The Independent - 05.03.2020

(Wang) #1
THURSDAY 5 MARCH 2020

Save The Children misled


public over serious failures


The charity was ‘unduly defensive’, watchdog report finds

JANE DALTON


Save the Children UK let down women who complained and the public through serious failures including a
cover-up in how it handled sexual harassment claims against senior staff, according to a watchdog’s
damning report.


The Charity Commission found “serious weaknesses” in the charity’s workplace culture following a probe
into its response to allegations of misconduct and harassment against staff between 2012 and 2015.


Former Save the Children UK chief executive Justin Forsyth faced three complaints by female staff of
misconduct, and Brendan Cox, husband of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, was publicly accused of
sexually assaulting a woman.


The charity said it had “accepted in full” the findings, and apologised to the women affected.


Save the Children UK (SCFUK) has faced accusations for several years that it failed to properly investigate
claims of sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour by Mr Forsyth, 54, and Mr Cox, 41.


The commission highlights a wide range of failings, including the charity not identifying its chief executive
as the subject of harassment complaints when it made a serious incident report to the regulator in 2015.


The watchdog says this amounted to the omission of material facts, and to “mismanagement in the
administration of the charity”.


It also said one of the charity’s public statements, in February 2018, was “not wholly accurate”, and
described its approach to reports in the media as “unduly defensive”.


These allegations, and the way in which the charity responded, had a “corrosive impact on its internal
culture”, the watchdog says.


Trustees were “poorly served” by not receiving a copy of the full findings of an external report on corporate
culture later that year, the commission found.


The report said there were 13 complaints of general bullying and five complaints categorised as sexual
harassment between 2016 and June 2018.


But since October 2018, the charity has made significant progress in implementing changes, the
commission added.


Helen Stephenson, chief executive of the commission, said charities should be led by those who acted as
models for the highest standards and who were held to account when they fell short.


She said: “This responsibility is especially pronounced in large, household-name charities: their leaders are


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