Clare Moseley Wiki – Clare Moseley Biography
Clare Moseley, the founder of refugee charity Care4Calais, has resigned after claims emerged that she had used pepper spray on a refugee in self-defense and threatened to drag a volunteer out of a room “by the bloody hair”.
The explosive news came after a catalog of complaints about the charity by whistleblowers. Separately, Care4Calais is already under investigation by the Charity Commission over regulatory issues. Moseley, 53, has been the figurehead of the charity since its inception in 2015, but a litany of complaints from volunteers recently surfaced.
One complaint alleged that there was a “bullying culture” at the organization, which the charity denied. In May 2020, Care4Calais received a formal complaint from a volunteer who said that Moseley had “threatened me with physical violence” while she was helping out at the Calais camp.
Calais Charity Chief threatened to drag volunteer by hair
The complaint said that, during a row about journalists photographing refugees, Moseley yelled at the volunteer, “I’m going to drag you by your fucking hair.” Responding to the claims, Ms. Moseley told MailOnline exclusively: “Regarding the volunteer who was threatened, this followed a period of trouble with this volunteer. I acknowledge that the comment, made in the heat of the moment, was completely inappropriate and I apologized.
In early 2020, the charity also investigated accounts from two people about an occasion in Brussels where Moseley allegedly used pepper spray during an incident while she was distributing goods to refugees.
Moseley said she used the spray in self-defense after threatening behavior by another person at the distribution site, the documents show, a position supported by other witnesses.
He added: “Regarding the pepper spray incident, this was in self-defense, as other witnesses have acknowledged, and I was unaware at the time of the different legal position in Belgium compared to France; upon learning of it, by Of course he stopped wearing it in Belgium.’
Responding to allegations of bullying in the organization, he said: “I can only say that in a leadership position of a young and fast-growing organization, I have been placed in many positions where I had to make difficult decisions and under great pressure.
If I made mistakes or upset any of our volunteers, I’m sorry. I have dedicated the last seven and a half years to serving the charity as an unpaid volunteer working long hours to do everything in my power to help and advocate for refugees who often have little or no other support.”
He also insisted that his resignation on May 6 had nothing to do with the complaints, but that a statement from the charity suggesting he had resigned after the news broke was “misleading.”
In 2017, the married Ms. Moseley began an affair with a refugee after she promoted her charity’s no-sex-with-immigrants policy. She was in a relationship with Tunisian migrant Mohamed Bajjar, a fact that was reportedly well-known among migrants and volunteers alike.
It was claimed at the time that she ended her relationship with Bajjar, 27, after fearing he had swindled her out of thousands of pounds, The Sun claimed. Ms. Moseley’s friends claimed that Bajjar had threatened to tell her husband about her affair and to send her photos of the couple together.
Care4Calais announced Moseley’s departure two days after Third Sector magazine contacted them with the catalog of complaints. Care4Calais told the Charity Commission in January 2021 that Moseley was still carrying pepper spray in France, “where it is legal”, but she was no longer carrying it in Belgium.
A Belgian charity complained in 2017 that a refugee working with Care4Calais had threatened some of his volunteers with a knife and that he would not send people to help again because they felt “unwelcome and unwanted”. Care4Calais said it had not been able to establish what happened, but apologized for the “bad experience” of its Belgian colleagues.
The charity received a complaint in 2018 about another member of staff who had allegedly been “rude, unwelcoming, abrupt, argumentative and just generally very unpleasant” to volunteers, prompting Care4Calais to say he was “concerned and upset” to hear the reports.
In 2019, Care4Calais apologized to another volunteer who complained that someone else at the charity had been rude and might be “talking to and treating others this way”. In 2018, a volunteer said he had stopped donating to Care4Calais because “preventable mistakes” in allocating jobs in a refugee camp had “inadvertently caused problems” on the ground.
The charity explained that he was understaffed at the time, saying it was “sad to lose his support of him as a volunteer”. Care4Calais acknowledged that a volunteer was “not treated well” and offered to cover the costs of counseling after he complained in 2020 that someone from the charity had sexually harassed him.
The alleged harassment was off-site and outside of business hours. Two board members during this period raised concerns about how Care4Calais was operating, although emails seen by Third Sector showed they left the organization on good terms.
One resigned from the board in 2019 in part because “there is a conflict between my ideas about how the organization should be run and Clare [Moseley’s],” while a second trustee urged remaining board members to correct “the lack of trustee’. meetings’ when they resigned in 2018.
The Third Sector file relates to eight separate complaints sent to Care4Calais between 2017 and 2020, the period immediately before the Charity Commission first raised regulatory concerns with its trustees. The commission initially opened a compliance case but escalated it to a legal inquiry after identifying “serious governance issues.”
When asked about this week’s complaints, Care4Calais apologized and acknowledged that it had “got it wrong” in the past. She said the protection and management of volunteers has improved in the years since. The charity also said it appointed Steve Smith, a seasoned leader in the voluntary sector, as its chief executive last month, as part of reforms to the charity’s governance and management structures.
Care4Calais supports refugees in camps in Belgium and France, as well as in the UK. He raised £1.6m for his work in 2020/21, the last year for which there are published accounts. Many of the complaints filed against Care4Calais also highlighted the importance of their work. Experts say refugee camps in northern Europe can be very difficult environments for charities to operate.
A Care4Calais spokesperson said: “Since its founding in 2015, Care4Calais has grown significantly to help thousands of people fleeing conflict and persecution and seeking asylum in the UK and France. “As a new charity, we don’t always have the right internal systems and processes in place to support this growth and we recognize that we were wrong. We are sorry for those mistakes.
The spokesperson said the complaints were “small in number” relative to the thousands of people who had volunteered with the charity, but stressed that “they have always been taken seriously and we learn from each other”. They said: “In response, over the past 18 months we have been working hard to implement a comprehensive approach to volunteer protection and management.”
Moseley told Third Sector in a statement: ‘When I first arrived in Calais, I had no intention of setting up a charity; I couldn’t have imagined one that now supports thousands of asylum seekers in the UK, as well as refugees in northern France.
“Over the past few years, I have been proud to volunteer alongside so many fantastic people who support some of the most vulnerable in our society. I thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart. “I am now leaving Care4Calais to focus on campaigning for safe routes for refugees and will work alongside our amazing union partners to ensure safe passage becomes a reality.”
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