Foreign charity to predator's hunting ground
October 14, 2018 11:43 AM   Subscribe

Once an acclaimed charity that was helping young girls in Liberia escape sexual exploitation, this school turned into a rapist's hunting ground.

Founder Katie Meyler was named Time Person of the Year in 2014 for her efforts during the ebola crisis in Liberia, with her school being praised as extraordinary and inspirational across many news outlets. The recent ProPublica expose puts into question just how much value these foreign-run NGOs can bring, with Liberian nurse Iris Martor quoted as saying, "They think we (Liberians) are all stupid people with little or no education, and our system is fragile, and they can get away with things because their skin is white …That is what Katie feels. But it is not true."
posted by movicont (10 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
I read this yesterday and it is harrowing. Need to add in some CWs as this story will fill out a horrific bingo card's worth.
posted by chavenet at 12:42 PM on October 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


^^^ Yes. What chavenet said. CWs for rape, racism, pedophilia and child sex trafficking, for starters.

I keep thinking of the young woman who'd been featured in More Than Me's Facebook posts as a child.

She had hoped the charity would help her become an engineer. Instead, she was raped by a predator -- who was enabled by the charity's so-called leaders -- and is trying to piece together her life as an adult.

She was turned away from More Than Me when she went there to ask for help.

She told the reporter, through tears, that she missed Katie Meyler and that she thought maybe Meyler had forgotten her number.

"Katie, she -- she carry me far, then stop."

Hell is too good for the likes of Meyler.
posted by virago at 4:25 PM on October 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'd like a name for that thing where a woman raises professional concerns and then is dismissed or refuted by just casting her professional concerns as just petty, bitchy dislike for a person, their true motivation chalked up to "She just hates her, who knows why?"

It happens at two key moments in this story where folks raise issues and then their concerns get muddied by this apparently brilliant ploy to recast their issues as small-minded and motivated by some kind of personal vendetta as opposed to, I don't know, concerns that the organization has no plan and no ability to protect these children and has in their inner circle a known predator and there are other powerful people who noone has any idea what their backgrounds are.

Why do people keep letting the wolves into the house? Why do white people think they have special powers? Why does evangelical devotion so frequently come with a blindness to power issues and an unwillingness to support accountability?

These girls. What a horror. A true horror story for them. There is no justice but they deserve recompense.
posted by amanda at 5:13 PM on October 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


Why do people keep letting the wolves into the house?

It's less that than hen houses will attract the most charismatic, charming wolves, and that's why they get let in. No one is letting Aqualung run schools for girls. But institutions of power over young girls (and boys) will naturally attract predators, and the ones that get in will naturally be charismatic and charming. We see this over and over in institutions of power. The church, scouts, USA gymnastics.

Why do white people think they have special powers?

Because they are regularly asked to use their special powers to help others. If I had a nickel for every time a charitable concern ended their spiel with "Only you..." I'd have a lot more money to give to charity. And every anti-racist discussion includes verbiage about how white people are supposed to use their privilege to stop racism. White people have super powers. They can get on social media and people will actually give a damn. The issue is when they focus it on themselves and not the people they are trying to help, and don't actually talk to the people they are trying to help, and amplify their voices. The picture in the Al Jazeera article is almost the Platonic ideal of this. 4 white people flashing a check, with almost nary a mention of who they are trying to help.

Why does evangelical devotion so frequently come with a blindness to power issues and an unwillingness to support accountability?

It's a religion built on submission, patriarchy and community. Issues like this tear communities apart. Iron law of bureaucracy. The organization will act to protect itself, rather than its purported values. Add in a lack of bringing marginalized voices to the forefront, and there you go. See also: Catholic church.
posted by zabuni at 5:55 PM on October 14, 2018 [11 favorites]


This reminds me of the documentary The Wrong Light. NGO head claims he is rescuing Thai girls from sex slavery; the girls and their parents claim that they were never trafficked and that their families sent them to the NGO thinking it was a charity-supported boarding school. This kind of thing seems so common that in the end the most shocking thing was that the NGO lead was "only" embezzling donations and fondling the girls, not full-on raping them. It's an interesting story, especially regarding the ambivalence and conflicted attitudes of the girls in the program.
posted by phoenixy at 7:23 PM on October 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


White people have (generally) disposable income and will give that income to other white people with far more social trust than to non-white people. A white person asking for a non-white charity raises more money than the non-white charity people asking. It's social credibility based on perceived shared social background. There's marketing research and stuff about this - OXFAM revamped their charity fundraising a while back to get around this effect and avoid having white staff and people centred in their fundraising, one specific thing I like about them.

Lack of diversity in fundraising is another issue - most of the people doing fundraising are middle to upperclass because it's not a well-paid profession for those skills and you have to be able to afford to pursue the career and have the network - it's like publishing or fashion in a way. You get subsidised by your family. They don't usually come from the same community as the people they're working with but from the community funding so there's already a power/class separation. So all the money which decides the direction is coming from people outside.

And the thing you really want are POLICIES. Boring boring policies and forms and procedures. People filling out background forms and other people working through a checklist and then going down a memo on child safety and having quarterly children's rights workshops and filing a monthly volunteers and staff report and people complaining about all the damn paperwork and having to pay for a secretary to help file the paperwork and sort it out because THERE IS A POINT TO IT ALL.

You have a procedure for mandatory interviewing reports and you follow it, you file a report and get a pre-assigned volunteer and it's been sorted out by a BORING committee ages ago in a stupid manual that every volunteer and employee has a copy of and - this is not exciting like taking Facebook pictures of kids in bed with you (GAH) and making speeches at parties, but way necessary.

Donate to and support Boring-Ass Charities.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:59 AM on October 15, 2018 [18 favorites]


I've just finished the piece.

They didn't test known rape victims for STDs immediately. They waited until he had died of AIDS to start sort of testing the girls. They waited.

WHAT THE FUCK.

There's like - the best practices for post-assault support process is documented online in like a bunch of places. It's basic. You offer medical testing, HIV prophylactics and contraception if you can, antibiotics and co, testing, abortion if necessary, counselling, family support, accompaniment to report depending on legal access, you document as needed and you might add local socio-cultural things.

But at a minimum, you would get appropriate medical care. WTF. That's beyond a level of negligence.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:17 AM on October 15, 2018 [9 favorites]


I mean - the kids and their families (depending on local laws) have the right to refuse testing but nothing was even OFFERED.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:18 AM on October 15, 2018


Katie Meyler has stepped down in response.

The original article is super long but worth reading.
posted by k8t at 8:12 PM on October 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ninety minutes before the original article went online, Katie Meyler paid to appear on the radio in Liberia in order to do spin control, ProPublica senior editor Alexandra Zayas tweeted this morning, linking to the article about Meyler's stepping down.
In her closing comments on the show, Meyler repeated the only mistake she had acknowledged to ProPublica, which was that she was sorry for hiring (accused rapist) Macintosh Johnson.

“Come on, Katie,” asked (Henry) Costa. “How could you have known?”
I've been on nonprofit boards. Like dorothyisunderwood says, good ones recognize their leadership role in the organization and prioritize the groundwork needed to create an institutional culture that Does. Not. Tolerate. Exploitation.

Bad ones prioritize publicity, keep rubber-stamping their CEO's decisions, and shift the blame to the victims.
posted by virago at 11:18 AM on October 16, 2018


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