Charity boss arrested in BBC Sex for Aid probe ‘Women get power’

A Turkish charity owner at the center of allegations of sexual abuse has been arrested, a BBC investigation has revealed.

BBC News Turkey uncovered allegations that Sadetin Karagoz sexually abused vulnerable women and promised them help in exchange for sex. He denies all the allegations.

Mr. Karagoz established his charity in 2014 in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Desperate for help, Syrian refugees initially said he was an “angel”.

One of them, Medina, fled the Syrian civil war in 2016 and said that two years later, one of her children fell seriously ill and her husband abandoned her. Her name has been changed to protect her identity.

Left alone to care for three children, she moved to Sadettin Karagoz’s organization, which translates as Hope Charity Store. It collects donations such as nappies, pasta, milk and clothes for refugees.

“He told me: ‘Come to me when you have nowhere to go and I’ll take care of you,'” she says.

But when she did, Medina says he changed. She described how Mr. Karagoz asked her to accompany him to a behind-the-scenes office to retrieve some items.

“He got me,” she says. “He started kissing me… I told him to get away from me. If I hadn’t screamed, he would have tried to rape me.”

Medina describes how she escaped the building but Mr. Karagoz then went to her house.

“I didn’t open the door because I was scared,” she says after he threatened to send her back to Syria.

Terrified of the consequences, Medina says she never went to the police and never told anyone what happened.

Mr Karagoz, a retired bank employee, denied the allegations and told the BBC his organization had helped more than 37,000 people.

He says the aid distribution area at the charity is small, crowded and monitored by CCTV so he cannot be alone with any of the women.

Over the years, his charity has gained widespread recognition and won a local newspaper award in 2020. It has been featured on national TV, and he says he has received support from national and international organizations. In March this year, it changed Turkey’s name to My Home-Meal Association.

In total, three women, including Medina, told the BBC that Mr Karagoz sexually assaulted and harassed them.

Seven other people, including two former employees of his charity, say they witnessed or overheard acts of sexual abuse between 2016 and 2024.

According to Nada, a 27-year-old Syrian refugee, he said he would only help her if she moved into an empty flat with him. “If you don’t, I won’t give you anything,” she says Mr. Karagoz told her. Again, her name has been changed to protect her identity.

She was with her sister-in-law and says they went out. But desperate to provide for her family, she explains that she didn’t know where to turn, so went back.

On one occasion, Nada says, Mr Karagoz took her behind a curtain to fetch a nappy for her son where “he tried to touch my breasts”.

On another occasion, she says “he came from behind and grabbed my arm… he forced me to touch his private parts”.

Fearing the stigma attached to sexual abuse and being blamed, Nada says she didn’t think she could tell anyone, not even her husband.

A third woman who told the BBC that Mr Karagoz had assaulted her is Batoul, who has since moved to Germany.

A single mother, she too says she turned to him for help. “When I turned around to get help, he put his hand on my back,” she explains. “I left the store and left the help.”

These testimonies are not the first against Mr. Karagoz.

He was accused of sexual harassment and assault in 2019 and 2025, but on both occasions prosecutors decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. Police said neither the victim nor the witness was willing to come forward to file a formal complaint.

Some women told us they feared that testifying would lead to persecution or deportation.

But following a BBC investigation, it is understood that two more women came forward to report Mr Karagoz and their testimony led to him being charged with sexual assault. He is now in jail awaiting trial.

Batoul says she is “really happy” he has been arrested, “for me and for all the women who have suffered in silence and cannot speak out because of fear”.

She adds that she hopes it will “give courage and strength to all women who are being exploited in any way”.

Before his arrest, we put the allegations made by Medina, Nada, Bataul and charity workers to Mr. Karagoz.

He denied all the allegations and claimed that if they were true, more women would have come forward.

“Three people, five people, 10 people can (complain). Things like that happen,” he said. “If you say 100, 200 (accused me), then fine, you better believe I did those things.”

He also said he has diabetes and high blood pressure and showed a medical report detailing an operation to remove his left testicle in 2016. This means he cannot have any sexual activity, he said.

However, Ates Kadioglu, professor of urology and expert in men’s sexual health, told the BBC that removing a testicle “doesn’t affect anyone’s sex life”.

We put this to Mr Karagoz who insisted that sexual activity was “not possible for me”.

We also told him that sexual abuse can be motivated by a desire for power and control. He replied: “I personally have no such insistence.”

“What we did was good work and this is what we get in return.”

Sadettin Karagoz said the women who previously accused him of assault did so because he had reported to the police about his involvement in illegal activities.

All the women we spoke to denied that they or their relatives were involved in the crime, and the BBC saw no evidence to suggest that they were.