EDITORIAL | Sexual predators at schools must be named and shamed

Teachers are said to be acting in loco parentis, a Latin phrase meaning “in the place of a parent”. This refers to the legal responsibility of a person to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent.

Besides imparting knowledge, educators are responsible for moulding and shaping young minds. They are expected to be role models and their conduct has to be beyond reproach.

Teachers are revered and held in high esteem in many communities, but sadly some of these educators are flagrantly abusing their positions of trust by having sexual relationships with pupils. A total of 167 cases of sexual misconduct involving teachers, including 49 for sexual assault, 30 for having sexual relationships with pupils and 14 for rape were reported to the SA Council for Educators (Sace) between April 2020 and July 2021. At least 11 of the 167 cases involved female teachers preying on high school boys, which Sace describes as an emerging trend.

Lifeline Pietermaritzburg, an organisation which, among other things, runs a programme on sexual reproductive health and rights at 20 schools, said it was aware of 42 schoolgirls at 12 schools in the uMgungundlovu district municipality who were involved in sexual relationships with teachers.

Our strong and impassioned plea to the police and the courts is to come down very heavily on the perpetrators of these crimes.

But what makes the brazen acts of these teachers even more abominable is that they bribe the poor parents of girls they impregnate with cash and groceries to prevent them from reporting the crimes to authorities. Desperate parents, with little or no sources of income, turn a blind eye to teachers’ sexual relationships with their daughters.

A mother of a teenage girl who was impregnated by a teacher described him as her saviour because he buys them groceries and also gives them R1,000 cash monthly. The teacher is still in a relationship with the woman’s daughter, who is repeating grade 11 after she gave birth last year. The girl’s mother vowed that she will never report the teacher because if he loses his job, “we also lose this better life”.

Ella Mokgalane, CEO of Sace, summed up the situation aptly when she said: “Parents are selling the souls of their children and this is something that is of great concern to us.” According to her, teachers are bribing parents with cash payments of between R1,000 and R15,000 to not proceed with sexual misconduct cases.

An author of cultural and spiritual works, Nokuzola Mndende, warned that the paying of damages (intlawulo in Xhosa culture) for getting a young girl pregnant should not be confused with the bribes teachers paid to families.

The Sace code of professional ethics states that educators must acknowledge the noble calling of their profession to educate pupils. According to the code, educators must refrain from improper physical contact with their charges, from courting them or from any form of sexual relationship.

In 2019, Sace made it mandatory for teachers registering for the first time with the council to produce a police clearance certificate. In April, amendments to the Employment of Educators Act made provision for educators found guilty of sexual misconduct involving a pupil to be “indefinitely prevented” from re-employment. As it stands, it is a dismissible offence for a teacher to have a sexual relationship with a pupil.

Sace, as well as the department of basic education and provincial education departments, has worked tirelessly to introduce measures to keep sex pests out of the classroom. But whether these are serving as deterrents is another question.

Our strong and impassioned plea to the police and the courts is to come down heavily on the perpetrators of these crimes. Sace sends the names of those found guilty of sexual misconduct to the department of social development for inclusion in the child protection register so that they won’t be employed to work with children again.

This is not enough. Sace should revisit the issue of naming and shaming these sexual predators who have been struck off the roll for bringing the profession into disrepute — an idea mooted in 2017. These miscreants have no place in our society, let alone in our schools.