I did nothing wrong and won't apologise, Kids Company founder tells BBC

19 Oct 2017 News

Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder, Kids Company

Camila Batmanghelidjh, the controversial founder of Kids Company, told the BBC today that she is not at all to blame for the closure of her charity, and does not need to apologise.

“I’ve clearly stated my extreme sorrow that children suffered in this way,” she told current affairs journalist Victoria Derbyshire on her programme this morning. “But we were not responsible for the closure of Kids Company. Not at all. I’m being absolutely clear about that.”

She said she would not bow to the "caricature" of her that was presented and be "forced into an apology".

She said that Kids Company had been well run and had had plenty of cash until it was brought down by allegations of sexual abuse.

“There wasn’t any financial mismanagement at Kids Company,” she said. “I don’t think we wasted money.”

She said that the charity had closed because a secret group of politicians and civil servants had decided to bring it down.

“There was a politically motivated dismantling of Kids Company through a systematically driven malicious campaign by some civil servants and politicians,” she said.

When asked who those civil servants were, and how she was sure they existed, she said she did not know, and was “not going to get into a guessing game”.

Batmanghelidjh also denied accusations that children given money by the charity had spent it on drugs, despite saying that 80 per cent of children who came to the charity were “addicted to substances”.

Batmanghelidjh was appearing on the programme in the wake of the publication of her book Kids – Child protection in Britain: The Truth, which she wrote with Tim Rayment. 

The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry shortly before the charity collapsed which is still ongoing. The Official Receiver was appointed to wind up the company and the Business Secretary is seeking to ban Batmanghelidjh and the trustees from being company directors for between two-and-a-half and six years.

 

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