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View our privacy policyA personal reflection by Jo Maugham on why we are supporting the judicial review to fully restore Kids Company’s reputation.
We don’t talk much about what kids without parents really need. Somewhere safe to live, yes, but also love. To be cherished, to be told their lives have value, to understand that they matter just as ‘normal’ children do.
And for a sliver of time, kids in England who learned from bitter experience that their lives were measured only in cost got something different. They learned what it was to be loved. They learned this under the remarkable care of a remarkable woman: Camila Batmanghelidjh and the charity, Kids Company, that she founded.
But on 7 July 2015, Kids Company was told the Metropolitan Police was investigating allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual impropriety at the charity. Those allegations had been passed to it by a journalist. That night, the BBC went public with the story. The publicity made it impossible for Kids Company to continue.
But the stories were wrong. In January 2016 the Met said it had “not identified any failings by the charity in respect of […] their duty to safeguard children or vulnerable adults.”
And in 2022 the High Court found, in an excoriating judgment, that the allegations of financial mismanagement were unfounded.
But Kids Company had already closed. And Ms Batmanghelidjh’s fight to clear her name, her friends believe, cost her her life. You can, indeed you should, read this tribute to her from Lemn Sissay, who needed and received her help and her love.
The High Court decision wiped the slate clean – almost.
The Charity Commission has refused to abandon its criticisms of Kids Company’s trustees, which are flatly inconsistent with the conclusions of the High Court. Michael-Karim Kerman, the Clinical Director of Kids Company, is suing the regulator, claiming that its conclusion was predetermined and irrational given the High Court decision. The High Court has said that this case, a judicial review, can go ahead and a hearing will take place on 19-20 March.
We are very proud to be working with Mr Kerman to help clear the name of Kids Company. Before she died, Camila and I corresponded about this case. I had been homeless as a teenager – and a victim of repeated sexual assault – so I know what her work meant to kids like me. I wrote in my memoir of how I had been put back together by a woman, someone like Camila, who saw, in the broken teenager that I was, someone of value, who deserved love.
Judicial reviews are very hard to win. It will not be enough for Mr Kerman to point out that the Charity Commission was plainly wrong. He will also need to show that it was so wrong that no reasonable regulator could have reached its conclusions.
But it’s important to fight for justice for the children this scandal left high and dry. From my own experience, I know this to be true.