The disgraced founder of the Kids Company charity has defended spending £55,000 on one troubled young man – including paying his massage bill at a luxury spa – saying material goods were important for ‘self-esteem’.
Camila Batmanghelidjh also insisted the charity’s controversial cash handouts to children were not used to buy drugs and instead were spent on utility bills.
The colourful character, who had the ear of three prime ministers and courted wealthy donors before the organisation collapsed in 2015, also revealed that at one point, the charity was paying for 48 advisers in a single Lambeth school.
She made the comments in an interview with The Sunday Times ahead of the publication of her autobiography, Kids: Child Protection in Britain: The Truth.
Camila Batmanghelidjh defended the Kids Company charity’s controversial spending ahead of the publication of her autobiography, Kids: Child Protection in Britain: The Truth
Describing the case of Dave, a man in his 20s with a drug problem and a long criminal history, she said he was handed to her care when she persuaded a judge to give him a suspended sentence.
After rehab didn’t work and a psychiatric hospital threw him out, she sent Dave to Champneys because he could be supervised there while on anti-psychotic medication and kept away from illegal drugs.
Batmanghelidjh claimed it was Dave who ordered the massage – which involves a chocolate exfoliation scrub and cocoa wrap – but said it was right to continue spending money on him.
‘Dave cost us about £55,000. But the minute you give up on a difficult case, it’s a slippery slope for that child and all the others who are watching you,’ she said. ‘Dave still needs support but he has been out of prison for four years, he has a partner and he is working.’
Describing the case of Dave, a man in his 20s with a drug problem and a long criminal history, she said she persuaded a judge to give him a suspended sentence. The charity spent £55,000 on Dave, including paying his massage bill at a luxury spa (file photo)
Batmanghelidjh added: ‘I don’t apologise for buying the kids nice things. You can’t have a consumer society driven by brands and say that these children can’t have it. In the ghetto they rely on material goods for self-esteem.’
Defending the cash handouts, she said: ‘They didn’t need the Kids Company living allowance to buy drugs. Our children are born into drug settings – 80 per cent of our kids arrived addicted, 90 per cent of these were given the drugs by a parent or carer.
‘The cash we gave our kids was for the electricity meter and the gas meter.’
The former psychotherapist admitted making ‘lots of mistakes’ while in charge of Kids Company but said she was not responsible for its demise.
She blamed a conspiracy of ‘unethical journalists’ and ‘politicians who don’t understand what’s happening on the street’.