According to the Telegraph, the volunteer, deemed “dangerous,” was hired with minimal vetting.
The Telegraph reports that a charity assisting Ukrainian children during the conflict with Russia employed a convicted pedophile due to inadequate screening procedures.
Siobhan’s Trust, now HopeFull, hired the man in early 2023 to help distribute pizzas to children and families in western Ukraine “with few, if any, background checks,” the paper stated on Saturday.
The Scottish charity paid a 52-year-old man, calling himself Jack Morgan, £500 ($645) per month. He regularly visited orphanages, schools, and camps for displaced people. The report noted that charity photos on social media showed him interacting with young children.
The Telegraph reports that colleagues became suspicious last summer when Morgan claimed to have joined the Ukrainian Foreign Legion and was raising money for military supplies.
An online search revealed that Morgan was formerly Lee Callaghan, from Newport, Wales. He was imprisoned for two years for possessing child abuse images and was given a ten-year sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) in 2017, preventing him from leaving the UK without police notification. The National Crime Agency described him as “a dangerous man, who wanted to abuse children,” the report said.
The Telegraph stated that Morgan changed his name to Callaghan after his release and went to Ukraine, where Siobhan’s Trust hired him.
Charity sources told the paper that “all hell broke loose” when Morgan’s true identity was discovered.
A HopeFull spokesman confirmed that “this individual gained his position under an assumed identity and was then dismissed by the charity in February 2024, at which point the charity was unaware of the allegations against him.”
However, he maintained that “as part of the charity’s safety processes, no volunteer is left unsupervised with vulnerable children or adults, and we always operate in teams of at least four people.”
HopeFull has admitted they lack the resources for thorough criminal record checks on potential volunteers, relying instead on internet searches.
The report suggests Morgan remains in Ukraine and had a romantic relationship with a Ukrainian mother of two.
“`