Charlene Smith
Minister of Education Kader Asmal says that Childine’s estimate that one in four school-going children under the age of 16 have been sexually violated is a national crisis.
“Sexual violence in schools must be rooted out and I will take a personal interest in this happening,” Asmal says.
His vow comes as police refuse to lay a charge against a Johannesburg teacher despite complaints from at least six schoolgirls, aged between 14 and 16, at Queens High School in Jeppe that he either raped them or made lewd suggestions to them.
The medical examination of one 14-year- old who claimed she was raped after the teacher gave her something to drink that made her “feel strange” showed that the child had been sexually violated.
The parents of the child have laid a complaint with the police.
Another 14-year-old girl told police she had an “affair” with the teacher. Sex with a child under the age of 16 is illegal and is considered statutory rape. She is refusing to co-operate with investigations for “fear that her father will beat her if he finds out”, says a police officer.
Yet another child claims the teacher had asked her if she “had ever been fingered”.
A representative of the Johannesburg child protection unit says when children refuse to make a statement or submit to a medical examination, “there is nothing we can do if they do not comply”.
The teacher, who holds a British passport, resigned from Queens High last week.
Police know of two previous schools where he taught and where there were claims of a similar nature made about him.
However, the representative of the child protection unit says police will not invest- igate similar complaints at the two other schools “until we know if [the 14-year-old from Queens High who claims she was raped] is telling the truth”.
The child is undergoing psychological testing every three weeks at the TMI Child Abuse clinic in Braamfontein, where she is asked the details of the incident repeatedly while a psychologist assesses if “she is lying”. She has attended the clinic twice.
In an interview with the Mail & Guardian the child, who sat with her arms tightly clasped across her chest, her lips firmly set and her eyes brimming with tears, said: “I’m sick of people acting as though I am lying. I hate being at school with him there. Some of the other children say to me, ‘you shagged the teacher’, but I didn’t, he raped me.”
The child’s mother said her daughter’s school marks have plummeted since the alleged incident and she has become moody and angry. “We can’t understand why the police haven’t charged him.”
Captain Edward Hutcheons, who heads the Johannesburg child protection unit, says while he personally would have charged the teacher, the investigating officer first consulted a prosecutor, who withheld the charges because the accused had brought a lawyer who said he had an alibi.
Hutcheons said the senior public prosecutor at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, Hans Wolfaardt, had further instructed use of the cautionary rule with the children. The rule, which has been discarded for adult rape victims, assumes that women and children who report rape are often unreliable.
It is under fire in South Africa and has been removed from practice in Namibia. Wolfaardt denied that he had instructed the use of the cautionary rule.
Gauteng MEC for Education Ignatius Jacobs has expressed concern about the case and Bheki Khumalo, Asmal’s representative, says, “The minister has expressed concern about violence in schools.
“The minister takes a pesonal interest in this. There is no way rape or sexual violence can take place in schools and he is determined to root it out. This is a critical element of a new collective agreement to be signed with the South African Council of Educators soon.
“The problem of sexual violence is not confined to schools: it takes place in the broader community where people live and work. In the recent incident where five teachers in Mpumalanga forced children to perform sexual acts in class, the minister was very angry and called on the Mpumalanga education MEC to take the strongest action possible.
“When the teachers received five-year sentences [each], he phoned the director of public prosecutions for the state to appeal against the five-year sentences given by the judge.”
Khumalo says sexual misconduct had to be thoroughly investigated by schools toge-ther with the police and district councils and that if necessary teachers should be suspended or dismissed – “but those against whom accusations are levelled must have the right of reply”.
He says schools are confused about guidelines from the department on how to deal with the issue of rape, sexual molestation or child abuse in schools whether among learners, educators or from the home.
“We must stop sexual misconduct but we need the support of school principals, by exposing those teachers, and if there is prima facie evidence to suspend wrongdoers.”