The NGO More Than Me, which opened eighteen schools in Liberia for victims of sexual exploitation, said Saturday that co-founder Macintosh Johnson had raped many of the girls.
A respected American NGO operating in Liberia apologized on Saturday for the constant rape of girls in a school she ran, where they were supposed to escape a life of sexual exploitation.
"We are deeply, immensely sorry," the More Than Me association wrote on its website in response to the revelations from the US investigation site ProPublica in a lengthy survey also published by Time magazine.
Some victims would have been infected with HIV
Girls were abused by the co-founder of the NGO, Macintosh Johnson, at this school in a slum in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. He died of AIDS in 2016 and is feared to have infected his victims, sometimes as young as 10 years old.
"To all the girls who were raped by Macintosh Johnson in 2014 and before: we failed with you," the organization wrote. "We gave Johnson a power he exploited by abusing children. These power dynamics hindered the team's ability to immediately report these abuses to our management. Our management should have recognized the signals earlier. "
Denounced by girls, Johnson was arrested. His trial in 2015 was suspended due to suspicions of bribes, according to ProPublica. He was to be retried when he died in 2016.
The NGO had the support of the Liberian President
The school, opened in 2013, was the first of More Than Me's 18 in this poor state of West Africa.
The NGO raised more than $ 8 million in funding, including nearly 600,000 from the US government. She had also received the support of then President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, also Nobel Peace Prize winner.
ProPublica has described Macintosh Johnson as a "charming hustler" linked to Katie Meyler, the founder of the NGO. This evangelist had come to help Liberia after 14 years of civil war, giving herself as a mission to help girls in slums.