Author Name: ProPublica
This story was originally published by ProPublica. [1]

Unprotected
Date: 05, 2021

Martor told ProPublica she was scared for her safety, scared of losing her job and scared that she would not be believed if she told her superiors what the girl had shared. Johnson was her “Liberian boss-man,” and Martor wasn’t sure what Meyler would do, faced with weighing the girl’s word against his — “Whether she will stand up for the girls, or stand up for her boyfriend.”

The abandoned Ducor Hotel.

But then, the girl confided in another Liberian staff member, listed many other victims and came to Martor for a pregnancy test. “If the case go out, maybe people realize I knew, and I cover it,” Martor said. “I could be implicated.”

Martor kept quiet for five months. In this period, according to their statements to authorities, two girls were raped for the first time.

[Macintosh] has just told me that he and the founder, they are in a relationship. … Will people believe me? Because people had high respect for Macintosh in the organization. Will Katie believe me? Will other staff in the organization believe me?” Iris Martor, MTM school nurse, 2013-2017

On June 12, 2014, Martor finally sat down with Spada and told her. “It felt like I’d been punched in the stomach,” recalled Spada.

At 24, it was her first managerial job. She said she told two colleagues and spoke by phone to Meyler in the U.S., who looped in key board member Skip Borghese.

What happened next is a matter of dispute. Spada’s recollection is that because there was not yet evidence rape had taken place on MTM property, Borghese’s attitude was that “we need to think about how we protect the organization. We need to think about whether this was our responsibility.” She recalled that when she challenged this, he told her, “Get off your fucking soapbox.”

Spada concluded: “This board cannot help me. They cannot help us. They cannot help our students.”

The next day, school staff interviewed three of Johnson’s victims. Spada said she felt she had to establish that the abuse took place on MTM’s property, to prove, “We are liable for this.” Girls confirmed they were raped at the charity’s school, the office, the guesthouse, even in the car. It was clear: “This was a very large-scale thing,” said Spada, “bigger than we were ever going to uncover.”

She reported Johnson to police that evening.

I was saying, I am the person on the ground. This is the way I need to move forward. And him, from so far away, not staring at the faces of the girls who have just told you they have been assaulted by one of our people, saying, “Get off your fucking soapbox, we have to protect ourselves.” You know, it’s not something I’m ever going to forget.” Play audio Michelle Spada

MTM program director, 2013–2015

Spada described the sequence of events and Borghese’s demand she get off her “soapbox” in interviews with ProPublica. Contacted again just before publication, she said that she stood by her account and that the comment was one of the reasons she left the organization. In addition, Spada said Meyler recently asked her what she had told ProPublica about More Than Me and did not challenge her recollection of what Borghese said on the call.

In a letter, Borghese’s attorney vehemently denied that he spoke to Spada before she went to police and called the statements “maliciously untrue.”

The charity says the board’s response was swift and supportive. To counter Spada’s recollection, Borghese’s attorney offered an email sent from Katie Borghese to Spada, two days after Johnson was arrested, telling her she had full board support. Board representatives also noted that Spada sent an email four months later, telling the board the response in Liberia was done “by the book.”

“They became supportive when they had no other option,” Spada said in her most recent interview.

It was never a question of whether or not we should prosecute him in any way, shape or form. I think a board's job is to understand where our liabilities lie.” Play audio Katie Borghese

Board interview, February 2018

To avoid alerting Johnson to the investigation, school leadership told him he was suspended in connection with the debit card theft and sent him home. Trying to arrest him on his turf could be dangerous; police needed to entice him out of West Point. It fell to Meyler back in the U.S. She was to call Johnson, express anger he’d been suspended without her knowledge, and tell him that he needed to go to the staff house that night so it could be sorted out.

“You would think that you would feel, you would want to protect him, but I didn’t,” Meyler said. “My immediate reaction was, how do we get him arrested?”

On June 16, four days after Martor reported the abuse to Spada, he came. The police were waiting.

I was in touch with our team on the ground, and really believed in the fierce way that Michelle spearheaded our team in taking swift and aggressive action against Macintosh. I was a part of that plan every step of the way.” Play audio Katie Meyler

Board interview, February 2018

The next day, Meyler was in New York to give a speech at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy. Board member Chid Liberty said he was first informed of the rapes when she called him right before the event. “It’s really, really, really bad,” he remembers she said. He recalls she told him something like, “it’s all the girls over 11.” On stage, without mentioning what had just happened, she told an audience of America’s wealthiest people she now had “the best school in Liberia.” Cameras clicked as billionaire Warren Buffett got down on one knee in a mock proposal.

Meyler’s talk at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy. (Forbes)

Meyler’s post capturing Warren Buffett’s mock proposal at the Forbes summit. (Katie Meyler’s Instagram, Jan 11, 2015

In Liberia, as news spread about the arrest, rioters gathered outside the school and police station. They weren’t angry at MTM for allowing the rapes to happen; they were angry because the organization had reported Johnson. Rape allegations were more commonly mediated between families in West Point, not prosecuted in court. Meyler flew in to deal with the crisis. Spada believed she had “a strong conflict of interest” in view of her closeness with Johnson. “It was obvious she (was) no longer the right person to be handling things.”

Spada’s mind went to a conversation she recalled having with Meyler in early 2013, which involved one of the girls who had now come forward. Meyler had said Johnson’s ex “had been claiming he was sleeping with one of our students,” Spada wrote in her police statement, but there was “no evidence… so she took the accusation as a rumor.”

Spada told ProPublica she clearly remembered something else, something she didn’t put in her statement: that Meyler told her, “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Meyler didn’t directly respond to a question about this but said in a statement, “I am desperately sorry that I was not aware of his criminal abuse of our girls sooner, but I reported it to authorities the moment it came to my attention and did everything possible to assist with his arrest and prosecution.”

She and Spada attended Johnson’s first hearing. Facing threats from West Point, only 10 girls pressed charges. An MTM document from the period, titled “confidential,” said one of the students had identified 30 victims, about a quarter of the student body at the time.

MTM engaged public relations specialist Sarah Lenti, who had worked for Mitt Romney and Condoleezza Rice. Four days after the arrest, a press release appeared on the charity’s site. It said “numerous students reported sexual misconduct” by a “community liaison.” It cited “the country’s epidemic of child rape.” The school had taken steps to form a coalition to address child sexual abuse “in the West Point Community.” Meyler was quoted: “Our girls cannot be victimized a second time by a culture that accepts their rape as standard practice.”

The press release established how the organization would frame the rapes. It was community business. Johnson and Liberia’s culture were the villains; MTM and Meyler, still the intervening heroes.

MTM blog posts featuring Johnson were deleted or edited without comment. In one about the school opening, MTM removed the headline “NJ woman and former child soldier meet and their dreams come true,” the organization’s description of Meyler and Johnson as “founders,” and a reference to his role in recruiting girls. Videos were also removed.

At left, the original 2013 MTM blog post featuring Johnson; at right, the current version of the same blog post. (Internet Archive, Sept. 13, 2013 capture current URL accessed Oct. 8, 2018)

MTM’s President Saul Garlick told ProPublica: “The board’s determination to prosecute this was unequivocal.” He said the willingness of the girls to speak openly in 2014 about the abuse they suffered at the school was a testament to the “safe environment” MTM had created for them.

“Within months, but certainly within the year of having a safe space for girls at the academy, they did come forward.

“And I think that’s really a powerful story.”

That July, the MTM board met for its annual retreat in the U.S. Members wore pictures of the girls on cardboard hats “to remember them in all the decisions we make and to see things through their eyes,” Meyler wrote on Facebook.

One board member not in attendance was Liberty. He told ProPublica he inquired about the organization’s insurance policy, because based on what he had heard, he felt “the girls’ families had a lot of grounds to sue the organization.”

Liberty said he left the board in early 2015.

The charity did not commission or write any report examining how the rapes had been allowed to happen.

Under a tab headed, “We stand with our girls,” its homepage linked to the press release for a few months, then it was gone.

In Liberia, far bigger news was unfolding.

[1] Url: https://features.propublica.org/liberia/unprotected-more-than-me-katie-meyler-liberia-sexual-exploitation/