An Open Editorial to Royal Grand Hotel and Orange Liberia on Their Decision to Co-Sponsor the Strengthening Families Conference
JOURNALRAGE EDITORIAL BOARD · MONROVIA, LIBERIA · JUNE 2026
Sponsorship is a statement. It is not a passive act. When a company puts its logo on a banner, it is saying — to its customers, to its employees, to the communities it serves — that it endorses what that banner represents. That it has reviewed what the event is, what it does, and who is behind it, and that it has decided: this is something we want our name attached to.
Orange Liberia describes itself as Liberia’s leading telecom network service provider, delivering fast data, clear calls, wide coverage, and empowering digital life every day. On International Women’s Day 2025, Royal Grand Hotel posted publicly that it was “incredibly proud to honor and support the amazing women who contribute so much to our success and growth.”
Both companies have now placed their logos on the banner of the 8th Strengthening Families Conference.
journalRAGE is asking both of them, on the public record: have you read what you have sponsored?
THE ROOFTOP THAT ROYAL GRAND HOTEL WOULD RATHER YOU FORGET
In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2016, a young Liberian woman arrived at the Royal Grand Hotel’s rooftop bar with friends to celebrate the new year. She was waiting for her turn to be photographed when the restaurant manager of the Royal Grand Hotel — a man named Joseph Chourity — reached out from behind her and pulled at her underwear.
When she turned around, she saw Chourity directly seated behind her. She reported feeling shocked, humiliated, and embarrassed. During preliminary investigations, police said defendant Chourity admitted touching her from the back part of her body. He was charged with sexual assault in violation of Section 14.77 of the Revised Penal Code of Liberia. In a letter to the accused dated January 1, 2016, Mr. Ezzat Eid, president and chairman of the board of the Royal Grand Hotel, dismissed Chourity “on grounds of Gross Misconduct.” — Liberian Observer, January 2016
This was not a rumour. This was not a private grievance. This was a documented criminal charge, reported by the Liberian Observer and distributed by AllAfrica, on the public record for ten years.
The rooftop where this happened is called The Living Room. It is the same rooftop that Royal Grand Hotel markets to guests as a place to “celebrate life.” It is the same rooftop where Royal Grand posted in March 2025 that it was proud to honor the amazing women who contribute to its success.
After what happened on that rooftop, how does Royal Grand Hotel have the standing to put its name on a women’s empowerment conference?
THE PATTERN, NOT JUST THE INCIDENT
We are not raising the 2016 assault to relitigate a case that may have been charged and acted upon. The perpetrator was dismissed. The record exists. The law took its course.
We are raising it because it sits within a pattern. And the pattern matters.
This was not the first such incident connected to Royal Grand Hotel’s ownership. In late 2013, a female waitress of the Anglers Bar — also owned by Mr. Ezzat Eid — was assaulted by South African customers who had been drinking. The Anglers manager at the time refused to protect his staff even after one of the customers bit into the shoulder of the waitress and drew blood. When a Liberian customer confronted the men about their behavior, they insulted her too, hurling racial slurs at her. — Liberian Observer, January 2016
Two documented incidents. Two establishments under the same ownership. Two Liberian women failed on premises that Royal Grand Hotel now markets as an oasis of comfort and safety.
And now that same establishment has placed its logo on a conference banner alongside the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection — the very ministry responsible for protecting the Liberian women that Royal Grand Hotel’s own establishments have twice failed to protect.
A hotel with this record has no standing to co-sponsor a ‘family values’ conference. It has no standing to co-brand itself with women’s empowerment. And it has no standing to stand alongside a ministry whose 116 GBV hotline exists precisely to help women in situations like the ones that have unfolded on Royal Grand’s own properties.
WHAT THE CONFERENCE BANNER ACTUALLY REPRESENTS
Beyond Royal Grand Hotel’s own institutional record, both companies need to reckon with what they have actually co-sponsored.
The 8th Strengthening Families Conference is organized, funded, and directed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. This institution formally barred Black men and women from its temples and priesthood for 126 years, from 1852 to 1978. It justified that exclusion with theology that taught that Black people were cursed, less valiant in their premortal existence, spiritually inferior to white members of the same faith. It only repudiated that theology in 2013. It has never formally apologized.
Its foundational 1995 Family Proclamation — confirmed as current church doctrine — states that by divine design, fathers are to preside over families and that mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. It defines valid families as those built around a man, a woman, and children born within matrimony. Single mothers, widows, and women-led households have no place in this framework.
This is the same conference network that preceded life imprisonment legislation in Uganda, three-year prison sentences in Ghana, and a comprehensive anti-family-diversity bill in Nigeria. Liberia’s Anti-LGBTQ bill is already tabled in the House of Representatives. The cash to push it through flows after the conference closes.
That is the banner Royal Grand Hotel and Orange Liberia have chosen to put their logos on.
ORANGE LIBERIA: KNOW YOUR PARTNERS
Orange Liberia is the leading mobile operator in Liberia with over 1.6 million customers and a stated mission of being a catalyst for the digitization of Liberian society. The Orange Liberia Foundation has facilitated cervical cancer screening for 7,000 women across four counties. Orange Liberia has World Bank guarantee backing, European investors, and corporate social responsibility commitments that specifically include women’s health.
Those 1.6 million customers include hundreds of thousands of Liberian women. Women who head their own households. Women raising children alone. Women whose families look nothing like the template the conference they are now sponsoring promotes.
And Orange Liberia’s logo is on the same banner as a hotel whose rooftop was the scene of a documented sexual assault against a Liberian woman — a hotel whose chairman’s other establishment also failed to protect a female staff member from assault. These are your co-sponsors, Orange Liberia. This is whose banner you share.
Orange Liberia has international partners who fund women’s health programs. The Strengthening Families Conference is the single most powerful force currently operating in Monrovia working against women’s autonomy and health. Those two things cannot coexist on the same banner.
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR WITHDRAWAL
journalRAGE is not naive about how corporate sponsorships work. We understand that both Orange Liberia and Royal Grand Hotel may have agreed to this sponsorship without fully understanding what the conference is, who is behind it, and what comes after it. We understand that sponsorship requests often arrive through relationship networks, approved at levels below senior leadership, and that the full documented picture was perhaps not presented.
That is why we are writing this editorial before June 19, not after.
There is still time to withdraw. There is still time to issue a statement saying that after further review, the company determined its values are not aligned with this conference. International companies do this regularly. It costs far less than the reputational damage of being associated with a legislative campaign that — if the documented pattern holds — will end with a Liberian law that criminalizes the existence of some of the very people who use your network and stay in your hotel.
Royal Grand Hotel posted about honoring women in March. Its logo is now on a conference whose doctrine defines women’s primary role as domestic nurturance under male authority. A hotel where a young Liberian woman was sexually assaulted on the rooftop in 2016 has no business co-sponsoring a conference that claims to value women. And a telecom company with World Bank backing and women’s health CSR commitments has no business sharing a banner with that hotel and that doctrine.
Withdraw your logos. Both of you. Before June 19.
Because the Liberian women who use Orange Money to send funds to their families, who celebrate at Royal Grand’s rooftop, who call the 116 GBV hotline from Orange SIMs — those women are watching. And they deserve to know whether the companies they have made successful consider their safety, their dignity, and their families worth more than a sponsorship fee.
journalRAGE extends a standing offer to publish any response from Orange Liberia or Royal Grand Hotel in full, unedited, on our platform. Contact us at contact@journalrage.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an editorial representing the position of journalRAGE. The 2016 sexual assault incident at Royal Grand Hotel is on the public record, reported by the Liberian Observer and distributed by AllAfrica. The victim has not been named in this editorial in accordance with our editorial policy on survivor protection. Orange Liberia and Royal Grand Hotel were not contacted for comment before publication of this draft; standard journalistic practice requires right of reply before final publication.