Justice fails pupils falling prey to teachers
Sace has a caseload of 1 327 with 27% relating to sexual misconduct
The wheels of justice are turning slow for pupils who are victims of sexual harassment by teachers and school employees as caregivers such as adults, authorities and bodies charged with ensuring their safety fail to protect them.
A senior attorney in the education rights programme at Section 27, Zeenat Sujee, representing two siblings, said justice was yet to be served against the caretaker of a school in the North West, facing charges of raping one child and sexually assaulting the other. The rape took place in 2015 and the sexual assault in 2017.
The caretaker was only investigated and found guilty of sexually assaulting the siblings by a disciplinary inquiry of the department of education following Section 27’s intervention at the request of the Teddy Bear clinic seven years after the first abuse took place.
The caretaker is out on bail.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union general secretary Mugwena Maluleke said the sexual abuse of pupils by educators is a national crisis.
Asked what role the union plays in ridding schools of teachers who prey on children, he said in addition to education and awareness campaigns, the union rescinds memberships of teachers who faced charges of sexual misconduct against pupils.
“Last year, two memberships were rescinded in Limpopo and three in Kwazulu-natal,” he said” In Eastern Cape it was 12 members the year before [2020]”.
The registration body for teachers, the South African Council of
Education (Sace), investigated less than half of the cases reported to it last year. The latest Sace annual report reveals that it had a caseload of 1 327 with 25% of the cases relating to sexual misconduct of teachers.
“In 2021/2022 764 new cases of educator misconduct [were] reported as compared to 443 in 2020/2021 … Plus 563 cases rolled over from the previous financial year/s,” it says in the report.
“Of the 443 cases of educator misconduct cases reported in the 2020/2021,
Registration body for teachers said less than half of the cases reported to it were investigated last year
255 were received at the end of February 2021,” it says in its report.
Of this number only three disciplinary cases were investigated, citing Covid-19 disruptions as the cause.
“This denied justice to the same children escalated the number of roll-over cases into the new financial year by 440,” Sace told parliament in November last year when it presented its annual report.
On only managing to investigate less than half of the 1 374 cases last year, Sace cited budgetary and human resources constraints, saying it had R4-million allocated budget, seven staff members and limited contracted panellists.