A convicted paedophile was employed by an acclaimed British charity working with vulnerable children in Ukraine after “serious failings” in its vetting procedures, The Telegraph can reveal.
Siobhan’s Trust, which distributed pizzas to children and families suffering following Russia’s invasion of the country, hired the man with few, if any, background checks.
The 52-year-old, who called himself Jack Morgan, made regular visits to orphanages, schools and camps for displaced people after being employed to work on the charity’s operations in west Ukraine from early 2023.
Photographs posted by the charity and its volunteers on social media showed him playing with young children.
Suspicions about Morgan began to surface among the aid community in the city of Lviv after he began boasting about joining the Foreign Legion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and claiming he was raising money for military supplies on its behalf.
Sources described how “all hell broke loose” when his true identity was first exposed in a group chat for the Lviv volunteer community in August 2024.
Volunteers who worked with Morgan told The Telegraph that he was paid £500 a month and given full use of vehicles owned by Siobhan’s Trust, which later changed its name to HopeFull.
These included a “large van with a built-in pizza oven” and a “refrigeration van”, which Morgan drove to and from sites where vulnerable children were present.
HopeFull said that it had been unaware of his criminal record until after he was dismissed by the charity in February 2024.
It insisted that, as part of its safety processes, no volunteer was ever left unsupervised with vulnerable children.
The Telegraph has now established that shortly before being hired by Siobhan’s Trust, Morgan was convicted at Cardiff Crown Court for breaching child protection orders, imposed on him under his previous name Lee Callaghan, six years earlier.
The revelations came after HopeFull announced in a surprise move that it had ended its flagship project in Ukraine on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion in February, having served more than 2.5 million pizzas at 1,800 locations across the country.
David Fox-Pitt, the founder of the charity, said: “This is a sad moment, but we have delivered as much hope and nourishment as we can, and our time has come to an end.”
HopeFull remains active in Ukraine, working with veterans and partnering with local organisations including orphanages.
‘A dangerous man who wanted to abuse children’
Morgan’s criminal record became known among several of Siobhan’s Trust volunteers after they grew suspicious of his self-proclaimed status as a “former British paratrooper” and military veteran.
After conducting internet searches in August last year, they discovered that the individual known to them as Jack Morgan had previously been called Lee Callaghan and was from Newport, south Wales.
They also learnt that he had received a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) for child sex offences in February 2017.
Callaghan had been arrested on suspicion of making contact online with a known paedophile in an attempt to sexually abuse a child.
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He was convicted of being in possession of category A child abuse images, and was jailed for two years and issued with a 10-year SHPO, meaning that he could not travel abroad without notifying police.
During sentencing at Cardiff Crown Court, Callaghan is reported to have displayed no remorse. Judge Daniel Williams told him: “You minimise the clear sexual interest you have in young children.”
Following the sentencing, Martin Ludlow, from the National Crime Agency, said: “In his communications with others, it became clear Callaghan was a dangerous man who wanted to abuse children.”
It is thought that following his release from prison, Callaghan changed his name by deed poll to Jack Morgan, before being charged in January 2023 for being in breach of the original SHPO.
He then travelled to Ukraine, where he was hired by Siobhan’s Trust.
Former volunteers with the charity told how they reacted angrily to the discovery that he was a convicted paedophile.
David, 60, a British national who has made four volunteering trips to Ukraine since the start of the invasion, told The Telegraph: “I realised that quite possibly he wasn’t who he said he was.
“When it came out, it was much, much worse than I thought. I was sick to the stomach.”
An American former volunteer who joined Siobhan’s Trust in February 2023 also raised questions over what she said were “serious failings” in the Scottish-based charity’s vetting process, describing it as “extremely lax”.
She claimed that no background check took place when she was recruited following a brief exchange conducted from abroad over WhatsApp.
Charity ‘relied on internet searches’
In February, a hearing at the London Central Employment Tribunal, in a separate case brought against Siobhan’s Trust, heard that the charity does not carry out disclosure and barring service (DBS) criminal record checks on potential volunteers, but relies on internet searches.
Chris Mackintosh, a HopeFull trustee, told the hearing: “We don’t tend to do DBS checks. It would be too difficult to do for all volunteers and only a small group are British. We’ve had 19 nationalities [volunteering with us] and DBS is only relevant to British volunteers.”
He added: “If we were aware of anyone with a criminal conviction, clearly, we would not accept them as a volunteer.”
The charity was set up in 2020 in memory of Siobhan Dundee, originally working with disadvantaged young people in Scotland.
Two months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Siobhan’s Trust moved its operations to the war zone, raising large sums from UK donors to buy vehicles and support projects on the ground.
The charity has been praised by its patron Sir Iain Duncan Smith, receiving a special “chairman’s award” and £30,000 from the former Tory leader’s non-profit foundation, the Centre for Social Justice, in November 2023, for going “above and beyond in alleviating hardship”.
Morgan is understood to still be in Ukraine after leaving his last known location – the apartment of a Ukrainian mother of two with whom he had begun a romantic relationship.
HopeFull defended its handling of the case. A spokesman for the charity said: “HopeFull is committed to the safety of its volunteers, employees, and the communities it serves.
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“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.
“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.”
source: telegraph.co.uk/british-charity-children-ukraine-hired-convicted-paedophile/
