'm conflicted. I don't like the idea of prostitution from the user POV, I don't understand it and fail to accept it.

 

[Silva]

Still think the fact it's a disaster zone is an odd argument

it's because the charity is acting in bad faith, opting to protect executives over locals

Not sure donors will have clauses about shagging hookers. Probably a broader one on bringing the organisation into disrepute.

their biggest donors are governments, and to get those grants you have to sign agreements saying you won't breach local and internal laws, or be in breach of morality clauses

 

[Denis79]

It is a different discussion, agreed, but our outrage slips away when we order our $1,000 iPhone made by workers driven to suicide.
The odd hierarchy of outrage.

I completely agree with you on everything you say, my discussion with him was because he defended the use of prostitutes as if they were a commodity and not human beings, even called the people reacting to the Oxfam scandal as the moral police. I simply completely and utterly disagree with his view on the matter.

 

[Jippy]

To be fair, I'm conflicted. I don't like the idea of prostitution from the user POV, I don't understand it and fail to accept it.

It seems a bit cold and clinical for my taste. I see it being an odd, kind of empty, experience.

it's because the charity is acting in bad faith, opting to protect executives over locals


their biggest donors are governments, and to get those grants you have to sign agreements saying you won't breach local and internal laws, or be in breach of morality clauses

I can understand why they chose to try and cover it up, while obviously not condoning it.

I've been to Haiti years ago and the poverty is grim. Saw a voodoo show.

They'll get their comeuppance now, not that it really helps the women involved.

 

[Jippy]

I completely agree with you on everything you say, my discussion with him was because he defended the use of prostitutes as if they were a commodity and not human beings, even called the people reacting to the Oxfam scandal as the moral police. I simply completely and utterly disagree with his view on the matter.

Fair enough and I'm not saying we shouldn't care about this cos we accept other forms of abuse.
Adex's views, given his background, are interesting. Maybe some are just resigned to this happening, given the darker aspects of human nature?

 

[Pogue Mahone]

the executive used his allowances to pay for sex

So? My analogy holds. What if they used their allowances to buy drugs? Would you have a problem with that too?

Whatever they spend their allowances on it goes back into the local economy, which is a good thing. What definitely isn’t happening is what you implied above. That money which should be helping with the aid effort gets diverted to pay for hookers instead.

 

[Silva]

So? My analogy holds. What if they used their allowances to buy drugs? Would you have a problem with that too?

Whatever they spend their allowances on it goes back into the local economy, which is a good thing. What definitely isn’t happening is what you implied above. That money which should be helping with the aid effort gets diverted to pay for hookers instead.

yeah, people give money to charities so it gets to people who need it, not so some overpaid executive can get his dick wet or take drugs, that money would also go into the local economy if he just handed it to a random local for nothing in return

 

[Denis79]

Fair enough and I'm not saying we shouldn't care about this cos we accept other forms of abuse.
Adex's views, given his background, are interesting. Maybe some are just resigned to this happening, given the darker aspects of human nature?

I know I'm very sensitive when it comes to matters like this and I can overreact, even got a warning in a similar thread because I let my feelings boil over. Before I changed to my current job I worked for just under 10 years in the Serbian police-force. 4 of those 10 years as a border police at the Romanian at Vrsac border. Serbia was then the gateway to Europe for drugs, guns and the sex-trade. The border I worked at was the way in to the EU.

We found girls from Africa in containers transported by trucks sitting in their own shit and piss, with almost no water in a 40C heatwave. One of the girls was dead, later we found out she was 15 years old, others were older but all were sold between traders and forced in to prostitition, one a man tried to smuggle a 13 year old Albanian girl over the border in a duffle-bag in his trunk. She had already been sold to men a couple of times before we saved her. I've seen what this "industry" is, with my own eyes so I know I'm biased and can say things I regret for that I apologize but I simply can't stand nor respect people with that view.

 

[Bury Red]

sex in war and disaster zones isn’t surprising. I’ve seen a lot of it in other disasters since; there have been books written about it. There’s a basic psychology to it, something about a primal need for comfort and trauma bonding. But what I found disturbing in Haiti was the profound disconnect between the overtly sexualised atmosphere in the aid and journalistic community and the visceral horror of the catastrophe surrounding us.

I saw the international aid community do a lot of good in Haiti. It also brought cholera to an already devastated country. Now it appears that aid workers also took the opportunity to buy underage sex cheaply. Trauma bonding I can understand – callous exploitation I cannot.

The quote Silva picked up from somewhere says an awful lot about this for me, I'd not even heard the term "trauma bonding" before but instantly knew what they were talking about. The 2 weeks I spent working in a Romanian orphanage with a small charity in my mid 20s just after the fall of Ceaucescu and my longer involvement with the general effort saw exactly the sort of mess a lot of aid workers get themselves into whilst overseas.

We were a mostly male crew with a lot of firemen working there on their 2 weeks annual leave and there were 3 or 4 young British nurses there who did longer stints of 6 weeks or more as the various teams came in and out. The physical building work etc was hard but it was the sight of the desperate poverty, the incessant wails of the kids in the orphanage and the sight of babies dying with things that could be treated easily in the UK that hurt and in the days before mobile phones were common and where there would have been no signal anyway calling the missus and sending the kids your love was not an option to ease the deep crushing pain felt even by people who see physical suffering as part of their normal 9 to 5.

Refuge was sought in alcohol but there were numerous blokes had affairs with the nurses as well as some of the locals who saw us as a novelty, perhaps a chance of extra money or possibly even a ticket out of their impoverished and forgotten town. A fair few marriages back in the UK did fall apart over things that went on out there and one bloke was banned from traveling out again, hounded from his job and took a fair kicking when it became clear that he had befriended a couple of 15 year olds and was still sending them money and planning holidays over there.

I was single at the time and had a pair of 21 year olds following me around every evening, both way out of my league, one a badly bleached young Courtney Love look alike without the heroin addiction and fluent in French so we could genuinely talk and her mate a drop dead gorgeous Mila Kunis lookalike. Only the lack of anywhere to take them other than the camp bed in the dorm I shared with 8 firemen and twin pangs of guilt that I was unlikely to be the white knight to whisk them away from their lives and didn't want to see mates fall out over me stopped me taking things beyond PG. The pair of them had arranged a camping trip for the 3 of us which fortunately/unfortunately fell the day after we headed home as I'm pretty sure I couldn't have held out any longer.

What has gone on in Haiti however, particularly with the regional head sounds like there are people whose entire existence within the aid sector is fuelled by the opportunities it affords them to exploit and abuse the vulnerable. The difficulty will be in separating those who are there genuinely and find themselves "trauma bonding" from those seeking to exploit the vulnerable, I'd hazard that some of the volunteers who have complained of harassment might instead be regretting the consequences of a bond they were part of at the time.

 

[adexkola]

Fair enough and I'm not saying we shouldn't care about this cos we accept other forms of abuse.
Adex's views, given his background, are interesting. Maybe some are just resigned to this happening, given the darker aspects of human nature?

To clarify what I meant (because it seems denis77 is misinterpreting what I'm saying)...

Prostitutes are not commodities. They're human beings, and in all interactions with them, should be treated as such, with respect. However, the sexual activity they offer in exchange for money is, while intangible, a commodity, like other intangible goods. I see no reason why this kind of act is treated with different gloves.

I'm resigned to the fact that human beings love sex, and some will go out of their way to pay for it. In response, a supply will try and fulfill that demand. I care about people being exploited and abused in the pursuit of money. I don't use that concern to flip the script on every john out there. Because as you've outlined (while avoiding the whataboutism tag, good job), that standard is failed by almost every consumer in developed society.

The ethics of vices is weird. Personally, I’d feel far more comfortable with taking drugs than prostitution because your interaction with the exploited is relatively indirect. Does this make it a more ethical hobby? Or just something it’s a lot easier to be in denial about?

The second. Hence a hippie drug user getting all trippy with me in this thread.

 

[Silva]

"Dame Barbara Stocking, who was the head of Oxfam in 2011, said Oxfam often worked in very difficult locations "where the rule of law isn't going on".

sociopathic, burn the whole thing down

 

[Silva]

“I saw the then-Oxfam director, Dame Barbara Stocking, mentioned that one of the reasons that those crimes were not reported was because they believed nothing would have been done about it, which is really an insult to my country because you are working in a place and country which is not a forest,” he added.

“Even though there was a chaotic situation after the earthquake...the state of Haiti did not cease to exist. Our police was still there.

“How can you not report those crimes because you believe nothing would be done. It is a cover up. We need to differentiate it, it is not an attempt. It was a cover up. Because the top executives here in London were informed.”

Meanwhile, amid new claims that reports of sexual abuse in charity shops were not acted upon in the UK, a poll by Sky has found that 46 percent of the public think that Oxfam should have their state funding withdrawn.

It comes as as the charity's former head of safeguarding, Helen Evans, accused her bosses of ignoring her evidence and her pleas for more resources, forcing her to quit in despair.

Ms Evans said that staff had been accused of rape and that sexual abuse by shop managers in UK stores against young volunteers was covered up.

Ten per cent of staff in some countries had been sexually assaulted by colleagues or witnessed abuse, she added.

Her allegations emerged just hours after Penny Lawrence, the charity's deputy chief executive, quit over the scandal and the Government announced that it would be launching a unit to investigate sex abuse in the aid sector.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ndemns-oxfam-scandal-serious-violation-human/

more on the nature of rampant sexual abuse and subsequent cover ups at the charity, burn the whole thing down

 

[Silva]

In February 2018, an investigation by the Times reported that, during Stocking's tenure, Oxfam allowed three men to resign and sacked four others for "gross misconduct" after an inquiry concerning sexual exploitation, the downloading of pornography, bullying, and intimidation by Oxfam's staff in Haiti.[11] The Times stated that an internal, confidential report was produced by Oxfam in 2011. It found that there had been “a culture of impunity” among some staff in Haiti and concluded that "it cannot be ruled out that any of the prostitutes were under-aged."[11] Among the staff who were permitted by Oxfam's leadership to resign without further actions taken against them was the charity's country director, Roland van Hauwermeiren. According to Oxfam's internal report, van Hauwermeiren admitted using prostitutes at a villa whose rent was paid with Oxfam funds means for charity. Stocking, Oxfam's CEO at the time, offered Hauwermeiren “a phased and dignified exit” invoking her concern that sacking him risked “potentially serious implications for the charity’s work and reputation."

wikipedia summary of the original Times article, which is behind a paywall

burn the whole thing down

 

[Jippy]

I know I'm very sensitive when it comes to matters like this and I can overreact, even got a warning in a similar thread because I let my feelings boil over. Before I changed to my current job I worked for just under 10 years in the Serbian police-force. 4 of those 10 years as a border police at the Romanian at Vrsac border. Serbia was then the gateway to Europe for drugs, guns and the sex-trade. The border I worked at was the way in to the EU.

We found girls from Africa in containers transported by trucks sitting in their own shit and piss, with almost no water in a 40C heatwave. One of the girls was dead, later we found out she was 15 years old, others were older but all were sold between traders and forced in to prostitition, one a man tried to smuggle a 13 year old Albanian girl over the border in a duffle-bag in his trunk. She had already been sold to men a couple of times before we saved her. I've seen what this "industry" is, with my own eyes so I know I'm biased and can say things I regret for that I apologize but I simply can't stand nor respect people with that view.

No need to apologise, that sounds absolutely horrific. I'd imagine those are images that you don't forget easily too.

Today was weird. We went to Stonetown, the capital of Zanzibar, and along the way we saw houses made of cow dung with straw rooves. The level of poverty here is grim and no doubt prostitution and human trafficking is rife- it used to be the slave trade capital of the empire.

The quote Silva picked up from somewhere says an awful lot about this for me, I'd not even heard the term "trauma bonding" before but instantly knew what they were talking about. The 2 weeks I spent working in a Romanian orphanage with a small charity in my mid 20s just after the fall of Ceaucescu and my longer involvement with the general effort saw exactly the sort of mess a lot of aid workers get themselves into whilst overseas.

We were a mostly male crew with a lot of firemen working there on their 2 weeks annual leave and there were 3 or 4 young British nurses there who did longer stints of 6 weeks or more as the various teams came in and out. The physical building work etc was hard but it was the sight of the desperate poverty, the incessant wails of the kids in the orphanage and the sight of babies dying with things that could be treated easily in the UK that hurt and in the days before mobile phones were common and where there would have been no signal anyway calling the missus and sending the kids your love was not an option to ease the deep crushing pain felt even by people who see physical suffering as part of their normal 9 to 5.

Refuge was sought in alcohol but there were numerous blokes had affairs with the nurses as well as some of the locals who saw us as a novelty, perhaps a chance of extra money or possibly even a ticket out of their impoverished and forgotten town. A fair few marriages back in the UK did fall apart over things that went on out there and one bloke was banned from traveling out again, hounded from his job and took a fair kicking when it became clear that he had befriended a couple of 15 year olds and was still sending them money and planning holidays over there.

I was single at the time and had a pair of 21 year olds following me around every evening, both way out of my league, one a badly bleached young Courtney Love look alike without the heroin addiction and fluent in French so we could genuinely talk and her mate a drop dead gorgeous Mila Kunis lookalike. Only the lack of anywhere to take them other than the camp bed in the dorm I shared with 8 firemen and twin pangs of guilt that I was unlikely to be the white knight to whisk them away from their lives and didn't want to see mates fall out over me stopped me taking things beyond PG. The pair of them had arranged a camping trip for the 3 of us which fortunately/unfortunately fell the day after we headed home as I'm pretty sure I couldn't have held out any longer.

What has gone on in Haiti however, particularly with the regional head sounds like there are people whose entire existence within the aid sector is fuelled by the opportunities it affords them to exploit and abuse the vulnerable. The difficulty will be in separating those who are there genuinely and find themselves "trauma bonding" from those seeking to exploit the vulnerable, I'd hazard that some of the volunteers who have complained of harassment might instead be regretting the consequences of a bond they were part of at the time.

Interesting counterpoint. People under duress will obviously behave differently in extreme environments. Good on you for volunteering out there though. I remember the harrowing news footage from orphanages after Ceaucescu's fall.

 

[Jippy]

To clarify what I meant (because it seems denis77 is misinterpreting what I'm saying)...

Prostitutes are not commodities. They're human beings, and in all interactions with them, should be treated as such, with respect. However, the sexual activity they offer in exchange for money is, while intangible, a commodity, like other intangible goods. I see no reason why this kind of act is treated with different gloves.

I'm resigned to the fact that human beings love sex, and some will go out of their way to pay for it. In response, a supply will try and fulfill that demand. I care about people being exploited and abused in the pursuit of money. I don't use that concern to flip the script on every john out there. Because as you've outlined (while avoiding the whataboutism tag, good job), that standard is failed by almost every consumer in developed society.



The second. Hence a hippie drug user getting all trippy with me in this thread.

I guess the intimacy of the act is the taboo thing, as opposed to someone slipping you a gramme under the table in a pub?

 

[jackofalltrades]

We should bear in mind that there are lots of Oxfam volunteers out there in really stressful situations who don't do any of the things highlighted in this report. We can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Also it seems to be the men who are doing the nasty stuff, not the women, who must make up a significant part of the organisation. The woman who resigned, Penny Lawrence, was certainly guilty of negligence but I'd say it was something on a different scale to what some of the others were doing.

 

[adexkola]

I guess the intimacy of the act is the taboo thing, as opposed to someone slipping you a gramme under the table in a pub?

Probably. Very hypocritical, regardless.

 

[Silva]

We should bear in mind that there are lots of Oxfam volunteers out there in really stressful situations who don't do any of the things highlighted in this report. We can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Also it seems to be the men who are doing the nasty stuff, not the women, who must make up a significant part of the organisation. The woman who resigned, Penny Lawrence, was certainly guilty of negligence but I'd say it was something on a different scale to what some of the others were doing.

the female CEO covered it up and allowed her executive friend to resign and work at another NGO where he did the same thing

 

[Silva]

We should bear in mind that there are lots of Oxfam volunteers out there in really stressful situations who don't do any of the things highlighted in this report. We can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Also it seems to be the men who are doing the nasty stuff, not the women, who must make up a significant part of the organisation. The woman who resigned, Penny Lawrence, was certainly guilty of negligence but I'd say it was something on a different scale to what some of the others were doing.

the corporate structure of oxfam is rotten to the core, burn it down and let the rest of the staff go work for a less rapey organisation

if there are zero consequences to these actions it is a green light for it to continue

 

[Mozza]

I am not sure how it's a cover up when people have been fired for these actions

 

[Silva]

I am not sure how it's a cover up when people have been fired for these actions

they did not disclose the information to the haitian government, uk government, european commission or any other governments that give them money and to whom they have to report these things

they also allowed the main executive at the center of it all to quietly resign and go work for another NGO where he did the same thing

the only people who suffered consequences were low level employees, and their actions were not disclosed either

 

[Silva]

I am not sure how it's a cover up when people have been fired for these actions

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ndemns-oxfam-scandal-serious-violation-human/

more on the nature of rampant sexual abuse and subsequent cover ups at the charity, burn the whole thing down

also, refer to that post for more details of the cover up