The whistle-blower who exposed the sex abuse scandal at Oxfam has told how she “begged” senior staff to act after learning that vulnerable teenage volunteers were working alongside unvetted adults in the charity’s UK high-street shops.
A total of 123 alleged incidents of sexual harassment have been investigated in Oxfam shops over a nine-year period, according to the Daily Mail.
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“There was one of a woman being coerced to have sex in a humanitarian response by another aid worker, another case where a woman had been coerced in exchange for aid and another one where it had come to our attention where a member of staff had been struck off for sexual abuse and hadn’t disclosed that, and we were then concerned about what he might be doing, and that was three allegations in one day,” Evans wrote.
An investigation by the Charity Commission is due to begin today.
Oxfam faces a battle to “rebuild the public trust” following the scandal, chief executive Mark Goldring says.
The charity’s deputy CEO Penny Lawrence resigned yesterday, saying she took full responsibility for failings overseas during her watch.