The Presidents Club, a British charity, is shutting down and will hold no further fundraising events after the Financial Times reported female hostesses were groped and harassed at a men-only gala it organised last week.
"The trustees have decided that the Presidents Club will not host any further fundraising events. Remaining funds will be distributed in an efficient manner to children's charities and it will then be closed," the organisation said in a statement on Wednesday.
The FT article by a reporter who went undercover at the Presidents Club gala last week described braying men in tuxedos fondling women, putting their hands up their skirts, pulling them into their laps, making lewd comments and offering to take them to hotel rooms.
One of the 130 hostesses, who were required to wear skimpy black dresses with matching underwear and to sign non-disclosure agreements before entertaining the 360 male guests, said a diner had exposed his penis to her during the event.
"Women were bought as bait for men, for rich men, not a mile from where we stand, as if that is acceptable behaviour. It is totally unacceptable," MP Jess Phillips told parliament during a hastily convened debate about the issue.
She was one of several visibly furious women politicians who lined up to denounce the event as despicable.
Two London children's hospitals, Great Ormond Street and Evelina, said they would return donations received from the Presidents Club, while corporate sponsor WPP, the advertising group, said it was severing ties with the organisation.
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The FT said the event, an annual fixture on the London social calendar for three decades, was attended by business executives, financiers, politicians and other powerful men.
The Bank of England, which was dragged into the story because one of the prizes offered up for auction at the event was tea with Governor Mark Carney, said it had not approved the prize or had any contact with the organisers.
Also on offer for big donors was lunch with Boris Johnson, Britain's foreign secretary. Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said Johnson had not known about the prize.
Luxury goods businessman David Meller, one of co-chairmen of the Presidents Club Charitable Trust, stepped down as a non-executive board member at the education ministry as the fallout from the FT report intensified.
May's spokesman said she had been uncomfortable reading about the event, pointedly saying that as a woman she would not have been invited.
The FT report said lots put up for auction at the gala, which was held at the prestigious Dorchester Hotel, included a night at a strip club and a course of plastic surgery, with the invitation "Add spice to your wife".
The Charity Commission, the not-for-profit sector regulator, said it would be urgently investigating the Presidents Club.
