A refugee charity backed by major stars is being looked at by the Charity Commission amid complaints about the way it handled a rape allegation against a senior team member.
Choose Love, which changed its name from Help Refugees earlier this year, has raised more than £47 million in six years for grassroots refugee organisations across the world. Its supporters include the screen stars Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jude Law, and Harry Styles, the pop star.
At least eight people have made formal complaints to the Charity Commission about the organisation in the past month, in addition to concerns about its handling of the rape allegation.
The complaints include allegations of a “toxic work culture”, bullying and concerns about the way spending decisions have been made. Several of the claims are from people made redundant this summer. All are denied by the charity.
The Charity Commission has opened a regulatory compliance case into Prism the Gift Fund, the umbrella charity responsible for the Choose Love charitable fund. Prism is responsible for overseeing Choose Love’s processes to ensure regulatory compliance.
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The Charity Commission has been conducting a regulatory case into Prism since September last year. The recent allegations relate to events between 2017 and August this year.
The charity was founded by three friends with celebrity contacts, who wanted to take camping equipment to refugees in Calais: the presenter and writer Dawn O’Porter; Lliana Bird, the radio presenter known as Birdy; and Josie Naughton, the former personal assistant to the manager of Coldplay. Naughton became the charity’s chief executive.
Its rapid growth was fuelled by high-profile backers photographed in their Katharine Hamnett-designed Choose Love T-shirts.
A number of complaints received by the Charity Commission relate to the treatment of a former volunteer at Choose Love who claims she was raped by a senior colleague after he spiked her drink at a work dinner in 2017. The woman claims the way the charity handled the rape claim had “increased the damage” she suffered.
When the charity first heard of the rape allegation in 2020, after being leaked an account of it, two of its senior managers held a meeting with staff at which the man accused gave a speech saying claims that he had drugged and raped a junior team member were completely untrue.
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He did not name the woman, who had left the organisation, but told colleagues they had both been drunk and had consensual sex.
Next to him, senior managers cried what were described by others present as tears of “sympathy” with him.
The way in which the charity’s management stood by while the man gave his version of events without first speaking to the alleged victim has concerned former employees.
“Nobody had a chance to think about her side,” one of several sources at the meeting claimed.
Management first made contact with the alleged victim a week later.
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The rape allegation is being investigated by authorities in the country where the accused is based. He has been interviewed by police and denies the allegations. He has also filed a defamation claim against his accuser.
The rape is alleged to have occurred after the man took the alleged victim, as well as a second female colleague from another organisation, to dinner at a beach restaurant in March 2017.
The alleged victim, now 34, says she was plied with alcohol during the dinner — an account supported by a female colleague — and lost most of her memory of the evening. She claims she pieced together what happened only in January 2020 after getting a flashback when she revisited the restaurant.
Prism sent a corporate investigations company specialising in crisis management to look into the rape allegations in July last year. Two retired detectives, one of whom was a woman with experience of dealing with victims of sexual assault, travelled to interview the woman at a four-star hotel. Both she and the man were offered counselling. The alleged victim said that although they took breaks, the detective “essentially interrogated me about the details of my rape” for eight hours over two days in a windowless basement boardroom.
The charity later refused to share the report with the woman, stating only that it had been “inconclusive”.
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She said the charity’s handling of the incident had “suspended me in a state of trauma and acutely increased the damage in my life that I suffered along with the damage of being raped”.
When contacted, the man said the allegations were “extremely false” and that they had initially remained friends “for years” after having sex. He said he was co-operating with the police and was confident his innocence would be proved.
Sources who worked at the organisation claim its leadership was in thrall to the accused, who was seen as a “golden boy”. He was a volunteer but sources say he co-ordinated how they spent funds, despite question marks over his behaviour and handling of money. Choose Love denies that he had authority to distribute or access funds and says that he was only able to make recommendations that were checked by it and Prism. The charity said that it had vetted the accused man before recruitment and ended its partnership with him last year following the “inconclusive” investigation commissioned by Prism.
In a statement, Naughton said: “Whilst we aim to do the very best for the communities we work for every day, it doesn’t mean it has been a perfect journey. We grew so quickly. Within three months we were the largest funder of grassroots aid to the refugee crisis in Europe. When we look back at those early days, with the experience we now have, we know that our reporting procedures should have been better.”
Commenting on the rape allegation, Naughton said they had been “devastated” to learn that the charity’s response to the rape allegation had led the victim to feel unsupported. She said the charity had “followed all possible guidance and protocols during the investigation”, but added: “No one should ever have to go through a traumatic experience and feel they were not supported.”
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Choose Love conducted an anonymous staff survey in 2020 and said nobody raised complaints about bullying or a toxic work culture.
Prism said it began an external review into its handling of the rape allegation by an independent law firm earlier this year “which found the investigation to have been carried out appropriately”. It also said it kept the Charity Commission updated and that Choose Love and Prism had taken action on “all recommendations made as part of the investigation and subsequent review”. Prism has strict governance and compliance protocols for all payments and spending put in place on the recommendation of the commission.
The Charity Commission said Prism had co-operated fully with the investigation. A spokeswoman said: “The commission is aware of and is considering the allegations shared with The Sunday Times. In general, charity should be a safe place, and we expect trustees to make safeguarding a governance priority.
“As the case remains open we cannot comment any further.”