VIENNA: The director of SOS Children’s Villages, an international charity for orphaned and abandoned children, has been suspended following allegations of abuse at facilities in Austria, the supervisory board said on Saturday.

Christian Moser, who has headed the organisation for 17 years, has been relieved of all his duties pending the findings of an external audit. Separately, Austrian prosecutors said last week they had launched a probe after reports of alleged child abuse at a care facility run by Austria-based SOS Children’s Villages, which has 572 branches in more than 130 countries.

“The supervisory board believes that child protection, transparency and dealing with the facts are an absolute priority,” said Irene Szimak, chairwoman of the supervisory board of SOS Children’s Villages Austria. The charity said on Sept 17 it was launching an external audit of its procedures after weekly magazine Falter published a report alleging children had been mistreated at its Moosburg facility in southwestern Austria between 2008 and 2020. Falter alleged that children and teenagers were beaten, locked up and photographed naked for years.

The alleged abuse was never made public despite a detailed internal report in 2020.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2025