On 12 July 2011 the Oxfam GB headquarters received an email from a member of staff alleging that members of the team in Haiti had behaved in breach of the Oxfam GB Code of Conduct.

This prompted immediate investigation, of which we now have the full report. As the allegations of sexual misconduct included the the Haiti Country Director, Roland van Hauwermeiren, “It was decided by senior management in Oxford that the allegations against the CD needed to be investigated prior to the other allegations. There were a number of risks associated with any potential action required against the CD and there was a need to establish the veracity of the allegations against him before commencing the investigation of the other staff members.”

During his first meeting with the investigators the CD “admitted using prostitutes in his OGB residence.” Having been briefed on the allegations on his members of staff, “he took full responsibility and offered to resign.” … “it was agreed that OGB might accept his resignation” ... “as there were potentially serious implications for the programme, affiliate relationships and the rest of the investigation if he were to be dismissed on these charges.” Once the investigation was concluded, four members of staff were dismissed for gross misconduct, and two more resigned while the investigation was still under way. The investigation concluded that “None of the initial allegations concerning fraud, nepotism, or use of under-age prostitutes was substantiated during the investigation, although it cannot be ruled out that any of the prostitutes were under-aged”.

The outcome of this investigation was included in the HR records of all all people involved, and Oxfam GB reported this case to the Charity Commission, which has the responsibility of referring any concerns to the police, local authorities, and the Disclosure and Barring Service (used to check on a person’s criminal records by prospective employers). Moreover, Oxfam put out a press statement on 5 August 2011 announcing the investigation (several news outlets reported on this, for example, see this BBC article from 13 August 2011) and another on 5 September announcing the outcome. A recent Oxfam statement states that “After the investigation, we carried out a thorough review of the case which resulted in the creation of our dedicated Safeguarding Team and a confidential 'whistleblowing' hotline as part of a package of measures to ensure that we do all we can to protect our staff, prevent sexual abuse and misconduct happening in the first place and improve how we handle any allegations.”

 

Indeed, according to her LinkedIn profile, in April 2012 Helen Evans was hired as Head of Global Safeguarding at Oxfam GB. According to her recent statement on Twitter she “was tasked with establishing a Safeguarding function to tackle sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by Oxfam staff. What happened in Haiti was inexcusable and the organisation sought to take action.” … “Unlike many other aid agencies Oxfam was investing in dedicated safeguarding resource; with a team of two working 1.4 FTE”

 

In July 2102 Oxfam published their new code of conduct, which includes “With beneficiaries, I will not exchange money, offers of employment, employment, goods or services for sex nor for any forms of humiliating, degrading or exploitative behaviour.” 

According to a later job description  Oxfam GB also “launched its first global safeguarding strategy, which sought to strengthen the organisation’s safeguarding risk management framework. Responsibility for delivering this strategy lies with Oxfam GB’s Safeguarding Steering Group. This group works in large part through the Global Safeguarding Coordinator, who in turn works through a network of Regional and Country Safeguarding Focal Points.”

 

In May 2013 Mark Goldring replaced Barbara Stocking as the Executive Director of Oxfam GB.

The Charity Commission published their Safeguarding guidelines (updated in December 2017)

 

In June 2013 Helen Evans was featured in a case study on how to strengthen the hiring procedures and background checks to to ensure they “weren’t unknowingly hiring staff with prior disciplinary warnings.”

 

In August 2013 Hannah Clare took over as the maternity cover for Evans and, according to her Linkedin profile she “worked to move Oxfam GB from a reactive approach to Protection from Sexual Exploitation & Abuse (PSEA) to a more proactive position involving discussion, explanation, training and higher visibility for the issue, aiming to offer greater protection for staff and the vulnerable people with whom Oxfam GB interacts worldwide.” She ran an anonymous survey across three countries in the region of the Horn, East and Central Africa, which, according to Evan’s statement “revealed that 1 in 10 staff were reporting witnessing or experiencing sexual assault, with 7% of staff in one country reporting witnessing or experiencing rape or attempted rape.” 

 

In January 2014 Hannah Clare joined the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Task Force on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by our own staff - a group of 25 UN agencies and charities, as a lead on advocacy with donors.

 

In October 2014 Evans came back from her maternity leave and was shocked by the findings of her maternity cover. She decided to prepare a paper to present these findings at the upcoming Oxfam Leadership Team meeting.

 

In November 2014 Hannah Clare started working as an independent consultant. According to her LinkedIn profile, she “trained all Oxfam Country Safeguarding Focal Points for the East Africa region on Safeguarding and complaints management”.

 

In December 2014 Helen Evans was disappointed to not have a chance to discuss her paper and the request to hire more staff for Safeguarding during the Oxfam Leadership Team meeting. According to her statement, when she challenged this decision she was told that "You are right that this is a serious issue. LT recognised this but felt that there was nothing as a group that we could actually add to the situation, which was clearly laid out on the paper".

A possible explanation for their response can be found in the 2013-2014 Oxfam GB annual report, which shows that in 2014 Oxfam GB reduced their staff by about 200.

 

In March 2015 Evans left Oxfam GB.

 

In June 2015 Evans contacted the Charity Commission as a whistleblower, but was “extremely disappointed when the Charity Commission failed to meet with me or ask for any further information”

In the meantime, Hannah Clare, her former maternity cover, was appointed as new Head of Global Safeguarding at Oxfam GB.

 

In August 2015 Evans raised her concerns with her local MP who wrote to several government departments but “No action was taken as a consequence. At this point having exhausted all official channels I stopped.”

At the same time, Oxfam GB published a job ad to recruit a new Safeguarding Advisor reporting to the Head of Global Safeguarding.

 

In March 2016 Clare published a blog post on Oxfam stating that “The same egregious acts that are being perpetrated out there are also being perpetrated in here, and last year we responded to 40 complaints from across the UK and the rest of the world. Our organisation is made up of 6,500 staff, more than 25,000 volunteers and thousands of partner staff with whom we work closely to directly deliver our programme to nearly 12 million beneficiaries.  We understand that the more confidence people have to disclose, the more they will.  As our practices and structures are becoming more established and trusted we are already seeing a rise in the number of reports.”

 

In December 2016 her statement was reflected in the Oxfam Accountability report “The introduction within 2015/16 of a common quarterly management report to be completed by each Oxfam Country Office, which includes as its first metric the request for information on complaints; has significantly improved the availability of information in this area. However, we still consider the number of complaints recorded to under-represent the total received given the size of our programme footprint; and we expect this figure to rise as the complaints reporting requirement becomes further embedded.”

 

In October 2017 Evans “saw The Times was picking up an Oxfam story and the Charity Commission would be investigating. At this point I got back in touch with the Charity Commission who were more responsive and invited me in for an interview culminating in a report“ (Indeed, in October The Times a story about sexual harassment at Oxfam).

 

In December 2017 the Charity Commission published a report on Oxfam, which concluded that:

Oxfam agreed to take some concrete actions, and to report back on progress in March 2018

 

On 1 February Oxfam GB posted a job ad for a replacement for Hannah Clare. The job description gives a glimpse on how the organisation has ramped up their capacity for safeguarding over the years: as the number of reports into this role is listed as “1 FTE Safeguarding Advisor (recruiting two new FTE Safeguarding Advisors); Safeguarding Coordinator and dotted line to the Trading Safeguarding Advisor (P/t) and approximately 60 Safeguarding Focal Points across the organisation”. Indeed, the two new Safeguarding Advisors positions are currently advertised on the Oxfam GB Job site. A recent action plan by Oxfam GB adds details to the amount of resources invested in safeguarding up to that point, as they promise to see the “annual funding more than tripled to £720,000.”

 

However, on 9 February The Times published one front page article “Oxfam’s Shame” with the claim that “The unforgivable behaviour of charity staff in Haiti after its catastrophic earthquake should have been dealt with transparently, not swept under the carpet” which was followed by 3 “TIMES INVESTIGATION” articles: Oxfam in Haiti: ‘It was like a Caligula orgy with prostitutes in Oxfam T-shirts’, Disaster zones are a magnet for sexual predators and Minister orders Oxfam to hand over files on Haiti prostitute scandal. The articles raised public outrage and were widely shared.

 

On 10 February The Times published an article claiming that “Oxfam failed to warn aid agencies about staff caught using prostitutes in earthquake-torn Haiti, allowing them to take jobs among vulnerable people in other disaster zones.”

 

On 12 February during an interview at Channel 4, Helen Evans complained that she received reports of sexual harassment in Oxfam shops. “That troubled me,” said Evans, “because I knew that Oxfam was not conducting the criminal record checks that it needed to conduct, that children were being left alone with adults that hadn’t been record checked”. However, as explained in an interview by Laura Pointon, employment solicitor at Brabners law firm, “the law doesn’t give charities enough power to undertake reliable background checks on volunteers.” As charities cannot undertake the DBS checks at the outset, they can only request voluntary disclosure from the applicants, which could translate in incorrect or even dishonest information being disclosed.

After her interview, Evans tweeted her statement on the whole situation linked at the beginning of this story.

 

---

 

Events are now unfolding very quickly, with governments, donors, celebrities, and the general public withdrawing support for Oxfam. The Charity Commission and the whole sector have now come under attack on the media, too, which unfortunately it is often fuelled by incorrect statements. I hope that the above helps to be better understand the current situation. Some of the articles on the topic clashed with my memory of the organisation (I used to work at Oxfam International between Jan 2011 and October 2015, but I have no more affiliation with them) so I started looking into the evidence behind those allegations. While I do not remember having ever met with anyone of the Oxfam GB safeguarding team (Oxfam International is a separate organisation from Oxfam GB, and back then it was based in a different area of Oxford, so I had only limited contacts with them), my knowledge of the organisation did help me find useful pieces of the puzzle, so I felt compelled to share what I found to better inform others, too.

 

I would be extremely grateful if any of the readers could add their comments below to add additional fact-checked information, with a link to the sources.

 

Thank you for reading this far!!!