On 12 January 2010, a catastrophic 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti. One of the poorest countries in the world, it was utterly unprepared. Roads and bridges, hospitals and government buildings as well as thousands of homes collapsed or were severely damaged. At least 220,000 died – including more than 100 aid workers already in the country – and as many again were injured. Scores of aid agencies with hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of relief raced to bring help, each agency hastily recruiting hundreds of extra workers. Among these men and women of goodwill who were dispatched to organise medical help, to inoculate, feed and protect the thousands of vulnerable people were seven Oxfam employees who, it has now emerged, spent their time off procuring young, possibly underage, girls and women for sex. It is likely that some of their victims were reliant on the aid Oxfam provided, with donations collected on street corners and jumble sales in Britain. The enormity of employees of an organisation dedicated to ending poverty, hunger and social injustice hosting sex parties said to be of Caligulan proportions amid the wreckage of a humanitarian catastrophe is what turns a scandal into a crisis that could damage the whole UK charitable sector.

Quick Guide How the Oxfam-Haiti controversy unfolded Show What happened in Haiti? Oxfam GB has been accused of covering up an inquiry into whether its staff used sex workers in Haiti in 2011 during a relief effort following the previous year’s earthquake. It is alleged those who were paid by the aid workers may have been underage. An investigation by the Times found that Oxfam had allowed three men to resign and sacked four others for gross misconduct after an inquiry into sexual exploitation, the downloading of pornography, bullying and intimidation. How much money could Oxfam lose? The UK government has threatened to cut funds to Oxfam unless it shows “moral leadership”. In 2016-17, Oxfam’s income was £408.6m, according to its annual report, including £31.7m from the DfID. Aidan Warner of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations said: “They will be concerned not just about the money but the endorsement that the relationship with DfID represents, and they are clearly working hard to regain the confidence of the government as well as the public.” How much does the DfID give to NGOs? Last year the UK government dedicated £13.3bn to international aid. About £1.2bn of UK aid is spent annually through NGOs. In 2016, the UK was one of only six countries to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid, a target set by the UN for all developed countries. Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, has said the UK remains committed to this target, despite some Tory MPs calling for it to be dropped. Should other NGOs be worried? A number have now been implicated. Some of the employees involved in the Haiti case went on to work for other NGOs. Over the weekend, the Sunday Times also reported that more than 120 workers from Britain’s leading charities have been accused of sexual abuse in the past year. Save the Children, which in 2016 secured multi-year contracts worth £91m with the government, had 31 cases, 10 of which were referred to the police. The British Red Cross, which admitted a “small number of cases of harassment reported in the UK”, received £16.3m in DfID funding.

A year after the earthquake, in 2011, Oxfam’s head office was alerted by a whistleblower to the allegations. The charity then made two more serious errors of judgment. First, it played down the seriousness of the offences. The Charity Commission was told only that “serious misconduct” relating to abuse of power and bullying was being investigated. Later the Department for International Development was misled in the same way. As a result neither treated the report with the seriousness it required – and both are now rightly furious at the way they feel they were deliberately misled. DfID’s secretary of state, Penny Mordaunt, will want hard evidence of a transformed culture at the charity if it is to justify its £32m worth of contracts. The resignation of Penny Lawrence, Oxfam’s deputy chief executive and international project manager at the time of Haiti, is only a start.

The second mistake was to fail to prevent the four men who were sacked and the three required to resign from working in the sector again. As the Observer reported at the weekend, allegations about sex parties in Chad in 2006, four years before the Haiti earthquake, led to the sacking of one senior employee. Roland van Hauwermeiren, who resigned after the Haiti scandal emerged, was head of Oxfam in Chad at the time. Ms Lawrence cited the failure to act properly on the earlier allegations as a reason for her decision to leave.

Reputational harm is an existential threat to charities. It is not an accident that Oxfam has been caught out; it is the same mix of negligence and complacency that has exposed the Catholic and Anglican churches to similar disaster. After Haiti, Oxfam tightened its safeguarding processes. But this may well be the tip of the iceberg. One challenge for organisations working with children and vulnerable people is the acknowledged risk posed by sexual predators seeking out respectable cover for contact with their potential victims. Oxfam denies giving references to the employees sacked or allowed to resign after the Haiti allegations, but Mr Van Hauwermeiren went on to another senior job in Bangladesh working for a French charity, and another man involved is reported to have gone on to work with the Catholic aid charity Cafod. A central register of all aid workers employed by UK charities would at least stop employees who had been sacked or disciplined in earlier jobs faking references to get another.

What this crisis must not be allowed to do is undermine the case for generous aid spending as both a moral obligation and as pragmatic policy. The Oxfam case involves fewer men than can be counted on two hands. The courageous and dedicated efforts of thousands of its employees have saved millions of lives in the most gruelling and dangerous circumstances. They and their peers in other charities deserve the best defence. That means honesty and transparency, and a conspicuous determination to root out anyone who threatens their reputation for it.