Witnesses testified in court this week that a senior children’s home official sexually abused several children in his charge, reports Stuart Hess
A FORMER house parent at one of the country’s most respected children’s homes appeared in court this week on charges that he raped and abused five children in his care.
James Arthur Frazer (50) allegedly touched, sucked and raped the girls at the Johannesburg Children’s Home. He pleaded not guilty.
The incidents are said to have taken place between 1992 and 1996 and involved girls aged between 10 and 12 at the time.
A girl, now 15, who stayed at the home from 1993, testified in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court that Frazer sucked her breasts and her sexual organs and also asked her to suck his genitals.
“He treated me like he cared about me more than anything else,” said the pretty blonde-haired girl.
She did not at first tell anyone because she was afraid they would not believe her. “Arthur told me to deny we had sex so that his wife would not divorce him,” she said.
She said he had threatened to send her and a friend, also an alleged victim, to an industrial school if they continued to “tell lies about him”.
Frazer was a house parent – a managerial post in which he oversaw several care workers – and the personnel manager at the home in Yeoville for four years. He was suspended on May 20 last year, in connection with the allegations. “He was dismissed from the home following a disciplinary hearing in July,” the home’s director, Muriel Farren, told the Mail & Guardian.
The home, which presently houses 64 children, was established more than 100 years ago. Its board of governors includes prominent public personalities including former Johannesburg Stock Exchange president Roy Andersen, stockbroker Humphrey Borkum, and SABC stars Adrian Steed and Sandy Ngema.
The home consists of eight cottages, each housing eight to 10 children and each with a child-care worker.
Physically, sexually or emotionally abused children, and those neglected or abandoned by parents, are placed in the home by the courts.
Frazer appeared relaxed as the testimony by the alleged victims was transmitted to the courtroom via television from a small room nearby. The room, designed to make child witnesses as comfortable as possible, has stuffed animals and bright paintings of Disney characters on the walls.
Questions from the court were relayed to the children by a social worker who sat with them throughout their testimony.
A second girl, also aged 15, said she was a close friend of the first witness. “She would tell me everything.”
She did not believe her friend when she first heard the rumours because “I had a lot of respect for Arthur”.
But she later took the rumours seriously when she saw her friend with a lot of money. Children at the home were given pocket money according to their ages, “but [my friend] always carried notes with her”.
She said that Frazer tried to “touch” her. When she refused he called her a “spoilt brat”.
A child-care worker, Juliana Hoffman, told the court that she saw Frazer with the first girl in his office. “I looked through the curtains which were about 30cm apart,” she said. The girl “was naked and lying with her back on the cabinet while he stood over her performing sexual acts”.
Hoffman, who has been at the home since December 1995, worked in the cottage where the girl lived.
“I first heard rumours about Frazer’s relationship with her at a braai in March last year,” said Hoffman. A man who also worked at the home told her “there were things going on in Arthur’s office and I would look through his window after hours”.
Hoffman said she later noticed that the girl always visited Frazer in his office after hours – at about 6pm, which was “strange because he never asked other children to come to his office”.
She said the girl always returned from the office with a gift but she also looked “very uncomfortable”. Hoffman said she did not tell anyone about the incident: “The man is the manager, who will believe us?”
She added: “I had a good working relationship with Arthur and had a lot of respect for him. He was good with children.”
The case was postponed on Wednesday until September 15.