Sex pest teachers bribing pupils with cash and promises of marriage to cover up their crimes
Sex pest teachers are bribing pupils with cash and promises of marriage in exchange for their help in covering up the crime by refusing to testify against them at disciplinary hearings.
The South African Council for Educators (Sace) confirmed this week that between 20 to 30 cases of sexual misconduct against teachers a year are dropped because of a lack of co-operation from both pupils and parents.
These crimes‚ which include rape and teachers having sexual relationships with pupils‚ are dismissible offences.
Besides the sexual misconduct cases that are dealt with by the nine provincial education departments‚ a total of 97 cases were reported to Sace between April 2015 and March last year. The number of cases between April last year and March has increased‚ although the figure will only be released in the annual report later this year.
Limits to offender registers preventing sex pests getting a job at schools Screening educators against South Africa's sex registers is cumbersome‚ impractical and costly‚ and is unlikely to even deliver the intended outcome‚ an expert says.
A Sace report‚ which was recently presented to Parliament‚ stated that it continued to experience delays in concluding cases due to "withdrawals by parents or their disappearance".
Sace spokesman Themba Ndhlovu said a family went to extremes recently by moving their teenage daughter‚ who was impregnated by a teacher at her school in Mpumalanga‚ to Pretoria because they did not want her to testify against him.
Pastor’s bail application: ‘Omotoso has suicidal thoughts’ On the third day of Pastor Tim Omotoso's bail application his defence attorney said his client had suicidal thoughts after he was arrested at the Port Elizabeth airport last month.
"We were about to start the hearing when they said their child is in the process of healing and she had already gone through a lot of trauma during the hearing [by the provincial Education Department] and they did not want to put her through the trauma again."
He confirmed‚ however‚ that the provincial education department's hearing could not be finalised as well because of the parents' reluctance to co-operate.
"The chances of finding this teacher guilty were very high but he got off scot-free."
Ndhlovu said they discovered that the teacher was paying the girl's father R1‚000 a month.
Officials from Sace would be visiting the family on June 5 to explain to them the implications of their actions.
He said that during its ethics committee meeting in March‚ it was revealed that five cases of teacher misconduct had been dropped.
Ndhlovu said on the eve of another disciplinary hearing against a teacher‚ the mother of the girl whom he had been sleeping with indicated that R20‚000 had been deposited into her husband's bank account and that her daughter would not be testifying.
"We had a water-tight case but the teacher is still teaching. He paid R20‚000; that's how much the child is worth to her parents."
He said they were aware of several cases of bribery involving teachers implicated in sexual misconduct.
Wessel van den Berg‚ children's rights and positive parenting unit manager at Sonke Gender Justice‚ said there was a failure in the collaboration between the Education Department and the criminal justice system "to ensure a safe and enabling environment for children to be able to report misconduct without coercion".
"We have a lot of work to do to ensure schools and the Education Department are accountable in managing teachers' conduct. But there are many good people working in the education system and the 'bad apples' tarnish their legacy."
*Meanwhile‚ the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department suspended a 33-year-old Durban teacher this week after he sent a string of sexually explicit photographs and messages to a 14-year-old pupil's cellphone.
Among the pictures that he sent to the teenager was one of himself in his underwear and another of a naked woman taking a bath.
The girl's parents reported the matter to the school on Monday after finding a lengthy text message on their daughter's phone which was written by the teacher.
TMG Digital/TimesLIVE