to think Camila Batmanghelidjh must be lying when she says she has done nothing wrong in her spending of Kid's Company Charity Funding?

[LuluJakey1]

She is like Jimmy Saville in that what she has been doing has been under all of all our noses and we have refused to speak up about it or believe it.

It is not just the luvvies who have been up close and personal with her- involved with the charity and CB at a very close level, some even Trustees. It is also the employees and the parents of children, the children themselves, the volunteers. We are not talking about a hidden mis-use of funding. We are talking aout a whole culture of open waste and self-indulgence.

I know it is from The Daily Mail but it is actually an interview with het.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199527/My-heart-clear-says-Kids-Company-boss-Batmanghelidjh-admits-charity-paid-school-fees-employees-children-denies-wrongdoing.html

£5000 a month rent on an Art Deco House with private swimming pool - which houses a member of staff, and the swimming pool is used by CB but hot by any children- they are 'not allowed' (her words)

£40,000 chauffeur- now a specialist worker (according to CB). also has private school and therapist funding for his 2 children.

Staff( how many?) have their children sent to private schools because the job is stressful and it is part of a 'staff well-being package'

The Chauffeur's sister is also employed - now as a 'brilliant accountant', last summer as 'the woman who does my sewing' (mind you that would be a full-time job in itself, but it does imply the charity pays for those vile outfits much as I suspected)

25 young people given £769,000 a year funding - £31,000 a year each, to do nothing. They are CB's specially selected young people- many of whom have received funding for many years. She describes them as 'like a family, hanging round the house'. She deals with their funding herself.

Yet STILL CB complains staff should not have spoken up about any of this and implies those who have will suffer for it.

In my view this woman and her behaviours are corrupt, dishonest and immoral.

Are my views unreasonable? I feel this could be jus the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is yet to emerge and prosecutions will be very likely.

I think there should be a down- to the -bone, in-depth investigation of every aspect of the work of this charity and of CB. Not simply any concerns that have now been raised but a complete trawl of the spending, the practices and the behaviours of CB herself.

Boffin- I agree. If 4000 children had converged on one venue on Christmas Day, it would have almost certainly made the news, especially as a token heartwarming Christmas headline. I can't imagine a photo op like that being missed.

FatherReboolaConundrum - you're totally right. It is inexcusable. She needs to be hauled over the coals too.

And where did these 3000 (or sometimes 4000) kids sit, not to mention the hundreds of staff and volunteers needed to prepare and clear up. Has anyone identified themselves as working there during these Christmas lunches.

I've been watching a YouTube video from 2012 of Camila giving a talk. Claims include Iranian revolution happening when she was 14 (born 1963), teams of researchers at Cambridge, Oxford etc, all staff being paid the same (might explain the driver's pay)' 97% staff satisfaction, and my personal favourite. Standing in the toy queue at Harrods making every purchaser buy toys for her place2be. (Cant do links but Camila batmanghelh documentary should pick it up)

She is a good and charismatic speaker, but her main theme is her unimpeachable wonderfulness. Over all it is like being in a bath of cosy warm words, so it is quite hard to pick up the amount of sheer bollocks she is speaking.

I don't think anyone realises the true story here. Camila is being silenced because she raised the alarm about child protection problems in government, including politicians who were abusing children. The attack against her is too organised and there is no evidence to the sexual abuse allegations. They had so many students from all sorts of universities, social work courses, nursing and mental health doing work experience with them. If they were doing anything inappropriate any of them could have raised the alarm with their professional organisations or their universities. How come in 19 years we haven't heard anything and then suddenly after she starts a child protection campaign the government doesn't like her. Wise up, don't buy the rubbish you're being told, there's more to this than meets the eye!

I do see what you mean Patti but the posts on Mumsnet about this have been fascinatingly spot on.

Yeah, wake up sheeple, it's all a conspiracy!!!!!

Returning back to planet Earth, the end of the thread is nigh.

OK, maybe one of these many students, social workers, mental health workers could come on here and explain the discrepancies in Camila's narrative (video evidence, so no mis-quoting), and at the same time explain the feeding of the three thousand.

You would also need to prepare:
(snip)
300 pounds of Brussel sprouts

Is that reckoning that everyone likes sprouts ?

Camila is being silenced because she raised the alarm about child protection problems in government, including politicians who were abusing children.

Did she? When? Where? Whom?

BoffinMum They did not walk to the Christmas Dinner- they went there and back in taxis and parents went as well all paid for By KC.
One of the mums was on the news a couple of weeks ago talking about it-the one who said she thought CB was wonderful because social services would not buy the 'right' trainers for her son, the expensive ones but CB bought the 'right' ones and invited her family and her son to Christmas dinner and taxied them there and back.
She said she had refused to send her child to school in the trainers social services bought because he would have been bullied again. Only the 'right' trainers would stop the bullying. Social services had said that bullying was not really about trainers and would not buy the expensive brand. She said KC had then given her money for and help with her two daughters as well for 5 years now and they had all go to the Christmas Dinner and get presents.

You know, after googling I am nearly as fascinated by the woman who sold her house as I am with this whole fiasco

So - straight question - was CB pocketing the money? Or was there something even more sinister going on?

Hope you'll start another thread Lulu - I reckon there's much, much more to come.

So was that 4000 kids plus family?! Dinner for 12,000! Or were the families included in the 4000? Either way, that's a lot of turkey! Or perhaps they just had a couple of loaves and a few fish...

She doesn't need to 'pocket the money' her grandfather was a multi millionaire.

It's an ego thing imo.

I think it was maybe 300 'kids' turning up throughout the whole day for money / vouchers / presents and they counted in all the possible extended family members to make the 3000 figure? Kind of like the whole class thing they did with the contact stats.

New thread link

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2459689--part-2-to-think-that-Camila-Batmanghelidgh-must-be-lying-when-she-says-she-has-done-nothing-wrong-in-her-spending-of-Kids-Company-Funding

Boffin, I can't do links, but if you Google kids company Christmas dinner and read the evening standard link your questions about quantities will be answered. I hope those presents include pants!

Maybe it was a couple of MN chickens to feed the 4000

Or maybe it was 4000 in total over many years

Or maybe 4000 in total over many years and on many days other than 25th Dec

Or maybe its a random number plucked from the air to sound really impressive

Here's a Guardian article about Xmas dinner. It does sound lovely - though I would dispute (from the description of the families mentioned in the article as attending) that "everyone [there] has serious issues". John and Mary sound as if they have fallen on hard times, not that they and their children are in need of therapeutic intervention.

KC winter 2014 newsletter for when someone has some time to read it through. I have only had a quick glance, but was interested to see that Bristol City Council was paying the Urban Academy there for some of the KS3 and KS4 education provision, which perhaps suggests that Ofsted should have been involved in some way.

Pattisier - I'd be interested to read any evidence that CB was being silenced because she knows about child abuse perpetrated by politicians. I would assume that if she had any child protection concerns at all she would be working closely with the local safeguarding team at the council and the police. I thought her outright dismissal of the allegations of underage sexual activity happening on KC premises was appalling: the only proper response would have been to say that they would cooperate fully with any investigation.

And lots of interns and workers did leave KC because of concerns about how it was run and the things that happened there - notably the handing out of envelopes of cash. The initial premise of this thread was that there are parallels between CB and Jimmy Savile because even though people with direct knowledge of them knew that there were inappropriate things happening, no-one stepped in to intervene until too late.

The Christmas party sounds great. It does not excuse all the abuses of power and financial mismanagement but for some kids it may have been a whole lot better than staying at 'home'. Camila wanted to play Santa right throughout the year.

pattisier unfortunately all that has been reported is true. I left Kids Company because of how it was run, it was an awful dysfunctional environment, I've never experienced anything like it. I did flag up abuse and it was blocked. Some of us did try and speak up about money spent, inconsistent care of the young people, safeguarding etc nothing ever happened.
You cannot say there is no evidence of sexual abuse how would you know? The police are investigating this and have a lot of people to interview, they tell me it will take time.
I honestly didn't think everything would come out for a long long time as C is very scary. I'm really thankful this has happened and that more and more people are being interviewed by the press and police.

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