by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jun 5, 2025 | Child Abuse, Children’s Online World, Missing and Trafficked Children
The advent of the internet has put predators into children’s pockets, and many use a classic child sexual abuse playbook. With ease of access to children online, anonymity, the speed and intensity at which online relationships progress, secrecy, careful grooming and vicious, prolonged attacks on children’s identity and belonging, the question is not how this crime occurred, but rather how many other children are affected whose stories we will never know?
It’s a parent’s worst nightmare: the phone call warning that the 16-year-old boy who befriended your daughter online, who told her he was en route from the UK to visit her, is an adult man with international warrants out for his arrest. Worse, he was already in the country.
The story reads like the script of a Hollywood movie – a teenage girl rescued minutes before she was sexually abused and trafficked out of the country. It’s a narrative made more shocking because it didn’t happen to a high-risk child from a vulnerable family. The victim was a normal South African teen from a middle-class home with loving and involved parents who had done everything possible to keep her safe.
It isn’t fiction. The advent of the internet has put predators into children’s pockets, and many use an archetypal child sexual abuse playbook. Through ease of access to children online, the anonymity of online contact, the speed and intensity at which online relationships progress combined with secrecy, careful grooming, vicious and prolonged attacks on children’s self-esteem while they are desperate for identity and belonging, and often with the support and financial backing of organised crime, 10 cases of online child sexual abuse and exploitation are reported to occur globally every second.
Multinational investigation
In September 2022, a combined team of homeland security, the Hawks and Interpol, along with anti-trafficking organisation Hope Risen were frantically working behind the scenes to keep UK citizen Adam Qasim Lucas Habib from abducting, raping and trafficking 15-year-old Sam*, the South African girl he had been corresponding with on Omegle, Snapchat and WhatsApp for more than a year, and who he was due to visit within days.
Unbeknown to them though, Habib was already in the country. Always one step ahead, he booked into his hotel two days before the due date on the fake ticket he had sent to her parents. Without luggage, he warned the hotel staff not to disturb him and requested no room service. That night, he allegedly purchased the services of a 13-year-old prostitute, sold to him by her parents.
On the other side of town, Sam, the only one who knew that he had arrived in the country early, began to implement her boyfriend’s carefully constructed plan. For months she had sat with her parents practising drawing a beard and moustache on her face with make-up, covering her hair with a hoodie and expertly transforming herself into a young man. It was done in plain sight of her family, a seemingly innocent pastime to which they imbued no sinister meaning.
Sam had also established a regular habit of going to the gym beneath the luxury apartment block where she lived with her parents and older brother. She’d usually be there for about an hour, more than enough time to meet the boy she was desperately in love with and disappear without a trace.
On that fateful Thursday evening, she planned to meet Habib at the gym. It was the day before Habib’s “mother”, a fake persona he had created to appease Sam’s parents, had told them he was arriving in South Africa.
Read more: Childhood in crisis
When Sam’s mom collected her from school, Sam asked if she would be home by 5pm because that was when she would be going to gym. None the wiser, it would have been an hour and a half before her parents realised she was missing, and by then she would have been long gone.
But at the last minute the plan began to unravel. The catalyst was a chance conversation at an anti-trafficking convention held by South African authorities with their foreign counterparts the week that Habib arrived in the country. During supper on the final night of the conference, a South African agent mentioned that they had a live case in play where the suspect was a UK citizen.
Alert to the potential threat, the UK agent did some digging on his return to the UK. It was he who discovered that Habib was not a child but an adult male in his late twenties, that he had been in juvenile detention in the UK, that he was wanted in both the UK and the US and, most concerningly, that he was already in South Africa.
What followed was a frantic attempt to keep Sam safe, made harder because Sam did not think she was in danger.
At the point at which her parents were notifying her school of a possible kidnap situation, staging an intervention with the senior Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) investigating officer who threatened to arrest Sam for possession of child pornography if she did not hand over her device and passwords, and authorities were putting in plans to arrest Habib, Sam still believed that he was her 16-year-old boyfriend and that they were in love.
Textbook grooming
It was an illusion that Habib had carefully cultivated for more than a year.
Sam was just 14 years old when she first tried Omegle. Like many others her age, her life had been railroaded by Covid, forcing her online and devolving her friendship groups and quest for belonging into the microcosms of online communities.
She’d done the safety talk at school warning that Omegle, the now-defunct (but resurrected in multiple other applications) online video chat site that randomly paired users with other users from across the world was dangerous, attracting predators, and infamous for close-ups of masturbating men and couples having sex on camera. But her friends were all on Omegle and peer pressure and curiosity finally won over caution. Given all the warnings, she felt like she had hit the jackpot when Omegle paired her with Adam Habib, a handsome 16-year-old boy from the UK.
Nevertheless, she felt uncomfortable on the site and begged him to move across to Snapchat instead. When he was finally persuaded, the price he extracted was for her to stick out her tongue on camera. Innocent as she was, she had no idea that he had a tongue fetish or that after his camera suddenly went dark, the sound she could hear was him masturbating.
Little is known about the first six months of their relationship but it seems that he was initially very attentive and romantic. He used affirmation and gifts to break down her barriers, including the airtime that enabled her to speak to him late at night, concealing her activities by placing a bathroom towel at the threshold of her door to block the light, and listening closely to the footsteps down the hall. As her parents attest, she became an expert at hiding her secret online habit and at identifying which parent was coming down the passage while she was speaking to Habib.
Read more: Survival stories – readers share their experiences of child abuse
But slowly the relationship began to deteriorate. Using a textbook grooming playbook, Habib moved from meeting an important need in Sam’s life, and flooding her with gifts and compliments, to control, isolation and abuse. He alienated her from her family, keeping her up until all hours so she was perpetually exhausted, tearful and not coping at school. He gained access to all of her social media accounts and passwords to keep track of her relationships and movements, and began grooming her friends.
Then, after he had extracted a promise that she “would never speak to other boys”, he hacked one of her male friend’s accounts. When she innocently messaged the friend, Habib revealed that it was him using the account and accused her of cheating.
He began punishing her. The conversations became more and more abusive. Gone were the romantic words. Instead he bullied and body-shamed her, mocking her body and face and calling her a slut, a whore and “only good for the streets”, gradually chipping away at her self-esteem.
Months later when her anxious father hacked her Snapchat account he came across a tirade of misogynistic abuse. When he asked Sam why she allowed Habib to speak to her like that, she said that she deserved it because of her unfaithfulness.
At the same time, the exchanges became more and more sexual. Habib explained in explicit detail what he would like to do with her when they finally met, sent her pornographic images and made her masturbate and perform oral sex and anal sex on herself using a hairbrush while he watched and masturbated.
His conversations with this 14-year-old-child, which included references to oral and anal sex, orgasms, his tongue fetish, tying her up, raping her like “a bad little slut” and taking her virginity whether she consented or not, were so graphic and so vulgar that his advocate refused to read them into record during the trial.
He also manipulated her into sexting and sending him nudes. It was at this point that Sam finally confessed to her mother that she had “done something” and that she was worried.
‘I met a boy’
Sam’s parents, Rob and Linda*, had been concerned about Sam’s behaviour for months, as she had become more withdrawn, anxious and angry. Arguments with her mom, who had previously been her confidant, had increased, and she was tearful and exhausted. But, they had attributed her changed behaviour to her being a teen, so her confession took Linda by surprise.
Trying to remain calm, Linda asked her what she had done and how bad she thought it was. She ascertained that Sam had met “a boy” online and sent him naked pics of her torso. Sam said that they were in love but also that he was being nasty and had made her cry.
When Sam’s parents asked her why she accepted the belittling, she told them that “relationships online are different”. They tried to prove it wasn’t normal, but she’d push them out of her room when she was talking to Habib, and wouldn’t let them speak to him. Nevertheless, she’d often end conversations in tears and then regret her transparency.
When Habib chatted to Sam live he used an emoji filter to mask his identity so Rob and Linda were increasingly convinced that he was a “catfish”. Worried that he may be a jihadist or an extortionist, Rob began digging, but could find nothing on him.
Then in Easter 2022, when the family planned a trip away, Sam insisted she wouldn’t go. At the last minute, one of Sam’s friends tipped off Rob and Linda that Habib was in the country and Sam was planning to travel to meet him at his hotel while they were away. Horrified, Rob drove her to Montecasino to find him. When his accommodation details proved to be false, they took it as proof that he didn’t exist and that their nightmare was over.
Their euphoria was short-lived though. Hours later he sent Sam a picture of himself standing next to the Easter Bunny at the Pick n Pay downstairs from their apartment.
Suddenly, he was not only real but a stone’s throw away from their daughter. Defying the advice of a top social media attorney to “lock her up for six months and take away her phone”, and in a bid to not lose Sam, the family staked him out and then let Habib and Sam meet in public places under supervision.
It was clear almost immediately that something wasn’t right. On two occasions when Habib (who concealed his age) was with Sam, older patrons flagged his behaviour, confronting him about the way he spoke to her and his unwillingness to accept her turning down his advances.
Frustrated at not being alone with Sam, Habib extended his trip, explaining that his family was waiting for him in Cape Town. Before he left, he begged Sam’s mom to let the two of them spend time on their own. It was a request Sam’s parents adamantly refused.
In the months that followed, Habib redoubled his efforts to meet Sam alone. He even created a mother persona who did her best to persuade Rob and Linda that the children were in love and that they would be bad parents if they stood in the way. Habib’s “mother” had a 30-minute video call with Rob and Linda, begging them to allow Habib to visit again. They finally agreed to let him come in September 2022.
Read more: Gaps in the safety net — breaking down state and societal protections for children
It was here that Habib’s plan went wrong. His “mother” inadvertently disclosed to Linda that she had never been to Cape Town, undermining his story that his parents had been with him in South Africa. “She” further agreed to send through a copy of his passport.
Although the date of birth and ID number were blanked out, the barcode was still visible, which was how authorities were finally able to uncover his age, record and movements. The family were also given the contact details of Tabitha Lage from Hope Risen.
Lage described how during her first meeting with Sam, the two of them sat in silence for a whole hour as Sam angrily refused to speak to her. But then the floodgates opened.
At Lage’s behest, Sam persuaded Habib to move their conversation to WhatsApp which allowed the family to capture evidence (the final three months of their relationship alone produced 2,596 pages of WhatsApps). This had been impossible on Snapchat because of the disappearing messages, and because Habib received notifications when their messages were screenshotted, sending him into an apoplectic rage.
No remorse
By the time September and the planned second visit arrived, Sam was exhausted from sleepless nights, overwrought from the ongoing barrage of vitriol and abuse, failing at school, and worn down, with her self-esteem in tatters. She would later confess that she felt like it was too late to turn back.
Everything was poised for what could have been the day she was trafficked. But then came the police breakthrough, the confiscation of her phone and the intervention that had her in a conference room with the FCS unit of the police, rather than at the gym ready to meet Habib.
Instead of feeling grateful though, Sam was devastated. The following day, as she sat with her relieved parents in a restaurant downstairs from their apartment watching the Springboks play rugby, she became more and more anxious until at half-time Rob decided they should leave.
Minutes later, his phone began to ping as the restaurant manager, who knew the family well, and who had been given Habib’s picture, alerted him that Habib was metres away from their apartment, retracing his steps from the March visit in a frenzied attempt to find Sam.
Although he came terrifyingly close to tracking her down, it proved to be his undoing.
Even after his arrest, he still had a hold over Sam. Managing to contact her while in prison, he threatened to punish Lage and Sam’s parents. She was so certain that he would harm them that she begged him to rather kill her than hurt them.
At trial, he showed no remorse or recognition that he had done anything wrong.
Finally, more than two years after his arrest, Adam Qasim Lucas Habib was found guilty of human trafficking, production and possession of child pornography, grooming, compelled self-sexual assault, compelling a child to witness sexual offences, flashing and sexual assault. On 4 March 2025, he was sentenced to an effective 40 years in prison. Having already served three, he is facing another 13 years of incarceration.
The Johannesburg High Court judgment was landmark because it reinforced that the Trafficking in Persons (TiP) Act doesn’t require children to be moved in order for them to be trafficked.
Judge Coertse provided a thorough breakdown of the Act, showing that if any of the following criteria were fulfilled, it would constitute trafficking: “any person who delivers, recruits, transports, transfers, harbours, sells, exchanges, leases or receives another person.”
He agreed that the prosecutor had proven that Sam was recruited for sexual exploitation. The judge further explained that Habib had used an “abuse of vulnerability” to recruit her, leading her to believe that she had no other option than to submit to exploitation.
But despite the victory in court, Sam, just months away from becoming an adult, has been significantly scarred by her experience. Captain Botha from the FCS unit testified at Habib’s trial that Sam had suffered from child sexual abuse syndrome, presenting with the five classic signs of secrecy, helplessness, entrapment and accommodation, delayed, conflicting and unconvincing disclosure, and retraction.
Habib’s grooming, which isolated her, met a felt need, created a shared secret, sexualised their relationship and then wore her down through cruelty and control, had altered her self-perception, evident in the way she continued to love and support him despite what he had done – according to Lage, a form of Stockholm syndrome.
Educating children
While Sam’s experience is unique, it is not uncommon. According to Childlight, more than 300 million children are victims of online child sexual abuse and exploitation every year.
Prevention requires tech companies to place children’s wellbeing over profit and for governments to use legislation to prohibit or at least delay children from accessing harmful platforms including social media and gaming platforms where predators can access them. For worried parents, the changes are coming too slowly.
In response, many are delaying access to devices, something Sam endorses for her future children.
In addition, educating children about grooming and online exploitation, and keeping open lines of communication wherever possible, are key to safety because even when authorities and families successfully collaborate to protect a child, there are no fairytale endings in child sexual abuse cases. For Sam and her family, healing and recovery may be a long and painful journey.
One in eight children has been affected by online solicitation. If you or a family member have been affected by online child sexual abuse and exploitation, contact Childline for assistance on 116.
If you want to report an electronic crime, contact Crime Stop on 086 000 10111 and ask to speak to the Serial Electronic Crime (SECI) Unit.
Concerned parents who want to delay access to smart devices can join the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. For more information about how this crime affects South African children and the legislative reforms needed to keep our children safer, read “Government initiatives to protect children from online harms may be too little, too late”.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 05.06.2025
*Names changed to protect their identities
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jun 3, 2025 | Child Abuse
In a 2008 study, 41% of boys who had been sexually abused reported that their perpetrator was a woman. No such stats exist for girls but research on female perpetrators shows that like boys, girls can be abused by female family members, educators, and even domestic workers. Secret, unacknowledged, and often unprosecuted, female perpetration against children is a huge unspoken crime.
When children attend our grooming awareness workshops, the first thing we ask is if they can identify a predator. They’re given images of people of different genders, races, ages, professions and socioeconomic groups to rank from “most likely to groom and sexually abuse children”, to “least likely”. The goal is to demonstrate that they can’t identify predators based on outward appearances. It always results in lively debate, though, and their choices are instructive.
When they give feedback about who they think is the most obvious predator, only a handful of children choose women, and then usually the woman who looks like she has lived a rough life, or the teacher because of her easy access to children.
There is only one image that no child has ever chosen. It is the image of the gentle looking domestic worker cuddling a pre-schooler. This disbelief that women, and specifically the women closest to us, can be predators is one of the reasons that many operate with impunity.
It is also what kept Beth Amato quiet for decades.
It has been 35 years since Beth was first abused. The daughter of a mother struggling with her mental health, whose work took her out of the home, often late at night, her parents outsourced care for their pre-school twins to their cherished nanny Florence*.
Taking on the role that Beth’s mentally ill and overwrought mother could not manage, she became indispensable almost immediately, and an integral part of the family. Whatsapp messages written by Beth’s mother many years later identified Florence as her most trusted confidante, “the only person”, she stated, who “understood” her.
The texts Beth’s mother sent to Florence after she left the family’s employment expressed how much she loved and missed her.
Beth also adored Florence when she was young but vividly remembers the moment when everything changed. It was a normal bath time until her nanny instructed her twin brother to get out of the bath. Leaving Beth in the bath, Florence dried and dressed him. When the little boy finally left the room, her nanny began to fondle and rub Beth’s genitals. Despite only being five at the time, Beth remembers that she didn’t like it.
Before she got out of the bath Florence told her not to tell anyone and that no one would believe her anyway. “It’s between us girls,” Florence said.
The abuse continued over a period of a year and then abruptly stopped. From that moment, Florence transferred her affections to Beth’s twin, cruelly isolating and rejecting the small girl.
Despite her young age, Beth personalised the abuse, caught in shame and self-blame. Experiencing her body as an unsafe place, she developed an eating disorder in her teen years, trying to use her weight to create a barrier around her body, attempting to keep herself safe from unwanted sexual advances. But her efforts were in vain and the early sexualisation led to further abuse, promiscuity but also the tormenting belief that no one would ever find her attractive.
For years she concealed what had happened. At 19 when she finally disclosed the abuse to her beloved father, his response was: “Beth, a woman does not sexually abuse children.” Her dad was nonetheless supportive in later years. But Florence continued to work for Beth’s family for 12 years despite their full knowledge of what she had done.
It took Beth much longer to tell her mom, and for good reason. When she finally did, her mother was incredulous, suggesting they call Florence in to hear her side of the story. Not wanting to confront the abuse with her abuser, Beth refused. But her mother’s enduring faith in Florence was confirmed by those devastating texts that she sent to her years after Beth first disclosed the abuse.
Although Beth only discovered these texts after her mother’s untimely death, they corroborated the message Florence’s continued presence in her parent’s home had telegraphed. Florence had been right, her mother, the person most responsible for her care, safety and wellbeing, did not believe that Beth had been abused.
Her abuser continued to work for her parents until she retired when Beth was 31. She had been employed by Beth’s parents for 27 years. Twenty six of those years were after she first abused their daughter. To date, she has not been held accountable.
Abuse at home
Like Beth, Martin Pelder’s abuse took place predominantly in the bath. Decades later, he can still describe his childhood bathroom in minute detail. From the blue fluffy towels and bath mat, to the Hitashi washing machine, the shape of the mirror, to the smell of the Colgate apple shampoo and the Lux soap.
Most of all, he remembers the scratching sound that the latch made when his abuser used a coin or a key to open the door he had so carefully locked, the fear he felt, and running his bath water earlier and earlier to try to avoid being in the bath when she came home from work.
But somehow she always knew. Nor could he escape, because Martin’s abuser was his own mother.
Martin, who has spoken extensively in public about his experiences, describes how she would push open the locked bathroom door and take off her shirt. She’d scrub his back with a rough cloth or brush until it was raw and close to bleeding, then scrub behind his ears, always saying the same thing, “we don’t want you to grow cabbages here”. These banal activities belied what always followed, the molestation, his mother washing and playing with his genitals, seemingly amused by his resultant erection.
The terrifying baths his mother gave him when he was eight or nine are forever etched in his memory. Vaguer are the memories of her curly head performing oral sex on him when he was about five or six.
The last time his mother, who also beat him physically, hurt him was when he was 18. By then he was six foot three inches tall but she still slapped him for visiting his father who was estranged from her. Although she weighed over 20kg more than him, Martin remembers picking her up, holding her at arm’s length and putting her down on the bed so she couldn’t hit him any more.
She never tried to hurt him again. But it was her voice he heard in his head when at 16 he lined his motorbike up with a concrete bridge pylon.
“You’ll mess it up,” her voice mocked. He imagined himself surviving but lying helpless and forever changed in hospital. In torment, he chose not to kill himself.
Although he did not die that day, his mother’s abuse, which she has consistently denied, left him sexualised, aggressive and misogynistic, and triggered decades of abuse at the hands of other perpetrators, both female and male, and years of substance abuse at his own hands.
It even subsumed the joy when his baby daughter was born — at the time the highlight of his young and troubled life. Overwhelmed with love for her, he clearly remembers standing changing her nappy and hearing the devil on one shoulder telling him that he would put his fingers into her tiny vagina and assault her, even as the angel on the other told him he loved her and would never hurt her.
Fearful that the angel was wrong, he withdrew emotionally from his much-anticipated child, just in case.
In the decades that followed, Martin, like Beth, had to fight for his own healing. His mother, now 92, has never been held accountable for the abuse.
The myth that only men abuse
Experts who have studied female sexual abusers of children believe that lack of consequence is probably the norm, despite the crime being far more prevalent than is commonly understood.
A 2008 South African study on the sexual abuse of boys found that of the almost 130,000 males surveyed, approximately 40% had been forced to have sex by the age of 18. Of those, 41% had been sexually abused by female perpetrators and 26% had been forced to have sex by both male and female perpetrators.
There are no commensurate South African studies on girl victims of female perpetrators. The crimes are also frequently underreported because of shame, and because many in authority, like Beth’s dad, don’t believe that women can sexually abuse children.
Nonetheless, the study belies the myth that only men abuse. Instead, it confirms global figures cited by one of the few South African academics to study female perpetrators, Dr Sherianne Kramer, which suggest that as many as one in four children are abused by female perpetrators.
Kramer explains that we are reluctant to acknowledge female paedophilia, defined as sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, or that women may have agency to act on those desires and the ability to operate independently, rather than as an accomplice to a man.
The two biggest hinderances to recognition of these crimes are that women are generally seen as nurturing and maternal and therefore incapable of sexual transgression, especially against vulnerable children, and that because women don’t have a penis, they are seen as incapable of penetrative sexual abuse, and other forms of abuse are seen as “less serious”.
However, the South African Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and related matters Amendment Act, 2007) broadened the definition of rape to include unlawful and intentional penetration of the mouth, anus or genital organs with an object or any part of the body; and sexual assault to include any unwanted sexual act or behaviour including touching, groping, fondling, or any form of sexual coercion or intimidation. Sexual grooming is also a criminal offence.
Both Beth and Martin’s stories graphically illustrate that their abusers used the role of nurturer as access to abuse them, and that even in the absence of genital penetration, the impact of the abuse on their lives was catastrophic.
Kramer found that South African practitioners and the general populace are also reluctant to accept that female sexual offenders often prey on very young children. This reality has recently been highlighted in the horror case of Nada-Jane however, the four-year-old girl sexually assaulted and murdered, allegedly by her father’s partner and former pre-school teacher, Amber Lee Hughes.
Hughes is currently on trial for the rape and murder of the child. According to National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane: “The accused allegedly raped the deceased by inserting an unknown object in her private parts, it is also alleged that she drowned her… Her lifeless body was later found floating in the bathtub.”
‘Mrs Robinson’ narrative
While the general populace is more willing to acknowledge female predation on adolescent boys, the so-called “Mrs Robinson” narrative, many people believe it is the ultimate teenage boy’s fantasy. The result is that those victims who recognise that they’ve been abused and are brave enough to report it, often have the crime trivialised or the impact minimised.
This is particularly common with female teachers who victimise their pupils.
It was evident in South Africa’s most notorious case of sexual abuse by a female teacher, former Bishop’s College History teacher and waterpolo coach Fiona Viotti. Viotti’s school found her guilty of sexual misconduct with five boys between 2013 and 2019 after she had sexual intercourse with the pupils and exposed them to pornographic images.
Despite her having been in a position of power over the boys she abused, and her former school having reported her to the police and South African Council of Educators for investigation of the crimes, the response of the public ranged from salacious “atta boys” to an outpouring of sympathy for her.
Comments such as, “wish she was my teacher at school” and “where can I get extra lessons” along with Big Blue’s distasteful “Waterpolo Teacher’s Pet” T-shirts trivialised and ridiculed the boys’ experience as victims, while Facebook pages entitled “We stand with Fiona Viotti” and “Fiona Viotti is the greatest teacher ever” portrayed her as vulnerable, wronged and misunderstood.
Partly because of the public’s reaction, which compounded the harm to the boys involved, portraying them as instigators, benefactors or equally complicit, parents of the victims would not allow their names to be given to the police or for the South African Council of Educators to interview them. The case could not proceed as a result.
To date, Viotti hasn’t experienced any legal or criminal consequences for her actions.
But Viotti’s isn’t an isolated case. Female sexual predators are prevalent in South African schools. Commonly reported grooming behaviour includes accessing changing rooms, one-on-one time with children behind closed doors, physical boundary violations such as stroking, massaging, kissing and back rubs, private messaging, inappropriate attire, allowing pupils to access exam papers or use contraband to create a shared secret, sending naked or sexualised images or videos, and exposing children to pornography.
International examples
While most of these South African cases have yet to be prosecuted, cases from the US and the UK illustrate what can happen when we ignore female sexual predators. Few are as instructive and troubling as that of Mary Kay Letourneau.
Letourneau first met her victim Vili Fualaau when he was eight years old.
Four years later, she began a sexual relationship with him. When she was arrested for felony second degree rape, she was already six months pregnant with Fualaau’s child. Her seven-and-a-half-year sentence was commuted to six months with three suspended provided she sever all ties with Fualaau. But, shortly after her release, she was re-arrested for continuing to have sex with him. Her full sentence was reinstated and during her imprisonment she gave birth to a second child fathered by Fualaau.
After her second incarceration, she and Fualaau, by then an adult, applied to get the no-contact order revoked. The two married nine years after she first began abusing him.
Letourneau died from colon cancer aged 58. In an interview with 7News shortly before her death, journalist Matt Doran, who described their relationship as arguably the most extended case of child sexual abuse, asked them how it began. Letourneau insisted that at 12, Vili had “initiated the relationship”. She forced Fualaau to reluctantly state publicly that he had pursued her and seduced her. She took no responsibility for raping him despite being a teacher in authority over him, married with four children and 22 years his senior.
The Letourneau case highlights a weakness in the US legal system also evident in South Africa. Fualaau’s abuser was sentenced for second degree rape because of Fualaau’s age and her supervisory role over him, not for rape. This legal negation of the crime’s impact is mirrored in South Africa where female predators are often prosecuted for consensual sex with a minor child (previously called statutory rape), rather than rape. This despite the Sexual Offences Act stating that consent is not possible if the victim is groomed, persuaded to give consent, or the victim of an abuse of power or authority.
Moreover, in South Africa, those found guilty of consensual sex with a minor child often receive a suspended sentence. And this, along with the disbelief that female sexual abuse is possible, and damaging, may be why Kramer’s studies and those of another researcher Dr Beba Papakyriakou revealed that only a small number of women offenders are arrested and incarcerated.
Lifting the veil
Those who are arrested or who confess abuse in a therapeutic environment typically don’t see themselves as criminals, but as maternal, passive, vulnerable, victimised and innately virtuous. Offender studies confirm that female perpetrators rarely if ever believe that they have done something wrong. When reflecting on the effect of their crime, they showed little or no empathy, focusing on the impact on themselves, not the victim.
None of the perpetrators the researchers interviewed believed that they were guilty of a crime.
According to Papakyriakou, this is reinforced by the criminal justice system. While male offenders of child sexual abuse are identified when they are incarcerated, women are classified more broadly as “child abusers”. This also means that programmes focused on behaviour change and restorative justice are not targeted towards sexual abuse.
The offenders’ perspective that they are victims who have done nothing wrong, and the lack of targeted interventions for the handful of women who confess or are convicted and incarcerated could also explain why some female perpetrators reoffend.
Kramer and Papakyriakou’s research found that like male perpetrators, paedophilia in females and the sexual abuse of older children often results from trauma in early childhood, difficulties with intimacy and self-esteem, and control issues.
Female child molesters are virtually indistinguishable from the general population, but they share a high incidence of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in their histories. Women for example, who abused children without male collusion were more likely to have been severely molested before the age of 10. The women’s relationships with their mothers were also found to be problematic, with physical and psychological abuse present in nearly all the relationships, resulting in poorer self-esteem.
Crucially, Kramer highlighted the invisibility of female paedophiles because “society doesn’t expect females to commit this crime. A woman touching a child is more likely to be excused or rationalised or ignored than a man touching a child inappropriately.”
Papakyriakou concurs that the crime needs to be more broadly recognised, policed, prosecuted and therapeutically addressed if there is to be a meaningful impact on the incidence.
The starting point is the validation of the experience of victims, compilation of statistics to show how many boys and girls have been sexually abused by women, and high-level prosecutions, not for so-called lesser crimes such as consensual sex with a minor, but for rape, sexual grooming of a child, exposing a child to pornography, flashing (exposure or display of genital organs, anus or female breasts to children), and compelled self-sexual assault.
For this to occur, authorities and society need to accept that women can be victims and perpetrators, that a penis is not a prerequisite for sexual assault, and most importantly, that the consequences of sexual assault are the same for the victim whether the perpetrator is male or female.
Until we do, schools, sports facilities, communities and country clubs will be strewn with victims of these undisclosed crimes, and sexual abuse by women will continue to be the hidden backstory behind many children’s eating disorders, substance abuse, misogyny, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, violence and even suicide.
It’s time to lift the veil of secrecy and challenge the myth that women can’t sexually abuse children, and to include prevention of female perpetration in our safeguarding strategies. Failing that, our violence prevention strategies will be incomplete and women will continue to sexually abuse children with impunity.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 03.06.2025
*Not her real name.
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jan 29, 2025 | Child Abuse
On 5 November 2024, the second anniversary of Julio Mordoh’s suicide, civil summonses were served on his alleged abuser; his former school and principal, on the secure facility where he died; on the doctor tasked with his care; and on interested parties including the Anglican church and Department of Education. For his grieving parents, the goal is simple — accountability.
is January, millions of parents dressed their children in their school uniforms, took back-to-school pictures and waved them goodbye as they started the new school year. In so doing, they acted on the expectation that their child’s school will be in loco parentis, safeguarding their children as they themselves would.
But what happens when children aren’t kept safe by their educators and coaches, and when the school tasked with stopping the harm fails in its duty of care?
According to the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC), in the 18 months from April 2023 to October 2024, 65 educators in South Africa were fired for sexual misconduct, prompting the disturbing News24 headline, Teachers are not meant to turn pupils into lovers.
Despite the 65 being reported to the Department of Social Development to be listed on the National Child Protection Register as persons deemed unfit to work with children, only 16 educators were deregistered by the South African Council of Educators (SACE), the registering body for educators.
Without deregistration, the upshot is that some of those fired educators may continue teaching, possible because the child protection register is notoriously out of date and not all schools have recent form 29s for their staff.
But even if educators are listed on the register, they could still be providing private extra lessons, music lessons or sports coaching because parents cannot access the register to check on a potential educator’s status.
Even more alarmingly, the ELRC said that while it is the Department of Education’s job to report sexual misconduct to the police in terms of Section 54 of the Sexual Offences Act and Section 110 of the Children’s Act, it has no way of confirming if these teachers were reported and how many cases have resulted in criminal proceedings.
The upshot is that even when educators are fired for sexual misconduct, they may still have access to children.
Varied school responses
And those are the ones reported – many aren’t. During 2024, we were inundated with stories about sexual misconduct by teachers. The schools’ reactions could not be more varied.
Some responded with active engagement and full disclosure. For example in one case, the alleged perpetrator’s sexual abuse was divulged by the affected children in mid-October 2024, the school immediately reported the matter to the police on the children’s behalf and within two weeks, the former educator was arrested and remanded in custody.
On the other extreme, some schools threatened whistle-blowers with legal action if they proceeded with their reports. And in one troubling instance, staff from a school were called into a meeting following an anonymous report to authorities about the sexual abuse of a learner which led to an investigation by the provincial department of education and SACE.
The staff were told by a senior member of the management team that he had contacts, and that not only would he make the case go away, but that he’d also find the whistle-blowers, and when he did, he knew where they and their families lived.
Most schools fall somewhere between these extremes however, quietly investigating allegations internally, and often, equally quietly, letting the alleged perpetrator move on to become another school’s problem. This enabling has in one instance allowed an alleged perpetrator to abuse children in at least two different countries for more than 50 years.
While responsibility for the sexual abuse of children lies with the perpetrator, accountability for the harm lies with the system that either enables them or holds them responsible.
In a series of articles I will be writing, I ask: who is guarding the guardians, and what should the consequence be for schools, government and other institutions that fail in their duty of care?
Julio Mordoh
Julio Mordoh. (Photos: Supplied)
It’s been two long years since Teresa and Marcio Mordoh lost their son. Julio died, aged 20, after he hanged himself with his belt in a restricted area at a secure psychiatric facility. His untimely death came less than a year after he first disclosed that he had been groomed and sexually abused by his former head of pastoral care and rock climbing coach, and only weeks after he deposed an affidavit against the man he accused of abusing him from the ages of nine to 12 while he was in the Preparatory School at St John’s College in Johannesburg, the elite boy’s school where he spent most of his schooling life.
After years of suppressed memories, Julio’s disclosure of the abuse first occurred when his psychologist read him a letter written by St John’s College after another of the school’s former pupils came forward to allege sexual assault by the prep school teacher.
Tragically, Julio’s response to the letter was, “Oh, so there were other boys, I thought I was the only one.”
Writing from Julio Mordoh’s diary. (Photo: Supplied)
Less than a year later Julio was dead, having lost his brave battle with the post-traumatic stress and depression that characterised more than half of his short life.
Despite criminal charges being initiated against the alleged perpetrator on 15 November 2021, he is yet to plead to charges. In June 2024, due to jurisdictional wrangles, the criminal charges against him were temporarily dropped so the case could be centralised. This finally occurred in November 2024. Up to two decades after the abuse began for many of the St John’s victims, they are still awaiting a set down date in the Johannesburg high court. Justice seems very distant.
But even when the criminal case proceeds, Julio’s affidavit cannot be presented as evidence because his premature death means he cannot be cross-examined. Giving Julio a voice, and achieving justice for him, is one of the main reasons why his parents initiated a civil case.
In November 2024, they served civil summonses on the alleged perpetrator, on St John’s College and its board, on the former headmaster of the preparatory school where the abuse is alleged to have occurred, on the facility where he died and the psychiatrist treating him and on the Anglican Church, Anglican Board of Education, Department of Education and South African Council of Educators as interested parties.
John Smyth case
The timing of the case is significant. Summonses were served on the second anniversary of Julio’s death, only 10 days before the case would have prescribed. Unlike criminal cases, civil cases prescribe three years after the victim’s first disclosure. It was also initiated just days before the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby addresses General Synod delegates during the debate on gay marriage at The Church House on February 08, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Welby’s resignation came after revelations about the Anglican Church and his own personal failure in the duty of care to as many as 130 young men in the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and South Africa who were victimised by the late John Smyth for 40 years.
For Julio’s parents, the latter is particularly significant given that one of the goals of the civil case is to hold those who failed in their duty of care towards Julio accountable. As the Mordohs acknowledge, even if Julio’s alleged perpetrator is found guilty, it will not necessarily result in systemic change.
Schools and other institutions often swiftly close ranks against those who abuse children, but are less quick to recognise their own role in allowing predatory teachers and coaches to flourish, often for decades, and their failures to stop them when presented with evidence of wrongdoing.
Horrific beatings
This is painfully clear in the John Smyth case. Reports abound of Smyth’s sadistic and perverse behaviour towards the boys in his care. This included making them strip naked or taking their clothes off himself to acknowledge their sinfulness, and then lashing them for atonement, sometimes hundreds of times, depending on the “sin”. He was reported to have meted out 100 lashes for masturbation, 400 for pride and 800 for some undisclosed “fall”.
The stories told by victims read like tales of torture, blood splattering, long-term damage, adult nappies and attempted suicides. But at the end of every beating, Smyth would rub lotion on their wounds, kneel beside them to pray and kiss them on the shoulders and back.
These horrific beatings, often in his garden shed or in “bash camps”, became interspersed with careful grooming, team skinny-dips, showers and naked prayer sessions while Smyth decried masturbation and homosexuality.
Smyth’s son PJ, who was one of his father’s first victims, reports that the Anglican Church initially became aware of Smyth’s abuse in 1982 through the Rushton report which detailed the beatings of 22 young men over a four-year period, the same period that Smyth had been beating his son. The report resulted in a tearful Smyth, fearful of consequences, apologising to his son.
PJ’s beatings stopped, but there were no further sanctions or consequences for Smyth.
Despite the bravery of the victims who came forward and told the stories detailed in the Rushton report, the church did not act on it. Instead, they covered it up. Smyth was sent to Zimbabwe as a “missionary” in 1984. There his behaviour continued until in 1992, one of the young men in his care, Guide Nyachuru drowned in “suspicious circumstances”. The resultant culpable homicide case against Smyth collapsed, and again, he avoided consequences. But in 2001, he was forced to move, this time to South Africa after being barred from re-entering Zimbabwe.
Even when an investigative documentary by Channel 4 in the UK aired in 2017, the church was still slow to act. Smyth died in 2018 without having ever been disciplined or prosecuted for his 40 years of crimes.
Church failure
In his exposé book, Bleeding for Jesus, the author Andrew Graystone reported that Smyth’s abuse was known to many of the most senior clerics and clergy in the church but “obfuscation, cover-up, delay, words ‘on the quiet’, the side-lining or shutting out those who raised warnings, and straight enabling” were the order of the day.
Shielding Smyth, they failed to report his crimes to the UK police, to let authorities including church authorities in Zimbabwe and South Africa know about the crimes, to support the victims, or to give them justice.
These failures were confirmed by the 2024 Makin review which outlined the extent of Smyth’s crimes labelling them as “prolific and abhorrent”. Makin stated that “words cannot adequately describe the horror of what transpired”.
It also highlighted the church’s failure in its leadership, accountability and duty of care. The report reflected that “The Church’s reaction to the exposé of John Smyth’s abuse by Channel 4 in February 2017 was poor in terms of speed, professionalism, intensity and curiosity. The needs of the victims were not at the forefront.”
The Makin report’s key themes are the impact of failures of leadership, accountability and safeguarding; the effect of an extended cover-up of harm; and that abuse can be hidden in plain sight.
Significantly, when former Archbishop Justin Welby was forced to resign, it was the first time that anyone other than Smyth’s victims had experienced any consequences for his crimes.
It telegraphed a significant change in thinking, specifically that punitive actions should follow institutional failures and failures of leadership.
St John’s obligation
The timing is key given that St John’s is an Anglican school, and the church is named as an interested party in the summons. The civil summons reinforces the school’s legal obligation to report physical harm and sexual abuse to the police, and the Department of Social Development, or a designated child protection agency if it is aware of it.
For this reason, whether the school was aware of Julio’s abuse and that of other victims is one of the pivotal issues in the civil case.
St John’s declined to comment for this article stating that, “the subject matter involves ongoing legal considerations, and as a matter of principle and confidentiality, we are unable to disclose details concerning the civil claim. This position is essential for ensuring the legal integrity of the process. We remain committed to transparency where appropriate and will provide updates or information to the St John’s Community in a manner consistent with our legal and ethical obligations.”
However, in a previous right of reply sent to Daily Maverick in October 2023, the school stated that it only became aware of the sexual abuse on 13 October 2021 when one of the victims, as an adult, disclosed the abuse to his parents.
Despite the law stipulating that anyone with reasonable suspicion that a child had been sexually abused should report it, and St John’s being aware that the alleged perpetrator was a deputy head at another private school who therefore continued to have access to children, the matter was only reported a month later after an independent investigation instigated by the school resulted in other victims coming forward.
Case opened
The victims then opened a case with the SAPS’ Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) unit on 15 November 2021. Once charges had been laid, St John’s reported the teacher to the South African Council of Educators and informed its school community.
Nonetheless, it is not the school’s response to the first disclosure that is at issue. The key question to be answered in the civil trial is, was the school aware of inappropriate behaviour from the alleged predator, including sexual grooming, when he was teaching at the school, and did it act to stop that behaviour?
St John’s is adamant that it wasn’t aware. In its 2023 reply, it cited the independent inquiry into the matter conducted by retired Constitutional Court Justice Johan Froneman. A redacted summary of the report was sent to the school community in May 2022. In it, Judge Froneman concluded that: “There is nothing to indicate that the staff, Headmasters of the Prep and the College, or the Council failed to report criminal conduct that came to their knowledge. No boy or parent had reported any conduct of the kind to the school during the relevant period.”
‘Carefully groomed’
While that seems definitive, it’s worth noting that the boys in question were between the ages of nine and 13 and if Julio’s story is reflective of others, they had been carefully groomed by the alleged predator. I asked St John’s if its preparatory school boys had been educated about sexual grooming, about how to spot a potential predator and how to report someone if they had concerns. It was one of the questions that the school chose not to answer.
But, in the absence of an understanding about grooming (and even with it), we should not expect young boys who had been groomed to disclose abuse because they would typically feel isolated, confused and complicit, as evidenced by Julio’s belief that he was the only victim and therefore somehow to blame.
Equally, if the abuse took place on school property or at school events such as camps, tours and hikes, and the boys did not disclose, their parents would have no way of knowing that their boys were being abused.
Reports
For this reason, the lack of reporting from pupils and their parents is not convincing evidence that the school wasn’t aware of the abuse. What is more significant is if the school received reports from staff members raising concerns about the alleged predator.
The Froneman report seems to indicate that it did. The summary states that “two complaints were taken by Prep staff to their Head during the former teacher’s tenure at the Prep, and these were appropriately dealt with by the Prep Head at the time.”
The summary further states that: “Judge Froneman felt it important to stress that his review did not uncover improper management of the complaints against the former Prep teacher, by the Prep and Executive Headmaster or staff, given the knowledge available at the time regarding sexual and other abuse.”
St John’s has elected not to share the full report, even in redacted form, so it’s hard to know how these complaints were handled. In questions posed to the school, we asked if the boys who were referenced in these complaints had been interviewed in the presence of their parents, if the teacher had been disciplined, if a form 22 had been completed and if the school had instituted an investigation through SACE and, or the police. The school declined to answer, but Froneman’s reference in his report to “available” knowledge about sexual abuse raises red flags.
Sexual grooming has been a crime since 2008, so knowledge about it was available when Julio was at the preparatory school. If the complaints brought to management by staff members could have been construed as grooming behaviour by the alleged perpetrator, and the school did not follow due process as specified by the legislation, it could certainly be deemed to have failed in its duty of care.
The civil case will probably be lengthy and challenging for the Mordohs, and regardless of the outcome, nothing will make up for the loss of their son, nor the painful aftermath of their efforts to help him prior to his death and their own psychological challenges and permanent loss of earnings following his suicide.
But as Teresa emphasises, their goal is to ensure that “although Julio died in pain, he did not die in vain”.
No matter the outcome, if their civil case results in even one more institution prioritising the protection of their children over reputational risk, it will already be a victory.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 29.02.2025
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Nov 16, 2023 | Child Abuse
When it comes to sexual abuse, grooming and physical brutality, what happens in school doesn’t always stay in school. For many boys, the trauma they experience in their elite schools indelibly changes their lives and can lead to their eventual death.
Listen to this article
In 2008, the 13,915 reasons for equity in sexual offences legislation study reported that 44% (two in every five) of the school-going boys included in the study had been sexually abused before the age of 18. Of those boys, 20% were abused by teachers. One in every 20 schoolboys in the study reported being asked to have sex by a teacher.
These shocking statistics were supported by the 2016 Optimus study which found that 36.3% of boys had been sexually abused before the age of 16.
US-based advocacy group, Darkness to Light, says that “child sexual abuse is likely the most prevalent health problem with the most serious array of consequences that children face.”
Research indicates that “sexual abuse and, to a lesser extent, physical abuse in childhood”, are consistently associated with suicidal behaviour and that “those reporting any traumatic experience in childhood show a two to five-fold higher risk of being suicide attempters compared to those who do not”.
This statistic was confirmed by 68 studies by psychologists from the University of Manchester and the University of South Wales which found that suicide attempts were:
- Three times more likely for people who experienced sexual abuse as a child.
- Two and a half times more likely for people who experienced physical abuse as a child.
Other significant contributing factors to suicidality are dissociation from the abuse, how severe and physically painful the abuse is, how long the abuse continues and the age at which it occurs: “Earlier onset of the sexual abuse and duration of the abuse were associated with more lifetime suicide attempts.”
The abuse allegedly perpetrated against Julio Mordoh, whose story is told in part one of this series, began when he was 10 and lasted for three years – to cope with the trauma, his brain disassociated from it. Small wonder he felt he could never recover.
Like Julio’s parents, Ben’s* family chose his elite school, Parktown Boys’ High School, because they wanted him to have the best possible opportunities in life. But before he had finished high school, they found themselves helpless onlookers as he hung from a bridge over the highway, threatening to let go.
To understand why he was on that bridge, his family points to the impact on Ben of his school’s devastating failure to safeguard its pupils from the outset, beginning with the Grade 8 initiation camp when he and the other boys were forcefully initiated into the “Parktown way”.
They were taught that weakness was frowned upon and that “snitches get stitches”. They were also taught that “what happens on tour, stays on tour.”
The outcome was that Ben and his classmates were well-schooled in secrets and boundary violations by the time their new water polo coach and junior hostel master, Collan Rex, arrived at the end of his Grade 8 year.
Rex then began to groom and sexually abuse the boys in his care.
In an interview with Ben, now 23, he described Rex as an overgrown schoolboy, charming with the parents but an instigator of trouble in the hostel, and able to overpower the boys physically and introduce illicit behaviours.
Like many other predators, Rex followed these stages when grooming Ben and at least 22 other boys in the boarding house and water polo team:
- Identifying and targeting the child.
- Gaining the child’s trust and access to the child often through needs or vulnerabilities.
- Playing a role in the child’s life and filling a need for the child.
- Creating a “special secret relationship” with the child while isolating the child.
- Sexualising the relationship through the process of desensitisation.
- Maintaining control of the relationship with the child.
Ben explains that Rex began working his way through the hostel and water polo boys carefully and slowly. Weeding out those who resisted, he then deliberately lured the other boys in, normalising pulling off their towels when they were changing, grabbing their genitals, wrestling them into submission, dry humping and team showering.
Rex used the hostel, which was off limits to parents and largely unpoliced by other teachers, as well as school tours, bus trips and time in the water polo pool and change rooms to take advantage of the boys.
Ben says that the behaviour became so commonplace that they began doing it to each other and the younger boys, and that Rex used the boys’ inappropriate actions towards each other, as well as contraband, to reinforce the secret.
The impact of Rex’s short tenure at the school has been well documented, culminating in him admitting to the content of 144 counts of sexual assault, 57 of which were for crimes committed against Ben, and 12 counts of common assault.
Rex did not plead guilty, instead arguing that what he did was part of the culture of water polo, which had also happened to him while he was a pupil at Parktown Boys. Nonetheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to 23 years in jail.
Less well publicised, though, is what happened to the boys, especially Ben, who had been his victims, and who still had two or three years of school left when Rex was arrested.
Ben’s family describe him as fearless; one who would never back down from a challenge, a clown, but also a natural leader who didn’t like to see anyone else in pain, either physically or emotionally. He was also the one willing to take the fall or be a target to protect those weaker than himself.
It was those leadership qualities which appear to have made him a special target for Rex, but also made him the whistle-blower who exposed his erstwhile coach.
Ben explains that his now famous “missing water polo caps” ruse, which he says was designed to “stop [Rex’s] s#!%”, occurred after three major incidents, mostly on tour, where he and other boys were victimised in ways that were clearly no longer a “game”, as Rex made it out to be.
Strongly empathetic, Ben began to recognise that he and Rex’s other victims were starting to interact with younger boys in the same way that Rex did, and, seeing through those children’s eyes, he realised this was far from “normal” behaviour.
Ben says his goal was to get Rex fired, not send him to prison. But when he was arrested, it was Ben who helped other boys to come forward. After the arrest, authorities were struggling to get the boys to break the code of silence. It was Ben who explained to them that they had been groomed by Rex into believing that what happened to them was “not so bad”. He also counselled them that they weren’t “snitching” if they told their stories.
For the boys, the question that changed everything was, “If you were a parent, would you be okay with this happening to your son?”
Ben’s family wonder if things would have turned out differently for him if the victims had been supported at the school rather than just by the hostel master and matron. The school also did little to protect the victims’ identities, and Ben’s role in Rex’s arrest quickly became common knowledge.
Ben was even confronted by a former Parktown Boys teacher at a water polo game, who told him he knew Ben was the one who “snitched”.
At the school, teachers and fellow pupils defended Rex. Unwilling to believe that he was an abuser, they expressed anger at the victims, leaving them isolated and vilified.
Luke Lamprecht, head of advocacy at Women and Men Against Child Abuse, describes how perpetrators use three strategies to avoid detection and prosecution: denial of facts, denial of responsibility and denial of impact on the victim, thus obfuscating the extent of the harm caused by their actions.
The unfortunate result is that schools and peers are often manipulated by that narrative and don’t believe the child.
Although the victims of Collan Rex were finally vindicated when he was found guilty, many had matriculated by that point. Their final years at Parktown Boys were therefore defined by their having exposed Rex and the resultant accusations that they had hurt their peers by “bringing the school into disrepute”.
A report by the Harris Nupen Molebatsi (HNM) law firm, which has still not been released to the public, even in redacted form, is known to have documented in painful detail how these abuse survivors were isolated by teachers and fellow students, victimised, verbally abused, intimidated and even physically abused. Only one of these incidents led to the teacher resigning when faced with a disciplinary hearing.
It was particularly bad for the boys who were seen to have “snitched”.
In a well-publicised racist and victim-shaming rant that the boys recorded, the school’s former art teacher labelled the boys who had alerted authorities to Rex’s abuse as “snitches” and “evil”. He also crudely referenced what had happened in “room 13” behind closed doors in the hostel, before threatening to blow the hostel up.
Survivors had their leadership roles challenged and one of the boys left the school after being violently whipped in a water polo first team initiation and was then threatened and spat on because he broke the “code of silence” about the initiation.
After the lashing, Ben was appointed as captain of the water polo team in place of the boy who carried out the beating. Despite this, when Ben and his dad visited the school earlier this year, they discovered that Ben’s name had been removed from the board honouring past captains.
By the time the HNM report was finalised, three victims were in long-term counselling and six more were on suicide watch.
After a year of providing support for the other victims, Ben began struggling with trauma-induced depression, compounded by his ongoing experience of isolation.
Rex’s grooming was so effective that Ben was in turmoil about turning him in. Ben confessed that he still feels sorry for his abuser and guilty about having him arrested, a feeling that was reinforced at school.
Edith Kriel, executive director of Jelly Beanz, a group dedicated to providing mental health services to children affected by sexual abuse and trauma, describes grooming as a process in which the child is psychologically manipulated in a myriad of nuanced and multi-layered ways to be entrapped in the relationship with the offender.
In that relationship, the child may be made to feel complicit in sexual acts that ensue, either through affection, gratitude or fear of the perpetrator. The sexual acts may further be minimised or normalised so the child doesn’t necessarily understand the wrongfulness of the behaviour.
According to Kriel, grooming and its impact is often the part of the sexual abuse which is most confusing to the child. She says it causes enormous emotional damage and has long-term consequences. She stresses that the betrayal of children’s trust hurts them deeply.
A 2023 Canadian study on externalisation of suffering among male survivors of sexual abuse found three main types of externalised behaviours: aggressive behaviours to express anger, rule-breaking and substance abuse to avoid suffering. Before the end of his time at Parktown, Ben manifested all three behaviours.
Darkness to Light’s research indicates that male survivors of sexual abuse are 2.6 times more likely to experience substance abuse problems than non-victims and more than 70% of male victims seek psychological help for substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide.
Ben began to struggle with destructive anger, which, to his dismay, was often directed at his family. A year after Rex’s arrest, he went from considering substance abuse a weakness that he abhorred, to finding ways to numb the pain of Rex’s abuse and the secondary victimisation he experienced at school.
Then came the fateful day in his matric year when Ben, convinced that he was hurting the ones he loved most, climbed out of his family’s car on a major road, ostensibly to walk back to his girlfriend’s house. He was followed by his twin brother who, seeing that Ben was overwrought, ran after him, worried he would do something desperate.
Ben says the more his twin followed him and fought to keep him safe, the more he ran. He finally broke through the fence that led him to a bridge across the N1 highway in Johannesburg. As his brother pleaded with him to stop, he found himself holding on by one arm, threatening to let go if his brother came any closer.
Ben vividly remembers the moment, while hanging from the side of the bridge, when he heard his brother crying. He kept his eyes on the tattoo on the arm that was still holding onto the bridge – a tattoo with the letters “IDBK” – the initials of his parents and brothers. Ben didn’t let go.
Ben’s* life-saving tattoo. (Photo: Supplied)
If this were fiction, the story may have ended there, with Ben’s life-saving tattoo and a tearful reunion with his twin. But choosing not to die did not make living with the depression, anger or addiction that had become a constant part of Ben’s life post-abuse any easier for him or his family.
Shortly after, he was admitted to a psychiatric institution and placed on suicide watch. He was there for 56 days on 26 tablets a day. He wrote his matric finals in the facility.
The boy who had once dreamed of being an architect went from a top sportsman who excelled in maths to barely passing; from hating drugs to self-medicating to cope with the abuse and its aftermath.
And like the Mordohs, who are still struggling with the cost of Julio’s psychiatric care and rehab a year after his death, Ben’s family have had to sell a house and a car to give their son the support he needs.
Ben says that if it weren’t for his family, and now his commitment to his baby and fiancé, he might have succumbed to the pain years ago.
But even now that Ben has a new family and so much to live for, the emotional anguish of the abuse and the years that followed still occasionally drive him to desperation and back to high places.
As recently as July, after a prolonged bout of psychosis, a fear of letting his family down led him to the edge of a mountain. Once again, he didn’t jump.
The themes of abuse – including sexual abuse, victimisation and suicide – are tragically common to many stories from those who were once proud pupils of Parktown Boys.
As with sexual abuse, there is a strong causal link between traumatic physical abuse and suicide. And, unlike Ben, not all boys survive.
When Pene Kimber’s son was violently beaten by Grade 12s in a 2009 hostel initiation where boys had to run the gauntlet of matrics wielding cricket bats, hockey sticks and golf clubs, and were made to rub deep heat on their genitals to earn the privilege of using a kettle, the furore that followed resulted in many families telling their stories of initiation at the school.
In one tragic case, the parents of a teenager opened a case against the school after he was beaten there. They later withdrew it because the boy was being victimised. Their son went on to take his life.
In another story, a mother told of how her son had been relentlessly bullied at the school. She said he showed her damage caused by “wedgies”, where his underpants were ripped, causing bruising and splitting of the peri-anal area. Her son was frequently humiliated and told he was a “loser”.
When she threatened to go to the school, her son told her: “Mum, if you intervene, life will be far worse for me!”
She says that in hindsight, she realises a lot was hidden from her.
When she finally spoke to the then-headmaster, she says he told her that mothers tend to be over-protective and that she should understand this was a rite of passage for young men. She was told not to worry about it.
Struggling with depression and anger, her son took his life shortly after finishing school. His psychologist said that he had never recovered from the helplessness he felt at school.
Bradley Skipper is another of those boys whose life was dramatically changed when he was at Parktown Boys.
Bradley, whose mom described him as a sensitive soul with a strong sense of fairness, was brutally beaten during a prefect’s assembly in October 2006 when he was in Grade 9.
The incoming prefects gave him punitive “PT” which involved smothering him in blazers, kicking his hands out from under him while he did push-ups, beating him in the back despite him telling them that he had scoliosis of the spine, forcing him to hold a bin full of bricks upright while they punched him in the ribs, and filling his mouth with cigarette stumps.
Despite his mother’s best efforts, only two of the boys involved were sanctioned by having their prefect’s badges removed for two weeks. But the teacher who was allegedly present at the time, and who at first denied that the assault occurred, wasn’t sanctioned. Nor was the seemingly endorsed violence addressed.
Instead, the master who investigated the incident warned Bradley’s mother that her son was now open to victimisation because he had “snitched”.
Bradley’s mom removed him from the school immediately and tried, through the headmaster, the South African Council of Educators, the provincial department of education, the Human Rights Commission and even the Minister of Education, to get justice for her son and end the culture of initiation and secrecy at the school. Her efforts were in vain.
Three years later, when Pene Kimber’s son was assaulted at the school, Bradley spoke to the media on condition of anonymity. In an article aptly sub-titled, “Fit in or F..k off”, he explained that he was terrified for his life:
“I am too scared to reveal myself. Parktown Boys has an extensive old boys’ network and I could be killed anytime I set foot in a club or a mall. When I left the school, the deputy headmaster told me I had better watch my back because he can’t do it for me.”
After 11 years of living with the fear and trauma of that day, Bradley died by suicide at the end of 2017.
In a written comment received from the school governing body (SGB) of Parktown Boys for this article, the school acknowledged that what “some of our boys went through in the past can never be diminished or forgotten.”
It said that, since 2019, the school had been implementing the recommendations of the HNM report and receiving expert input from both Luke Lamprecht and Rees Mann from Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse.
The SGB further affirmed that “the school is determined that these tragic events will never be repeated” and that “there continues to be an unrelenting and shared focus on the process of healing, learning and advancing transformation that we have embarked upon to forever change our culture.”
In 2020, Bradley was memorialised at Parktown Boys in a plaque that was laid outside the hostel on the same day that the school safety bell was installed. It was meant to be a commitment by the school and its pupils to put an end to violent initiations and abuse.
Bradley Skipper’s memorial stone: October 2020. (Photo: Robyn Wolfson Vorster) / Bradley Skipper, Grade 9 Parktown Boys High School. (Photo: Supplied)
Both the bell and plaque were removed by their donors when the heads of hostel, Chris and Mariolette Bossert, left the school.
The plaque dedicated to Bradley has since been placed at the Fight with Insight programme in the Children’s Memorial Institute as a reminder that abuse can drive vulnerable children to desperation, and also as a challenge to adults to never stop fighting for the protection, safeguarding and care of their children.
In the final article in this series, we tell the story of Thomas Kruger and ask why, on the 5th anniversary of his tragic death – despite an explosive podcast, an independent review, a change in leadership at the school and criminal and legal investigations – authorities seem no closer to delivering justice or even providing answers to his grieving family about why he died. DM
If a child you know has been affected by sexual or physical abuse or is at risk for suicide, please contact Childline’s Helpline 24X7 on 116 (free from all networks) or visit their Online Counselling chatrooms. Alternatively, email reportsafely@STOPS.co.za to report abuse.
These articles were written in loving memory of:
Julio Mordoh: 08.01.2002–05.11.2022
Thomas Kruger: 20.03.2002–18.11.2018
Bradley Skipper: 18.12.1989–30.12.2017
*Name changed to protect the identity of the victim.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 08:12:2023
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Nov 10, 2023 | Child Abuse
About two in five boys in South Africa are sexually abused before the age of 18. Of those boys, 20% are abused by teachers. Those reporting traumatic childhood experiences such as sexual and physical abuse are 2-5 times more likely to attempt suicide, with early onset of trauma an even stronger predictor. Given those statistics, we should not be asking why Julio Mordoh died, but rather how his abuse occurred at the elite boys’ school tasked with safeguarding him.
Listen to this article
On 5 November 2022, Teresa Mordoh received a phone call that’s every parent’s worst nightmare. She was told that her son, Julio, had attempted suicide.
She and her family were en route to see him, bringing a cake to celebrate his father Marcio’s birthday, when the heart-stopping call came.
During the frantic trip across town, Teresa tried to cling to hope – it wasn’t the first time Julio had tried to take his life.
Desperate for news, she called again, only to be told that paramedics were unable to resuscitate him and that Julio had been pronounced dead.
In a Facebook post paying tribute to her son, Teresa described how she wished they could have “flown over the traffic on Saturday to get there just a few mins earlier to save you and tell you again how much we love you”.
She explained how, when they finally arrived, her son’s body was lying lifeless on the floor. He was still warm when she hugged and kissed him goodbye.
While they couldn’t intervene on the day Julio’s life ended, the family had done everything possible to support and save him.
When Julio Mordoh died just two months before his 21st birthday, he had been assessed by six psychiatrists, treated by eight psychologists, spent over 12 months in treatment as an inpatient, and been hospitalised 12 times for mental health-related conditions, including complex post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidality.
On the day he hanged himself with his belt, he was in a secure, private psychiatric facility where he’d been admitted as a high-risk patient to keep him from self-harming.
Teresa remembers little of the terrible moments following her son’s death, but she does recall every decision that brought them to that day.
Describing Julio as a calm and loving baby with huge brown eyes, she says that while he was diminutive in stature, like his parents, it was obvious from the time that he was in pre-school how talented and clever he was. He competed in gymnastics at the highest level from a very young age.
A deep thinker, he was obsessed with finding out how things worked, and designing and inventing everything from water rockets to a go-kart, and then building them with his dad.
It was his intelligence that made the family choose to send him to the best school they could afford. With its excellent academic record, St John’s College in Houghton, Johannesburg, seemed the best fit. They even bought a house within a stone’s throw of the school.
As Teresa and I sat drinking tea on her veranda, surveying the family’s wild and beautiful garden complete with tree houses and homemade forts, we could hear the St John’s school bell chiming 10.
Although we can’t see the clock tower Julio allegedly climbed while in prep school, for the Mordoh family, the melodic chiming is a haunting hourly reminder of the suffering he endured.
St John’s formed a significant part of Julio’s life. He was there for pre-prep and prep school, and then, after the family spent his high school years in France and Dubai, he chose to return home to complete his A-levels at the school.
His experiences in pre-prep and 6th Form were positive ones, but Teresa says that he felt very differently about the prep school. She describes how in the year that he died they visited the school together, which gave Julio the opportunity to show his mother some of his favourite places, including the science lab and 6th Form lounge.
She says she was struck, however, by how his demeanour and body language changed and how he withdrew into himself when he walked into the prep school.
By then, she knew why.
***
According to Teresa, the catalyst for a major change in Julio’s life was St John’s requirement for all boys to participate in school sporting activities.
By the time Julio was in prep school, he was already competing in gymnastics (a sport not offered by the school) at national and then international level. In his second year at prep school, he received a special dispensation excusing him from school sports and even school recognition for his achievements.
But his exclusion left him isolated from his peers. That, along with his size and intellect, made him a target for bullying.
After a bullying incident that Julio downplayed because he didn’t want to be a snitch or singled out, his headmaster suggested that Julio have weekly hour-long counselling sessions with the prep’s head of pastoral care.
According to Teresa, the head of pastoral care was a friendly, caring and approachable man. He seemed to take a keen interest in Julio and his well-being and kept in WhatsApp contact with her about Julio’s progress and emotional stability.
In addition to counselling sessions, the head of pastoral care, who was also in charge of rock climbing at St John’s, presented climbing as a solution to both Julio’s isolation and the ongoing bullying.
Julio’s upper body strength and agility made him a perfect candidate for climbing, at the time an emerging sport at the school. Although boys were not allowed to climb until they were 12 years old, the teacher offered him the opportunity to start training in 2013 when he was only 11.
Unbeknownst to the family, he invited Julio to go bouldering in the school “cave” during break. Julio disclosed to a friend that the teacher warned him not to tell anyone, especially his parents, in case they got angry and he wasn’t allowed to climb anymore.
His teacher also permitted him to climb the school climbing wall which was supposed to be off limits until he was in Grade 6. It was another secret, along with his reported climbing of the school’s bell tower.
By the end of that year, Julio’s mother had seen a notable change in his behaviour. He was more withdrawn, sad, private and less willing to connect with his dad or open up to her.
She attributed it to his age, but sought help from the headmaster when Julio began to resist going to school and stopped sleeping well. Teresa says he seemed visibly afraid of school and refused to attend sessions with the school’s male psychologist.
Once again, the school’s proposed solution was counselling with its head of pastoral care.
Despite his distress, Julio continued to excel academically and in gymnastics, and in August 2014, he won the U13 SA National Rock Climbing Championship.
Teresa remembers Julio’s climbing teacher encouraging him to go on weekend trips with the school’s explorers to get climbing experience. But despite his persistence, Teresa wouldn’t let Julio camp unsupervised overnight, citing his weekend gymnastics commitments as an excuse.
However, in November 2014, a few months after his nationals win, she did allow him to go on a day trip to the Magaliesberg with his climbing teacher and some other boys.
Teresa describes her dismay when it got dark and her son had still not returned. When he finally got home at 7pm, he was the only boy in the car.
As Marcio invited the teacher in for coffee, Julio rushed off to shower. But before leaving, the head of pastoral care insisted on giving Julio his engraved Leatherman as a “reminder of the special day”. Julio reluctantly accepted the gift but then hid it away. His mother says he never used it.
It wasn’t long after that the head of pastoral care and climbing teacher, whose name is inscribed on the Leatherman he gave Julio, left the college to take up a deputy head position at another school.
Shortly thereafter, on the cusp of qualifying for the 2015 World Championships, Julio stopped climbing.
***
What happened during Julio’s time in the prep school stayed buried through his teenage years when the Mordohs lived in France and then Dubai, until five years later when the family returned to South Africa.
While Julio was excited to be home and seemingly enjoyed 6th Form at St John’s, his anxiety intensified and his insomnia worsened.
His mother describes how he would come home from school with goosebumps and visibly shaky. After suffering more extreme anxiety and panic attacks, his psychologist diagnosed him with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
When the psychologist briefed the family, one of the first questions she asked was if Julio had been sexually abused.
It was a question no one could answer. Despite the diagnosis and help from his psychologist, Julio wasn’t able to access what had caused the trauma, so after completing 6th Form in 2020, he chose to spend his gap year seeking help.
During his long-term treatment, Julio wrote this: “There are one or two things that I haven’t shared with anyone yet… I’ve pushed this to the deepest, darkest corner of my mind and tried hard to delete it from my memory entirely. Saying it out loud makes it real and validates that it actually happened.”
Writing from Julio Mordoh’s diary. (Photo: Supplied)
The diary entry was written shortly before 15 November 2021, when St John’s released a letter notifying the school community that several past pupils had alleged sexual assault by a former teacher who had been employed in the prep school between 2002 and 2014, and that charges had been laid with the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit and the matter reported to the South African Council of Educators and the Anglican Safe Church Unit.
Teresa remembers how, when Julio’s psychologist read him the letter, his head dropped and his body stiffened. When she had finished reading, all he could say was: “Oh, so there were other boys. I thought I was the only one.”
On hearing his words, Teresa says she felt as if her heart shattered into a million pieces, realising her son had suffered the shame of thinking he was the only victim and therefore somehow to blame.
Julio’s psychologist, who believed that Julio would have benefited from group therapy to deal with those feelings of shame and isolation in a safe space with other survivors, offered to facilitate group therapy for the victims.
But the school declined, confirming that it was providing the victims with psychological support if required, but that everyone was “on a different journey” and cited victims’ requests for privacy.
In a written response to questions for this article, the school’s executive headmaster, Stuart West, stressed that “the need for such a process was not shared by other victims and could not be imposed on them.”
Perhaps for this reason, Julio never disclosed the details of his abuse. However, a close friend said he told her that it went on for a long time and that he felt confused, tormented and irreparably damaged.
He said that “he felt broken and wished his life was over. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to fix himself”.
It was the message that he conveyed to St John’s when he was finally ready to meet with the school in July 2022, three months after allowing his psychologist to disclose to the school that he was also a victim.
In September 2022, two months after he met with the head of human resources at St John’s, the family received a letter from the headmaster expressing alarm over Julio’s suicidality and stating that “without any admission of liability” the school would “sponsor a short-term hospitalisation at an approved mental health facility that specialises in patients that are at risk.”
En route to being admitted, Julio went to a police station where he wrote an affidavit stating that he had been sexually abused by his climbing coach (who he names) while a pupil at St John’s College during the years of 2011 to the end of 2014 when he was aged 10 to 12 years old.
It was his final act of defiance against the abuse that forever altered his life.
***
Shortly thereafter, while in the supposedly secure facility, after begging unsuccessfully to be sedated following intense dreams, flashbacks and extreme agitation, Julio hanged himself.
Although 10 survivors of the abuse at St John’s prep school came forward, the case against Julio’s alleged abuser, which was moved to Rustenburg in November 2021, stalled because there was no active investigation.
Attorney Ian Levitt subsequently became involved, resulting in the case being incorporated into Operation Nemo and Colonel Heila Niemand being appointed as the special investigating officer.
On 9 October 2023, the former head of pastoral care at St John’s prep, who cannot be named until he has pleaded to the charges, finally appeared in court.
The case was postponed to 7 December.
Headmaster West emphasised the importance of duty of care and said the school continues to support the complainants in the case. He also referenced a report by retired Constitutional Court judge Johan Froneman commissioned by the school after the allegations of abuse emerged. It was deemed too confidential for release even in a redacted form, but a summary was sent to the school community.
The report noted that the school had no knowledge of the allegations of abuse prior to 2021. It also noted that during the prep teacher’s tenure, no complaints were made against him by pupils.
The summarised report provides little explanation of how the former head of pastoral care was able to abuse boys undetected throughout his 12-year employment at St John’s, but does note that “two complaints were taken by Prep staff to their Head during the former teacher’s tenure, and these were appropriately dealt with by the Prep Head at the time.”
While the nature of those complaints is not detailed, the report stresses that Froneman “did not uncover improper management of the complaints… given the knowledge available at the time regarding sexual and other abuse”.
Tragically, Julio is one of many pupils who are sexually or physically abused at one of South Africa’s elite boy’s schools.
The second of this two-part series tells the stories of two other boys whose lives ended tragically following abuse at two other schools, and unpacks South Africa’s horror statistics about the sexual abuse of boys and the link between abuse and suicide. DM
If a child you know has been affected by sexual abuse or is at risk for suicide, please contact Childline’s Helpline 24X7 on 116 (free from all networks) or visit their Online Counselling chatrooms.
These articles were written in loving memory of:
Julio Mordoh: 08.01.2002–05.11.2022
Thomas Kruger: 20.03.2002–17.11.2018
Bradley Skipper: 18.12.1989–30.12.2017
First published in the Daily Maverick: 2023.10.10
