"It's my whole life" wails an asylum-seeker, as she learns that Kids Company is to close down after allegations of extreme mismanagement. That is perhaps one clue as to what was wrong - someone expecting to be a 'client for life', like a teamster at Tammany Hall.
The mission of Kids Company was meant to be compensating for the breakdown of the family unit by providing drop-in centres for youths who would otherwise be drawn into the gangs. The reality was very different. An all-year Santa's Grotto, where whole families became dependent on the brown envelopes where uncounted sums of money were heedlessly dished out every day to the people least likely to make constructive use of it, while the charity ballooned into something huge and unmanageable.
Camila herself might be described as unmanageable, as well as huge. For example, we hear that she has always had her own moral code (well, so did the Yorkshire Ripper). "I never break the law. The correct law is to take care of these children properly. If the law of the land is not correct, we have to slightly break it." It is on scrambled hippie-logic like this that the whole corrupt bandwagon kept careering on to its doom.
Educated at Sherborne, she might be expected to issue clearer dialogue than this. Instead, as an Iranian, she seems to be the Second World trying to sound like the Third World. The exaggerated hugging, cooing and giggling reflect a dumbing-down culture where there are no fixed points, just a childish love of chaos. One girl who has been helped into a good school says she wanted to study law, but Camila told her it would be boring. Obviously not too keen to encourage sharp critical faculties.
Even then, people who didn't look too closely may still have felt that she was somehow adding to the gaiety of nations - until the cops knocked on the door, investigating sexual abuse.
Everywhere, smiles faded. It could look like supervisors taking advantage of the vulnerable, though this was never proved. It was between kids that the abuse was known to be happening. At worst, this could have meant that the gangs had infiltrated the charity. But either way, Camila's naivety had been fatally exposed.
A short clip of the official inquiry ends with the chairman calling out "Order!". He must have been an optimist indeed.
The mission of Kids Company was meant to be compensating for the breakdown of the family unit by providing drop-in centres for youths who would otherwise be drawn into the gangs. The reality was very different. An all-year Santa's Grotto, where whole families became dependent on the brown envelopes where uncounted sums of money were heedlessly dished out every day to the people least likely to make constructive use of it, while the charity ballooned into something huge and unmanageable.
Camila herself might be described as unmanageable, as well as huge. For example, we hear that she has always had her own moral code (well, so did the Yorkshire Ripper). "I never break the law. The correct law is to take care of these children properly. If the law of the land is not correct, we have to slightly break it." It is on scrambled hippie-logic like this that the whole corrupt bandwagon kept careering on to its doom.
Educated at Sherborne, she might be expected to issue clearer dialogue than this. Instead, as an Iranian, she seems to be the Second World trying to sound like the Third World. The exaggerated hugging, cooing and giggling reflect a dumbing-down culture where there are no fixed points, just a childish love of chaos. One girl who has been helped into a good school says she wanted to study law, but Camila told her it would be boring. Obviously not too keen to encourage sharp critical faculties.
Even then, people who didn't look too closely may still have felt that she was somehow adding to the gaiety of nations - until the cops knocked on the door, investigating sexual abuse.
Everywhere, smiles faded. It could look like supervisors taking advantage of the vulnerable, though this was never proved. It was between kids that the abuse was known to be happening. At worst, this could have meant that the gangs had infiltrated the charity. But either way, Camila's naivety had been fatally exposed.
A short clip of the official inquiry ends with the chairman calling out "Order!". He must have been an optimist indeed.
