PANJIM: The project managers of the Light House Charity Graham and Tricia Phillips Clarke had decided on an exit plan on March 31, 2014, a week before the disappearance of the minor girl, who eventually got pregnant, by a staff member of this British charity.
The blog of the director of Light House Ministries dated March 31 states “Unfortunately the current project managers – Graham and Tricia Phillips Clarke will be unable to continue to run the work as previously as new local government legislation will make this untenable. Please pray for the stress and difficulty this is causing them. It means they will have to adjust to the biggest changes as they inevitably will need to return to the UK”
Apart from showing up in this blog, the charity made no mention of this to the Goa government. They also did not inform the government when they finally closed down the rented homes and left for England even as they knew that their staff member Motilal Lamani, who they now state is “former staff”, was under investigation.
Interestingly, Goa Light House was completely blanked from any further update even though the charity regularly posted updates about their other Indian and international projects. The fact the project managers and the charity withdrew from the investigation and the sordid episode that involved the rape and abortion of a minor girl is clear. It was only on September 2, over five months later, that the Goa project was mentioned in the Directors blog after Herald reported on the incident and its aftermath. The director referred to the report and called it “exaggerated”, stating that the decision to close the rented homes was taken “several weeks” before it came to light that one of the minor girls had fled with one of their staff members. This too doesn’t hold out since it was only on March 31, barely a week before the police officially came to know, that the charity first spoke of their work in India becoming ‘untenable’. There was no sign of the“weeks before.”
The blog also says that the children have all been moved into their new accommodation with El Shaddai a large Indian charity based in Goa. The girls have gone to a large house called “The lighthouse” and the boys have gone into “Shekinah house” and “Roshannah house” depending upon their ages”
None of these movements were reported either to the government or the police, something with the charity will have to account for when the police steps up investigations. Clearly the Charity cannot wash its hands off this affair.
