THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY ON 03/07/2011
By: Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
TO a casual observer, charity ICROSS’s website, detailing its work in Kenya, is no different from any other charity, with project updates, photos of the work purportedly being done and a downloadable annual report.
‘The past year has been exciting for ICROSS. We met the many challenges together with great success,’ writes Joe Barnes, the co-founder and director of ICROSS Ireland, in preface to the recently published 2010 annual report.
The website, which was updated only last week with a press release from cofounder and international director, Michael Meegan, also details an impressive-sounding policy on transparency.
‘ICROSS insists on the highest standards from its entire staff as well as ensuring due diligence and the highest work ethics. Our code of conduct is based upon international gold standards and ensures not only equality and ethics but transparency and integrity,’ it reads.
But there is no mention that just 12 months ago ICROSS (International Community for the Relief of Suffering and Starvation) was in meltdown over a series of allegations of sexual and financial abuse against Mr Meegan.
Nor is there mention of the fact that ICROSS Ireland was split in two over the allegations against Mr Meegan and its then only director Tim Bourke who pledged to close the charity and refund €250,000 to other charitable causes.
The allegations were revealed by a lengthy international investigation first printed in the MoS last April.
Mr Meegan sought and failed to prevent publication in a desperate High Court bid to silence the considerable evidence which raised concerns about his behaviour going back decades.
As presented to the court by the MoS, this evidence included signed and sworn affidavits from men who said they had been sexually abused by Mr Meegan while ICROSS employees. Meegan denied all of the allegations against him, but even prior to the hearing, the Department of Foreign Affairs, concerned at financial irregularities, had demanded a refund of almost €100,000 in funds given to ICROSS.
After the revelations, concerns about Mr Meegan and his charity were raised in the Dáil and House of Commons.
The UK Charity Commission launched an inquiry and here the Revenue Commissioners delisted it as a charitable body. In the ensuing months many believed ICROSS Ireland had closed.
But behind the scenes new directors have been appointed and the charity has regained access to its frozen funds and is sending them to ICROSS Kenya.
What has been done to address the allegations against Mr Meegan is unclear. Neither ICROSS Kenya or a solicitor representing ICROSS Ireland provided answers this week.
Tim Bourke, the director who last year pledged to close the charity, also failed to reply to questions.
He has been joined by three new directors, one of whom is Jerry Barnes, son of ICROSS co-founder Joe Barnes.
Another director is businessman Thomas Cooke, a former IDA executive, who set up Certification Europe Ltd and other successful companies.
The last – William Scally – is an economist and a one-time Government advisor and kitchen cabinet member to former Labour tanaiste Dick Spring.
He sought to distinguish between ICROSS Ireland and ICROSS Kenya.
‘I can’t speak about Mike Meegan, for him or against him. I can’t engage in that,’ Mr Scally told the MoS.
‘I can only tell you that he is not a director of ICROSS Ireland and he is not a member of ICROSS Ireland and that we are sending some money out to Africa.
‘I can’t accept responsibility for all the things ICROSS Kenya do. I can only try to monitor what they do with the money we send out and what Mike Meegan then does after that is certainly not our responsibility,’ Mr Scally added.
He said ICROSS Ireland would not close. ‘There is enough money there to send to Africa and get the thing going again and we are doing that on a controlled basis.’ But Dr Vincent Kenny, a senior member of the volunteer community and former ICROSS board member, said he was astonished that the charity had reopened.
‘It’s incredible that ICROSS Ireland can still claim that they are separate from the work of their main spokesperson and operational manager, Michael Meegan,’ he said.
PANEL INSERT Police call on witness who says ICROSS director sexually abused him
By: Michael O’Farrell
ONE of the key witnesses in the case against Michael Meegan was questioned by Kenyan police yesterday. The incident followed requests by this paper to the Kenyan police about the status of the criminal investigation into allegations of Meegan’s sexual abuse of young men.
The witness, Maasai tribesman Meriape Ole Sangaire said he was questioned by Kenyan CID officers at a station out of the blue yesterday. .
Meriape stands over statements he made to police previously.
Last year ICROSS Kenya tried to have him arrested for making statements against Mr Meegan in the lead up to last year’s High Court case.
Speaking yesterday he said: ‘I’m a little bit scared. I’m still getting threats.’ In his court statement last year he said Mr Meegan began ‘harassing me by touching me continually’ as far back as 1986.
‘I asked him not to but he continued, telling me I had sexy buttocks and telling me to touch his secret parts.
‘I became Meegan’s first victim, I realise now. One night he pulled me into his bedroom and tried to force me to take off my trousers, trying to rip them off me. I resisted him, but although I was strong he was stronger. Even now I have problems with sex. Everything he did to me was against my customs, my family, my Christian religion. It was a terrible abuse.’ The statement, backed up by a sworn affidavit, also included allegations of caning.
‘He said if I needed money I should let him cane me. He forced me to partially strip and he caned me. I was angry and wanted to hit him but I knew I would end up in jail. He was the powerful white man and the police would believe him, not me,’ his statement said.
‘He gave me Ksh1,000. I still have the scars on my buttock and inner thigh. I wanted to go back to the police and insist they arrest him but I was worried that he was bribing someone and I would be arrested instead of him.’ Meriape’s statement also made the court aware of alleged deceptive practices at ICROSS.
‘He started telling everyone that he was “living with the Maasai”. This was a lie, he was living in a house. He never slept in a manyatta [Maasai community] in his whole time in Kenya.’
Mr Meegan’s legal presentation included claims that Meriape has twice previously admitted making false claims. This was denied by Meriape in an affidavit, shown to the court, saying Meegan’s claims were untrue and documents used to back them up – which used an incorrect ID number and even spelt Meriape’s name wrong – were forgeries.
PANEL INSERT Allegations were part of ‘rival’ NGO’s smear campaign – Meegan
By: Michael O’Farrell
IN AN affidavit provided to last year’s court hearing Michael Meegan denied all of the allegations against him and accused two named fellow aid workers from what he called ‘a rival’ NGO of conducting a 25-year smear campaign against him.
But the court ruled against Meegan, and found that the MoS had provided sufficient evidence in the form of original documentation and affidavits from independent witnesses to show that it had a likely chance of defending any libel claim.
This evidence included a 1986 letter, signed by Meegan, in which he acknowledged and confirmed to one of his own board members that he was the subject of a police investigation.
It also included an affidavit from one-time ICROSS board member Dr Vincent Kenny who travelled to Kenya in 1986 to help Meegan deal with the sexual allegations. Evidence from a former board member who confirmed Meegan had insisted on sleeping with an employee in her home in Dublin was also included, and a former volunteer, now working for Concern, also swore Meegan had made a casual sexual advance towards him.
In addition, a British Labour Party peer, Lord Nicholas Rea, provided an affidavit in which he confirmed that after a visit to ICROSS he found a plea for help in his jacket pocket from a male member of staff whom Meegan had teased during dinner about ‘the size of his enormous penis’.
The signed note, the court was informed, read: ‘Michael Meegan is a liar and a cheat. Don’t believe anything he says.
‘He also molests the boys,’ it alleges. Other evidence provided to the court by the MoS included the complete details of a fivepage 2006 letter from the Irish and British board of ICROSS to Meegan in which the board requested Meegan’s response to a large number of allegations that had come to its attention.
Evidence before the court showed that this letter – sent to Meegan as a draft form to allow him to comment – included allegations of ‘financial impropriety’, ‘character/integrity issues’ and ‘sexual impropriety’.
It asks Meegan about newspaper revelations that he had exaggerated his academic qualifications and ‘misleading’ claims by Meegan that he lives amongst the Maasai while in fact he lives in an urban compound.
It also raises allegations involving ‘the skimming off of ICROSS funds for personal use’ and that employees have allegedly been ‘induced to engage in false reporting about the use of donated funds and the effectiveness of projects’.
Further details of the letter, opened as evidence in court, involve what the board referred to as ‘a constant stream of allegations that Mr Meegan likes the company of younger men’.
The letter refers specifically to an allegation that he shares a bed with a named ICROSS employee.
The court learned that the board, in its letter, expressed uneasiness about the number of allegations against Meegan, something the letter says has ‘been compounded by the perception that Mr Meegan has been less than open and honest’.
Further correspondence deemed Meegan’s response to the allegations as ‘wholly inadequate’ before the board closed the British arm of the charity down.
