US charity apologises over rape scandal

An acclaimed US charity operating in Liberia has admitted to major failings after girls at a school set up to save them from a life of sexual exploitation were raped. ‘We are profoundly, deeply sorry,’ the charity More Than Me said after media reports notes that students at the pioneering school had been repeatedly abused by the charity's co-founder, Macintosh Johnson. A report on the IoL site notes that Johnson eventually died of AIDS and there are fears that he infected some of his victims who were aged as young as 10. ‘We gave Johnson power that he exploited to abuse children. Those power dynamics broke staff ability to report the abuse to our leadership immediately,’ the statement added. The assaults took place at a school at West Point, a notorious slum in the capital Monrovia. It opened in 2013 to a blaze of publicity, becoming the first of 18 schools that More Than Me opened in the impoverished West African state to empower girls. The charity eventually raised more than $8m in funding.