Filed in by Olando Testimony Zeongar – 0776819983/0880-361116/life2short4some@yahoo.com
Monrovia – Exactly three days following condemnation from Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor, frowning on the reported sexual exploitation of scores of Liberian girls at a US-charity the More Than Me (MTM), the Government of Liberia (GoL), through the Ministry of Information Cultural Affairs and Tourism (MICAT), has announced that its joint ministerial committee has convened with the view of taking appropriate legal actions into the sex scandal.
The Government says since learning of the reported sexual and gender-based abuse at MTM through a recent investigative report released by the US media non-profit ProPublica, its joint ministerial committee comprising the Justice; Gender, Children and Social Protection; Labor; Education; Health; Youth and Sports; Finance and Development Planning Ministries, has met in two separate emergency meetings, on last week Friday and on today.
The meetings of the joint ministerial committee were held with the intent to look into the circumstances contained in the ProPublica publication, “with the view to taking the appropriate legal actions to protect the children and ensure that they are safe,” a MICAT statement said on Monday.
Members of the More Than Me Liberian Advisory Board were cited to both meetings to provide information and clarity where required, the MICAT statement further said, adding that “GoL acknowledges the preliminary actions taken by the More Than Me Liberian Advisory Board after consultation of its’ Friday Joint Ministerial Committee meeting, where an internal Investigative Team has been set up and Ms. Katie Meyer has been asked to step aside.”
The GoL says it is greatly concerned about the events depicted in the story coming out a documentary recently released by ProPublica, involving More Than Me Academy’s founder, Katie Meyler, and its Program Manager the late MacIntosh Johnson.
“The article and documentary revealed that Mr. MacIntosh Johnson and others allegedly raped, infected, and violated the rights of over ten (10) disadvantaged and vulnerable girls enrolled at the More Than Me Academy,” GoL maintins.
The joint ministerial committee meetings ended with the conclusion that government takes several measures, including the Ministry of Justice ordering the immediate re-opening of the case, in light of the recent publication, to determine any new evidence and further culpability.
Ministry of Education will strengthen the monitoring and evaluation, and ensure that the regulation and compliance surrounding all schools are intensified; whereas, the Ministry of Health will work to address all health issues relating to the matter; while the Ministry of Labor will investigate to determine whether there was strict adherence to the National HIV/AIDS workplace policy at More Than Me Academy, and whether any labor laws were violated.
In furtherance of government actions to be taken, that arose out of the joint ministerial committee meetings, the Ministry of Youth and Sports will lead the anti-stigmatization efforts to ensure the protection of the survivors and other unrelated persons, who may have otherwise been affected; and the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning will work on strengthening the implementation on monitoring, compliance and enforcement to ensure proper processes leading to accreditation of Non-Governmental Organization (NGO); while the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection will ascertain if there were any lapses in adherence to the provisions of the Children Law of Liberia, 2011, and will engage the affected community at the granular level.
Meanwhile, government has urged the general public to contact the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Women and Children Protection Section of the Liberia National Police with any information they may have that will be helpful to the investigation, with the GoL assuring that anyone who will be found culpable in the MTM sexual exploitation case will face the full weight of the law.
It can be recalled by Punch online service how a horrific sexual abuse report regarding dozens of young Liberian girls being sexually exploited at MTM was recently released. In the report released by the US media non-profit ProPublica, it is reported that girls as young as 10 years-old were raped.
The ProPublica recently released investigative report unveiling widespread sexual abuse at MTM, which operates 19 schools in the country.
According to ProPublica, the head of MTM, Katie Meyler and the board of MTM exerted great effort in a bid to cover up the sex scandal, with the media group indicating that the NGO and some unnamed officials of the Government of Liberia tried to influence the trial of the accused rapist.
More Than Me was founded in 2009 by Katie Meyler to help rid the streets of girls and send them to school, but the girls were raped from the onset, according to the ProPublica investigation, which was conducted within a period of a year in collaboration with Time Magazine.
The rapist, the investigation further reveals, is a man described as MTM’s co-founder, an ex-combatant named Macintosh Johnson, with whom Meyler, a US citizen, was allegedly having a sexual relationship.
Soon after More Than Me was founded, Johnson, an HIV carrier then, who later died of AIDS, began raping girls as young as 10, according to witnesses and court documents revealed in the report, which points to Meyler admitting at one point, saying that the number of girls who were raped at the MTM-run school could have been a quarter of the school, “everyone over the age of 11.”
ProPublica reports that some of the girls became pregnant and Johnson threatened that if they didn’t get rid of the pregnancy or if they told anyone of the abuse, he would take them off scholarship at the More Than Me academy, even at some point issuing death threat against the girls.
Prior to his demise, when Johnson was taken to court to answer to his sexual abuse crime, several of his victims who testified against him tested positive for HIV with the ProPublica investigation establishing that the baby of one of the infected girls died of an illness that could have been AIDS.
ProPublica says More Than Me did not test the rest of the girls in the school. Meyler and MTM President Saul Garlick said it wasn’t the charity’s job to check Johnson’s medical record. “Let me be super clear,” said Garlick. “It’s not my business what he died of. I have no idea.”
But, following the publication of the ProPublica report, More Than Me has somersaulted, becoming somewhat remorseful, even posting on it website a marathon statement of apology.
“We are deeply sorry: When we started this work, we believed that our energy and passion for improving girls’ lives was enough to create lasting change. We were ambitious but also naïve,” the statement issued on last Friday said..
More than Me added: “We are deeply saddened and regret that we were underprepared for the magnitude of the challenges we would face when we opened More Than Me Academy in 2013. We want to apologize to the brave girls who came forward, as well as those who potentially may not have, for the pain they have experienced from Johnson’s heinous actions. We stand by the girls and young women affected and we are here for them. We continue to support them with scholarships to school, healthcare, counseling, and monthly stipends to pursue their dreams.”
