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Monrovia – Grand Bassa County Senator Nyonblee Karnga-Lawrence has condemned multiple cases of rape at the US-charity More Than Me (MTM).
The US media non-profit ProPublica, recently released an 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.
“I categorically condemn the alleged serial rape of our girls by staff(s) of “More Than Me,” Senator Karnga-Lawrence wrote on her official Facebook page Monday.
“Being a mother, I can easily imagine what those girls have endured for the mentioned number (not amount) of years, said Senator Karnga-Lawrence, who noted that as a national leader it is part of her responsibility to advocate for all Liberians, including the rape survivors.
“As a national leader, it’s our responsibility to advocate for and ensure the safety and well being of all our citizens, especially during a time like this,” she said.
She made the call for the sexual exploitation case to be driven to its logical conclusion, saying, “We must all be relentless in our efforts to ensure that we reach the most legal and logical conclusion and that such devilish act doesn’t reoccur.”
“The best thing we can ever give to our girls is education; however, we must ensure that it doesn’t come with such severe and damaging cost,” Senator Karnga-Lawrence lamented.
“My heart is with the young girls and their families and I support all legal means intended to bring to book those culpable of this grievous act,” she said.
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.”
