Page 34 - Time Magazine-November 05, 2018

World

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June 17, 2014, found KaTie meyler in Girls testified to being assaulted inside take action because she was so close to
New York City, talking to the world’s rich- the charity’s first school, Johnson; in fact, Meyler and Johnson had
est men about her work with some of its in downtown Monrovia been intimate.
poorest girls. On little more than a sense “I don’t think that even if I came to tell
of purpose and fit of inspiration, the New thing that I can to make sure to do the her, she would come to believe me,” the
Jersey native founded More Than Me, a most amount of good.” girl told Finlay Young, a reporter for Pro-
nonprofit to help girls off the streets of There was indeed a nightmare, though. Publica, a nonprofit investigative news-
Monrovia, Liberia, by paying for their One day earlier and 4,500 miles away, the room based in New York.
school. Eventually, it would open its own man Meyler had described as the char- Young spent a year investigating the
academy and earn a contract from the Li- ity’s co-founder had been arrested. The assaults and the actions of Meyler and
berian government to operate 19 schools charge was raping the girls in their care. her charity. The resulting article was
across the country. Ten students would testify against Ma- published jointly online on Oct. 11 by
Meyler had corralled $1 million in cintosh Johnson, though the number of ProPublica and TIME. It included indi-
funding through her expert use of social suspected victims approached 30. cations that Meyler had overlooked or ig-
media, but she was no less impressive They were girls who wanted the schol- nored evidence of Johnson’s appetite for
in person. After her presentation at the arships Meyler was offering. She had made sex with young girls, and that the charity
Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy that a sexual predator the gatekeeper for a pro- had failed to formally investigate how the
June day, Berkshire Hathaway chairman gram that existed to help girls escape sex- assaults could have occurred, working in-
Warren Buffett, the most admired inves- ual exploitation. In a Liberian courtroom, stead to dissociate itself from Johnson, its
tor in America, found her backstage, fell the victims would describe being raped first and most prominent employee.
on bended knee and proposed marriage. in the More Than Me school’s bathroom, No international staff from More L AYLEH — AP/SHUT TERSTOCK; AHMED JALL ANZO — EPA - EFE/SHUT TERSTOCK PREVIOUS PAGES: SPECIAL TO PROPUBLICA; THESE PAGES: JONATHAN PAYE-
“He said no prenup too, lol,” Meyler library, guesthouse, classroom and car. Than Me testified at Johnson’s trial,
later wrote on Twitter, linking to an Insta- The victims said Johnson enforced si- which ended in a hung jury. And after he
gram post where the message was not en- lence about the rapes by threatening the died in custody, with AIDS, the charity
tirely light: “Honestly need to slap myself loss of their scholarship. One of the girls told Young it made no attempt either to
sometimes bc this More Than Me journey would later tell a reporter that she and her establish the cause of death, or to deter-
feels like a dream and sometimes a night- friends nonetheless considered reporting mine the HIV status of the general stu-
mare but it’s not, and I’ll use every single their rapes, but feared Meyler would not dent population on which he had preyed.
64 Time November 5, 2018