The Cycle of Life Global Forum certainly sounded impressive.
The event literature said it was presented by the Col Alliance in partnership with the Lins Institute as part of Horizon Initiatives.
Held in Dublin from February 2nd to 7th last to coincide with St Brigid’s Day and the UN International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, the forum focused on the subject of FGM and aimed to generate “a global awareness and support for women’s empowerment and equality”.
Female genital mutilation is the deliberate cutting or removal of a female’s external genitalia. The reasons most cited for it are religious, social acceptance, misconceptions about hygiene, a means of preserving a woman’s virginity or making a woman “marriageable”.
The event’s organiser, Sean Collins-McCarthy (43), was aiming high. It was to be the first in a series of annual international conferences in Ireland, with “prestigious stakeholders, distinguished academics, world-renowned sports, arts and media personalities, supermodels, like-minded world leaders and philanthropists”, he boasted.
A remarkable line-up of 41 “expected” speakers and special guests had been assembled for the 2024 and 2025 events.
They included Dr Auma Obama, sister of the former US president, and businessmen Denis O’Brien and Richard Branson. There would also be “invite-only, public attendance and media and press events”.
Sayydah Garrett of Pastoralist Child Foundation, a US-based charity that works to eradicate FGM and forced early marriages primarily in Kenya, was sold.
She received an email in January from long-time anti-FGM activist Hilary Burrage, forwarded from Tobe Levin, an academic and anti-FGM activist, about an Irish conference “addressing FGM, child marriage, violence against women”.
“I saw the schedule, all the people who were attending, and I jumped on it,” she said.
On January 11th Garrett had a Zoom call with Collins-McCarthy.
“Sean spoke at length about the visibility we would get, the billionaire funders who would be there, the power breakfasts and special dinners they’d be at. He said he knew Richard Branson, so I thought ‘I’m there’,” she said.
The week before Christmas, Burrage, an academic and author, had also been asked to speak at the event. She too heard about the conference from Levin.
Burrage had her own call with Collins-McCarthy, who told her he wanted her as the main speaker on one of the days.
“He claimed a track record in raising money for various charitable enterprises. I didn’t check that, but I’ve never had to check out the background of people I’m working with in this field,” she said.
He had contacted other advocates, several she knew, and claimed “to know a lot of other well-known people.
“Why would we disbelieve him?” she said.
One advocate Burrage knew was Lorraine Koonce, a Paris-based international lawyer who specialised in gender rights. Like Burrage, she learned about the conference from Levin. Being advocates in the same area, they would all often speak at the same conferences.
“About a week later Sean rang, telling me members of parliament will be there, important officials,” said Koonce.
Collins-McCarthy offered to cover expenses and the cost of hotels and flights. They agreed a nominal speaker’s fee of €150, she said.
“It was only afterwards we found out he was asking these extraordinary amounts of money from other people,” she said.
Burrage, whose expenses were also covered, was unaware people were being asked sums of almost €9,000 to attend.
“This is very embarrassing – some were people I would know well and were coming because I had said I was going,” she said.
“They raised that money through their universities or foundations so now they have the extremely difficult position where they have to explain to their boards.”
Garrett agreed to attend with a Kenya-based colleague. During her call Collins-McCarthy mentioned costs of several thousands of euro per person but said he would send her a more detailed “tailored package” later.
“During the Zoom meeting I did say to him it seemed very expensive and he said the conference was across from the Dáil, in a four-star hotel,” she said.
The conference was held in Buswells Hotel, a three-star Dublin hotel.
When she asked again why it was so expensive, she said he told her: “Well, frankly, if people are going to ask us that, we really don’t want them to be there.”
“I thought, well this is a lot of money but I don’t go to international conferences a lot, so I didn’t really have any comparison,” she said.
The “tailored package” for Garrett and her colleague came to €11,868, which she sent to a company called COLHQ International Holdings Limited. This covered attendance at the conference, accommodation and meals, but not flights. With airfares, the costs rose to more than €14,000.
Dr María Viola Sánchez of Stop The Cut Now, another US-based anti-FGM foundation had a similar experience to Garrett.
An enthusiastic Zoom meeting with Collins-McCarthy in January was followed by an email from him telling her he was including her as a “panellist, speaker and moderator”. He sent on a “tailored package” for 10 days’ attendance at a cost of €8,965, excluding flights.
Sánchez declined and was offered a new price of €4,123 for seven days, which she was asked to pay immediately in full to COLHQ via a wire transfer.
“I was very uncomfortable prepaying in cash before stepping foot into Ireland,” she said.
Eager not to miss out on what she thought was a prestigious event, she paid the money and booked her flights.
For Burrage, things started to go awry as soon as she landed in Dublin Airport.
“Sean had said there would be a driver to pick me up, there wasn’t. I just got a taxi to the hotel,” she said.
For Garrett it was first thing the next morning in Buswells Hotel.
“I had booked a place at the ‘power breakfast’, this was one of the big draws for me,” she said.
“I see a room with some muffins and I’m just thinking: well, where are the billionaires? The second morning, the same thing ... we’re just left sitting there.”
For Koonce her disquiet started when the conference began.
“Hillary and I have spoken at the UN, at conferences in Geneva, when you say conference you expect an amphitheatre,” she said.
“I walked in and it was just a small room in the hotel with about 25 people. I remember thinking: where is the audience?”
As the week progressed, the women said they were filmed constantly.
Midweek, the conference transferred from Dublin to Kilkenny, to Butler House, a local hotel, and the Medieval Mile Museum.
“I couldn’t understand why he wanted us to go to Kilkenny,” Burrage says.
“He was getting people to cycle around videoing constantly, and it hit me; this isn’t an FGM event.”
She felt that it was “a tourism thing we’re being used for”.
While they enjoyed the event as a networking opportunity, as a conference, it was very far from what they were expecting.
“It was all just very odd; we were baffled by it,” says Koonce.
It was only after they returned home that more serious concerns emerged.
Burrage sent Collins-McCarthy a short polite email pointing out she had not been presented with a consent form for the filming and asking for details of how her name and the material would be used.
In a 1,300-word email he railed against “erroneous rumours” being spread about him and “loose cannon-like behaviour” by a delegate whom he said would be “suspended from attending the annual forum indefinitely” until he received a written apology.
He said the event encompassing something he called the “Michael Collins Path to Freedom Awards” was “widely considered ... a complete success” and that he was busy planning the 2025 forum.
All material filmed during the forum was “proprietary content owned by my international holding company, and by agreeing to participate in the forum all participants automatically agreed to participate in media components relating to same”, he told Burrage.
As Burrage had now “reversed” herself, he said he would have his accounts team invoice her to recoup his costs: “hotel accommodation, ground transportation, food & beverage, security, logistics, registration fee, etc”.
He ended the email by quoting the entirety of Rudyard Kipling’s poem If.
He signed off: “Sean Collins-McCarthy, Managing Director, COL Alliance; Co-founder, LINS Institute and the Cycle of Life Global Forum; Head of Partnerships & Alliances, COL-LINS Network: Horizon Initiatives; Senior Producer & Director: COL Media for Development Team.”
Burrage did not receive the invoice and has had no further contact with Collins-McCarthy.
On February 10th Garrett sent Collins-McCarthy an email reminding him she needed itemised receipts for her board of directors.
When he didn’t respond, she sent a follow-up text. He replied that he was travelling and would get back to her. He never did.
She said that, being part of a tax-exempt organisation, she needed receipts to account for her expenditure for US tax returns.
Koonce sent several messages reminding Collins-McCarthy of her speaker’s fee. As with the other women, he did not respond.
Chief among the concerns of the women who spoke to The Irish Times is that Collins-McCarthy plans to hold a similar event in 2025.
“I don’t want this to happen again,” says Garrett.
“It was totally self-serving. Why would we pay all this money to go to Dublin and only be among ourselves without an audience asking questions, journalists to share information with, in addition to philanthropists who could fund this vital work?”
Burrage is concerned about the reputational damage for speakers and the anti-FGM movement as a whole if the event is held again.
“We want people not to be fooled again,” Koonce says.
Levin, who introduced many of the attendees to Collins-McCarthy, takes a more benign view of him.
She claims he “presented his ambitions in a way that could be mistaken for fact”, says Levin, who in 1998 founded Forward-Germany, dedicated to eradicating FGM.
“He listed people who are involved in financing projects against FGM and claimed he had invited them to the conference, and presented the description of the conference in terms that could be misunderstood to say they were coming,” she says.
“On the basis of the expectation that these very wealthy funders were coming, some people agreed to pay a lot of money to attend the conference, and this is where things went very wrong.”
Levin was interviewed by Collins-McCarthy in Frankfurt in 2023 for a documentary on FGM. Although she has not seen the finished product, she has seen a trailer, which was “quite impressive”, she says.
He approached her later last year looking for names of FGM activists and organisations whom he could invite to his global forum in Dublin.
“He did not begin to organise this conference until about six weeks beforehand, and the fact that he pulled it off at all, in my eyes, is amazing,” she said.
“Given the minimal amount of time, I am shocked that not more went wrong.”
People who were asked to pay had the choice of not coming, she says, but she concedes there were “ample opportunities to misunderstand the opportunities for participants in coming”.
“I understand from the people who paid that he quoted various sums of money and they agreed, but they agreed on the understanding the investment might pay off in being exposed to deep-pocketed sponsors. I think the principal disappointment was Richard Branson didn’t come.”
There was in fact no prospect Branson would attend. The billionaire, along with several other high-profile individuals contacted by The Irish Times, had no knowledge of the event.
Branson’s representatives say he did not and would not be attending the forum and had “no connection” with Collins-McCarthy.
Representatives for Denis O’Brien say he has “no involvement with Mr Collins-McCarthy” and planned to ask for any references to O’Brien to be removed from his promotional literature or websites.
Obama, who is involved in a number of humanitarian foundations, had given no permission for her name to be used and has asked Collins-McCarthy to remove it from his website.
“I am surprised that Sean Collins is using my name to draw an audience. He interviewed me once for a film but I am yet to see the completed product,” she says.
“At no time did I agree to attend a conference of his and am not even aware of these conferences. What he is doing is wrong.”
The three were included in a “world renowned guest list” which Collins-McCarthy included in his promotional brochure of “expected” speakers for the 2024/2025 forums. Of the list of 41, 10 were in attendance in February, according to delegates interviewed by The Irish Times, but these include Levin, Burrage, Sánchez and Koonce.
A series of queries and requests for comment were submitted to Mr Collins-McCarthy by The Irish Times.
Three weeks after being sent an email seeking comment, Mr Collins-McCarthy replied by email seeking the names of people and organisations to whom The Irish Times had spoken.
In response to the queries, he said that, in advance of the forum starting, an “updated itinerary and confirmed list of guest speakers, lecturers, panellists and moderators” was circulated to delegates “which did not include Sir Richard Branson, Mr Denis O’Brien and Dr Auma Obama”.
However, he said “these individuals and their respective non-profit organisations were featured at the 2024 forum”. This was in the form of “film screenings, lectures, panel discussions or photography exhibitions”, he said.
In response to queries about high cost of participating in the conference, the “high AB socioeconomic delegates” had been charged on the basis of their “selected tailored offerings,” he said.
“At no time did any delegate (ie paying guest) request a refund (partial or whole) relating to their predetermined and requested tailored package as per their respective itineraries, which indicates that they were satisfied with their respective packages,” he said.
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