The ever-increasing reports of sexual violence and sexual harassment in schools is becoming a major cause for concern despite the lack of accurate statistics.
According to the Human Rights Watch report dated March 2001, it was found that, “on a daily basis in schools across the nation, South African girls of every race and economic class encounter sexual violence and harassment at schools that impedes their realisation of the right to education”.
The department of basic education has compiled a handbook for learners on sexual abuse in an attempt to eradicate it. Speak Out, written by Dr Patricia Watson, Rolaball Eduscript and Julia Grey, focuses on how to prevent sexual abuse in public schools. The foreword is by Angie Motshekga, the minister of basic education.
She acknowledges that sexual abuse is becoming a major problem in public schools and emphasises the department’s commitment to eradicating it.
“As the department of basic education, we promise each one of you to honour our duty to protect and respect you while you are at school. Likewise, we promise you our full support in seeking justice if you have been the victim of sexual abuse. We invite all our schoolgoers to join this call to make our schools the places of safety and learning that we all want them to be.
“One way to do this is to speak out about any sexual harassment or violence you may know of or have experienced at school so that action can be taken to stamp out sexual abuse altogether,” she writes.
Speak Out discusses various aspects of sexual abuse in a simple, highly effective manner. The handbook looks at what sexual abuse is, explaining all the ways in which one could be sexually abused. It clearly differentiates between flirting and sexual harassment and spells out who can be sexually abused, what the law says about one’s sexual rights, tips to protect learners from becoming victims of abuse and the tell-tale signs of someone who is being sexually abused.
The clean design of the handbook, with bright, colourful visuals, attracts the reader’s attention. The text is large and reader-friendly, making it easily understandable, even for a primary school learner.
Speak Out adopts a question-and-answer style, breaking up the information into different categories to make for easy reading.
Some of the messages depicted in the visuals read: “Stop abuse! It doesn’t matter if the learner is over 16 years old! It doesn’t matter if the learner agreed to have sex with the teacher! Teachers: hands off us learners! and the law says: The teacher must be fired and should never, ever teach again!”
The handbook takes on a more personal feel with the advice of an agony aunt, giving the learner something to relate to. Included are examples of sexual misconduct to include in all schools’ codes of conduct, highlighting the level of seriousness of the offence as well as the procedures or corrective actions that could be implemented with regard to sexual misconduct.
The book wins over the trust of learners by including a personal story of a learner who was sexually abused and how the child handled the situation. This is, indeed, something a learner who is being abused would relate to and would be encouraged to speak out.
Speak Out places a great deal of emphasis on the duty teachers have to stop sexual abuse as well as the seriousness of the situation if a teacher is involved in sexual abuse. Contact details for reporting teachers who break the law are included.
The handbook goes the extra mile in giving learners the confidence to report abuse by explaining the procedure of events that will take place when reporting abuse, eliminating the fear of the unknown in the learner. In addition to this, a letter template is included for reporting abuse as well as a contact list of relevant numbers for learners to call if they ever find themselves victims of abuse.
The book ends with a glossary of words to know regarding sexual abuse.