New sex taunt hits posh Durban school

ONE of Durban’s premier private schools is in hot water after one of its pupils — a star water polo player and senior prefect — sent a sexually explicit post to the team’s WhatsApp group about a teammate’s sister.

The Clifton prefect posted a picture of his teammate’s sister to their “closed” group, suggesting that her boyfriend’s Instagram adoration was only an effort to have anal sex with her.

This social media scandal comes on the back of another sexually demeaning incident at the school last year, when a pupil posted some lyrics from the Dr Dre song Medicine Man, “I even make the bitches I rape cum”, as a caption to an Instagram post.

These incidents have raised concern about Clifton’s soft handling of these types of cases. The offending pupil in the Dr Dre scandal remains at the school after a brief period of suspension last year, while the water polo player relinquished his title as prefect and his place on the water polo team.

The prefect’s father said his son was “extremely remorseful”.

“The young lady concerned contacted my son and we were grateful for the mature attitude in which she responded and that she understood that the comment was banter among boys.

“My son is an exceptional boy liked and respected by his peers and teachers. He made a mistake and has had to deal with the consequences.”

The school considers the matter closed — sealed with the written apology of the pupil. He had posted a message about his team member’s picture of the teammate and his girlfriend, saying he “must be eyeing anal with graft that hard”.

The girl’s brother, still a pupil at the school, is understood to have been victimised as “a snitch” in the wake of the prefect’s resignation.

The children involved in the incident cannot be named.

The father of the girl, when approached by the Sunday Times, said he had approached the school to shield his children. “Obviously everything that I have done is to protect my kids because they are taking a lot of flak for this. You can imagine what the rumour mill is like at a private school, and this is obviously doing the rounds; I just want this matter to go away,” he said.

He wanted the school to act against the former prefect, but the punishment had to fit the crime.

“This weighs very heavily on me and on my family. Obviously we wanted ac-

This is obviously doing the rounds; I just want this matter to go away

tion to be taken, but you don’t want things to be so heavy-handed that you ruin a child’s life over something like this. I think they have dealt with the matter pretty sternly,” the father said.

Clifton headmaster Brian Mitchell said the school did not condone the post.

“We have accepted his resignation from his leadership positions . . . no further disciplinary sanctions are necessary and he has apologised to the family and to the school. In all disciplinary matters we seek to ensure that remedial actions result in life lessons being learnt and in this case we believe that this has been achieved,” he said.

Children’s rights co-ordinator for Sonke Gender Justice, Wessel van den Berg, said educators had to equip children to understand sexual consent.