"It's not as if we murdered babies in their cots" - Oxfam

[JaimesGoldenHand]

Apparently the Oxfam CEO thinks the reaction to the Aid Worker rape and use of prostitutes and the subsequent apparent cover-up has been disproportionate. It happens in all aid agencies so why the fuss.

I was in two minds as to whether to boycott Oxfam but this has decided me. I feel physically sick.

Donations made in good faith have been used to pay for the sexual abuse of children.

And when people point out that this is not OK, they are accused of an 'anti aid agenda'

Are we being told that child sexual abuse is an inevitable side effect of aid? And that we should accept this?

Maybe he thinks that when it comes to aid work:

men need to be helped to rebuild, and with food and stuff
women and girls well we all know what they're like, a good dicking is what they need to sort them out

or maybe his people were paying for sex with men as well? If that came out, that they had paid for sex with men and possibly boys in haiti, would he be so cavalier, so utterly unable to understand why this would make anyone upset & angry?

"Are we being told that child sexual abuse is an inevitable side effect of aid? And that we should accept this?"

Certainly, this has been the way it is for a long time and the agencies involved seem to have little interest in addressing this.

Thing is if bunsiness men go abroad and rape children that is bad enough
These men are there to help though, using our donations.

Oxfam can get fucked. And all the others involved in this which I am willing to bet is most of them.

They also have an in. The power they have cannot be overstated. They have access to food, shelter, money, they are there with big signs saying "charity", they are there to help, they are supposed to be nice, good, kind. They are not supposed to offer the material goods they have which are supposed to be distributed in return for sex - but this happens a lot in various parts of the world.

Upabitlate I guess having power over vulnerable people is what attracts abusive people to these roles.

None of this is new. This CNN report is 10 years old- although it is Save the Children, not Oxfam.

edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/27/charity.aidworkers/index.html

Didn't we discuss 2/3 years ago a report / article defending the rights of overseas aid workers to have sex with the locals?

I can't see how he will stay after this. If it wasn't despicable enough before, this has to add insult to injury. He cannot come back.

Why take out a full page 'We are so sorry' ad if you then make those disgusting comments to show your true colours? It reveals the disengenious nature.

Those dozens of press officers must want to leave in droves now.

I was reading how the Eavis family is sticking by Oxfam though.

I think it's ridiculous how shocked people are by this.

Feminists have been saying for soo incredibly long that this is how men think. And we're branded as man-haters. Why is this a surprise?? This is how men behave, all the time.

What woman hasn't worked with or known a man who has some sort of power and who acts like a total arsehole, then when called on it has a pathetic wounded puppy act where he makes himself out to be the victim? Fuck sake, when we talk about the millions of women raped every year, how many men (and often women too) are lining up to say 'not all men' and to claim that women are so horrible giving men such hurty feelings? This is just a logical extension of that attitude - men believe that as long as they themselves are not 'murdering babies in cots' they have no responsibility whatsoever for what happens to women, even women they are being paid enormous amounts of money to help and protect. Not their problem.

As an aside, it's worth stopping and thinking about the concept of charity for a moment and how fucked up it is. Charity is necessary in a world where there is plenty for everyone but some people are routinely denied what they need. For charities to exist, inequality must exist, the two go hand in hand. And the people who work for charities love the sense of power they have over their subordinates beneficiaries. So many of them are narcissists who like the idea of being heroes but when it comes down to it are only out to make themselves feel good. Like this ridiculous waste of skin CEO fuckwit.

Let me reassure you also that there will be many many men out there that totally agree with this cockwipe. So many men think that women's suffering is just a natural consequence of the world and that rape is just one of those things. They will genuinely believe that because some people benefited from Oxfam's involvement in Haiti, the women who were raped are essentially irrelevant - we can't lose sleep over such an insignificant thing can we? Any woman out there who doubts the need for feminism should have her doubts firmly extinguished by this blatant show of misogyny from one of the 'good guys.'

It is also notable that the one person to resign over this is the deputy chief executive - a woman.

“I also think the Oxfam Chairman has a point. A lot of this is being driven by an anti aid agenda. Unfortunately the press won’t stop now until a lot of these charities are driven into the ground. Who benefits then?”

I, too, think the timing and frenzy of all this is highly suspect.
This comment of the CEO’s has been taken out of context and was indeed aimed at the media’s coverage.

It was just a few weeks ago that the Government was talking about cutting back foreign aid to pay for Brexit and the NHS. Suddenly, there are scandals with the foreign aid organisations. Surprise, surprise!

www.express.co.uk/news/politics/905201/foreign-aid-uk-india-how-much-Penny-Mordaunt

You can't be serious Tanith. How on earth do you figure his comment has been taken out of context?? Do you agree with him that we should all just calm down because the rape of women and children isn't something to get upset about??

I am an Oxfam volunteer. I will still be an Oxfam volunteer next week because the 0.01% of people who are sexual predators shouldn't be allowed to destroy the good work of the 99.9%.

I don't believe there was a cover-up. The people involved were sacked or resigned. Legally, Oxfam could not pass on details of alleged wrongdoing to other agencies. There is NO evidence one way or the other about the age of the women involved - lots of speculation that they were underage but nobody knows. It was not taken to the police at the time because Haiti did not have a functioning police force. UK police could not get involved as it was non-UK citizens involved in something which happened outside the UK. Oxfam did NOT give them references - one French charity received a statement from Oxfam saying along the lines of "Mr X was employed by us from Y date to Z date" - that's a statement of fact, not a reference. The sacked people gave each other references, or gave personal references as ex-colleagues which is different. In many areas of the world when sexual assault is reported it's the woman who gets questioned and hauled into the police station, not the man.

Nobody within Oxfam is making excuses for what these men did as even if it wasn't rape, it was abuse of power. The charity has strong safeguarding and whistle blowing policies - there's a helpline poster in all stores with the regional HR manager's contact details for anyone to raise issues with, in confidience.

I didn't read Mark Goldring's interview but there does seem to be a sector of the media piling in to give all charities a good kicking. The bosses earn too much, none of the money goes to good causes, the shops are overpriced, the organisations are too political / not political enough, Oxfam is anti-Israeli, why are we funding developing countries anyway, charity begins and home, pigs with their snouts in the trough. All the same cliches which are always trotted out by people who don't give to charity and think that big charities shouldn't have any overheads whatsoever and should pay their CHief Exec minimum wage. And also failing to recognise that no organisation can EVER guarantee that there will be no sexual predators working for them as that's impossible. All they can do is to have robust policies to deal with it when it's reported.

Oxfam does hugely valuable work educating women and girls all over the world and improving basic conditions of sanitation and health. You are kidding yourselves if you think Oxfam is somehow intrinsically "worse" than any of the other big aid charities. I have found it a hugely supportive and tolerant place, accepting of people at all stages of their lives, people with disabilities and full of good, honest and downright decent people.

I suggest you read the interview K2p.

Yes, men who abuse women are everywhere and will use whatever means necessary to get their kicks, including going to wartorn countries to exploit women who have literally lost everything.

That's a pretty big issue in itself, one that's largely ignored or put across like you have - as though it's inevitable and we all just have to put up with it.

Be that as it may, the further issue is that the CEO of Oxfam has given an interview implying that the people who are rightly disgusted that women were abused and Oxfam covered it up are overreacting because the only thing we have a right to get upset about is babies being murdered in their cots. This is the man running your supposedly great charity. He is a fucking disgrace.

So how do you deal with it then? Any employer can DBS check all of their employees (or whatever the local system might be) but if nobody's ever been convicted of a crime, there's no record of that. There's certainly no inference that charities are doing DBS checks which are flagging up issues, and then choosing to employ those people anyway. There has been talk of setting up a register of approved aid workers which sounds great but would need every single country around hte world to buy into the idea and share records. And in most cases there are no records to share as these people are "clean".

It's not inevitable - but you can take all the precautions in the world to avoid employing people with an unhealthy attitude to women, but a determined man is still going to get through the system. Perhaps we should be pressing for changes in the legislation so that people suspected of crimes overseas when employed by a UK based charity can be prosecuted under UK law - but again, there's no proof that any crime was committed here at all.

I don't disagree that there may be additional motives behind the timing of all this, especially, as Lass points out, since everyone has known it was going on for years.

But I don't care. Anything that puts a stop to it is a good thing.

Oxfam reemployed one of the people it allowed to resign after the Haiti incident in a different disaster zone

Is it not the case that this has been happening for a while across the aid industry as paedophile tourism has become harder.
And these stupid people in the trans movement think their time and energy is best spent elbowing women out of female spaces. ffs

I'll tell you how you don't deal with it. You don't quietly allow the people responsible to slink away quietly only to be rehired by other charities or other parts of the same charity. You don't fail to tell the people providing you with millions of pounds what has happened. You don't ignore the victims involved and do nothing to redress the wrong done to them and when all of this finally gets out you don't then do an interview with a national newspaper implying that being disgusted by the exploitation of women is an overreaction.

The reemploying thing should never have happened - and is part of the reason Penny Lawrence felt she had to resign as it occurred on her watch.

I do think a register would be a good idea but would have all sorts of logistical difficulties and privacy issues.

Thank you k2. The truth is not so simple.
www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/16/oxfam-boss-mark-goldring-anything-we-say-is-being-manipulated-weve-been-savaged

Inseoir - I get where you're coming from, really I do. It was disgusting behaviour and should never have happened.

But taking a step back - what could Oxfam (or any other charity) do? The local police in Haiti aren't interested in investigating. You have no proof that any crime has been committed or indeed know the identities of the women involved. The UK police can't get involved. You're legally not allowed to ring round all the other charities telling them not to employ Fred because he was up to dodgy stuff in Haiti. All you can do is try your very best to tighten up on your recruitment and whistle blowing procedures.

Can't really comment on the recruitment as I'm not involved in how foreign staff are recruited to work overseas and what checks are done. There is a lot of stuff about safeguarding and whistleblowing though, and as a volunteer it's clear what you should do if you see something you're not comfortable with - whether that's another volunteer stealing or an employee harrassing someone.

There has been practically no mention at all of the women exploited. Oxfam, a charity that supposedly helps people, knew these 'men' had raped vulnerable women who had just experienced a horrific earthquake. What did they do to help those women? My guess is absolutely fuck all.

How was it even possible for such a high up employee to bring women to his villa? Where did he get the idea that he could do that and get away with it? How many other high up employees had done the same thing before him? How many other employees knew this was happening and said and did nothing about it? Yes they couldn't prosecute these specimens but they could have put out a statement saying that they could have carried out an internal investigation and put out a statement making it clear that that was what they were doing.

But they didn't. They just kept quiet about it and hoped no one would notice, then when people did notice they said 'Oh come on stop being so emotional!!'

It’s only sexual abuse, not murder, so chill the fuck out.

A depressingly unsurprising point of view, although I’m shocked someone high profile was stupid enough to say it out loud.