Kids Company, the British charity for children run by the much admired and honored Camila Batman-ghelidjh, closed this month, with the charity in financial tatters and a debate raging on whether Batmanghelidjh is a saint or a sinner.
Kids Company is—or was—is a highly respected charity run by a highly respected woman from Iran—a charity that received $4.5 million from the British government only days before it closed.
Critics say it wasn’t just bad management. Instead, many accuse her of bleeding money from the charity for her own benefit and the benefit of her staff.
Batmanghelidjh’s passionate defense of the mounting allegations, have had “more than an air of the persecuted martyr about them—hinting now that she is the holder of dark secrets and an establishment plot is the reason for the charity’s collapse,” The Telegraph reported last week.
“I am being suppressed because I know about sexual abuse claims against senior people,” she told the BBC last Wednesday. “I think they’re trying, generally, to get rid of people who are challenging them about child sexual abuse issues,” she maintained.
Later, she added a charge of sexual discrimination. “Because I don’t wear a suit and because I don’t carry a briefcase and I have not bought into the corporate package, and essentially because I’m a woman and I work with children, people assume I don’t understand finances and can’t organize systems.”
Batmanghelidjh was born January 1, 1963 in Tehran. Her mother was a Belgian Roman Catholic, while her father was Iranian physician Fereydoon Batmanghelidj. She was born two and a half months premature and is severely dyslexic.
In 1974, her family emigrated to the United Kingdom when she was 11. She attended the University of Warwick, graduating with a first-class degree in theater and dramatic arts, before training as a psychotherapist at Regent’s University London.
In 1991 Batmanghelidjh established The Place to Be (now Place2Be), a charity working with troubled children in primary schools. In 1996, after leaving Place2Be, Batmanghelidjh founded Kids Company, a charity that provided care to children whose lives had been disrupted by poverty, abuse and trauma.
Originally a single drop-in center, Kids Company’s services allegedly reached some 36,000 children, young people and families. However, this figure is now disputed, with critics saying she vastly exaggerated the reach of her charity.
The charity operated through a network of street level centers, alternative education centers, therapy houses and with over 40 schools in London and Bristol as well as a performing arts program in Liverpool.
Last month, a broadcast news report said public funding for Kids Company was to be withheld unless Batmanghelidjh was replaced. Late in the month, however, the government provided a grant of $4.5 million.
Just days later, on August 5, Kids Company closed its doors. It said it was “unable to pay its debts as they fall due.”
Speaking to the Telegraph newspaper, Batmanghelidjh said she hoped Kids Company could make a comeback after some restructuring and once the media storm died down.
In February 2013, Batman-ghelidjh was named one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. In the same month, Queen Elizabeth named her an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to children and young people.
Harriet Sergeant, who has written many articles lauding Batmanghelidjh in The Telegraph, last week described the way she enthralled businessmen who donated to Kids Company.
“I first encountered Batman-ghelidjh nine years ago when I was researching a report on children in care,” Sergeant wrote.
“At my first meeting at Kids Company, I watched her dazzle a group of businessmen with claims about the link between emotional development, brain size and violent behavior. She talked passionately and with love, using not just the language of a mother —which has so charmed everyone from [Prime Minister] David Cameron to [British rock band] Coldplay—but a mother who had the backing of science for her method of loving.
“Whatsoever you think of these claims, it did the trick.
“In the middle of the meeting, she excused herself. One of her kids was having a crisis and needed to talk to her. The businessmen watched her leave admiringly.
“One said, ‘Imagine a kid like that interrupting us in the middle of a meeting!’ They all shook their heads in envy. I marveled at her cleverness. Would any one of those businessmen have put up with a female colleague running out of a meeting to take a call from a sick child? Yet Camila had done that and more, turning a vulnerable young person into every businessman’s must-have accessory.”
But, Sergeant then wrote, that wasn’t the only time Batmanghelidjh got an anguished child’s call in the middle of a meeting. “It appeared to be almost a leadership technique.Ö It seems strange that one of them always happens to phone Camila when she needs it.”
Sergeant said she saw a gap between claims and reality early on. “She said that 50 or 60 youngsters turned up every day for a nutritious lunch—‘pouring in’ was how she described themÖ.
“But instead of large numbers of kids arriving malnourished and stunted, as one journalist had claimed previously, I saw just one child. When I visited a second time I saw more children, but they were frank about why they attended. It was only on a Friday—because Friday was when they received an envelope filled with cash—between 50 and 200 pounds [$75 to $300].”
Sergeant notes that statistics are important for a charity. They determine donations and government funding. A little fudging was understandable.
She wrote, “I debated raising my concerns back then in 2009. In the end, I decided not to…. Why? From my interviews with young people in care and my friendships with gang members, I, more than most, understood that the need for a charity like Kids Company is huge.
“Batmanghelidjh’s forceful personality and astounding ability to generate good PR and attract funds kept these kids in the public eye. They are the forgotten flotsam of society….
“Camila Batmanghelidjh, I believed, did really care and fought hard, kept them visible. But was my decision to keep quiet about some of what I’d seen and the concerns the right decision? Now, I am not so sure.”
Among the many allegations leveled against the charity, the Mail on Sunday stacked up these this week:
- One of Batmanghelidjh’s senior aides lives in an elegant London home called The White House, which has cost the charity $300,000 in rent.
- The house was obtained as a home for underprivileged children – but they were not allowed to use the swimming pool although Batmanghelidjh took regular dips.
- Charity funds were used to help two children of Batmanghelidjh’s chauffeur to attend a private school.
- The charity has a policy of paying school fees for the children of staff “to reduce employees’ stress levels.”
- The charity gave the chauffeur’s sister-in-law a top finance job. She also makes the former charity boss’s colorful outfits.
• A leaked document showed the charity spent more than a million dollars on 25 so-called clients in one year. Many were adults in their 20s and 30s.
