Police are investigating claims that the founder of the collapsed charity Kids Company tried to block staff from reporting criminal offences.
Detectives from the Metropolitan police’s complex crimes unit have widened a sexual misconduct inquiry to examine whether Camila Batmanghelidjh told staff that it was against the organisation’s ethos to press charges after a number of violent incidents.
Ms Batmanghelidjh and Alan Yentob, the BBC’s creative director and the charity’s former chairman, will be questioned by MPs today over the charity’s sudden closure less than a week after a £3 million government grant.
An investigation by The Times has raised fresh concerns about alleged misspending and bad management:
● Kids Company encouraged a client pregnant with the child of a Premier League footballer to sell a “kiss-and-tell” story to a tabloid newspaper.
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● The children of some Kids Company staff were registered as clients and had free places on adventure holidays and trips to theme parks paid for by donors.
● A client was given £500 in cash, which she blew on designer clothes, then £500 more without punishment.
● Young people continued to receive funds after they had moved abroad.
● One client was given funds to buy a car, according to former staff.
Kids Company was set up in 1996 by Ms Batmanghelidjh, the daughter of an Iranian exile, to help severely disadvantaged youths in south London. It closed in early August shortly after Scotland Yard’s child abuse command launched an investigation into sexual assault claims. This related to claims that staff received complaints of sexual offences but did not refer them to the authorities.
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Mr Yentob has said that he believes the suggestion that Kids Company’s management was “in any way complicit in sexual misconduct will be found to be completely untrue”.
One former Kids Company worker, who was hit on the head with a snooker ball by a teenage client, said Ms Batmanghelidjh had left him in no doubt that his position would be untenable if he pressed charges. He visited A&E and was signed off for two days after the assault at the charity’s Kenbury Street centre in 2010.
Ms Batmanghelidjh “phoned me and said I understand you want to press charges. I said yes. And she said, well we don’t press charges against our students.”
This year the client, Kai Steele, now 18, was convicted of murder and sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in jail after he stabbed a stranger in a row over a cigarette. “I do genuinely believe that that was a contributing factor, that his experience at the charity showed him he could do what he wanted,” the former key worker said.
He handed in his notice within a few weeks of the incident. “My position was untenable. It wasn’t explicit but because I knew her for two years I knew you don’t really cross her,” he said.
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In late August, he was interviewed about the incident by detectives from the complex case team. “They’re trying to find instances of times when she has intervened and told staff not to contact the police,” he said.
Another former client has raised concerns that Ms Batmanghelidjh took no action when her £400 BlackBerry phone was stolen. She said she had left it unattended on a desk at one of the charity’s centres and that there was footage of a male client taking it.
Ms Batmanghelidjh said that “any crimes committed at Kids Company are open to being reported to the police and dealt with accordingly”. She said it was “absolutely not true” that she had discouraged the worker hurt with a snooker ball from pressing charges.
Ms Batmanghelidjh is due to appear alongside Mr Yentob before the Commons public administration select committee this morning.
Last night the BBC’s Newsnight and BuzzFeed News reported that concerns about the charity’s “weak finances” and “conflicting information” about client numbers had been raised with the trustees as early as 2002. Kids Company said that it had disputed the claims at the time.