by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | May 22, 2024 | Child Abuse
For Thomas Kruger’s bereaved family, his suicide at St Andrew’s College in Makhanda was inexplicable. Five years later, with the launch of a documentary focusing on harm experienced by boys at elite schools, are they any closer to getting justice for their son?
Thomas Kruger’s bereaved family felt his 2018 suicide at St Andrew’s College in Makanda was inexplicable. (Photo: Supplied)
Read Part One here and Part Two here. For details on the documentary on the issue, see here.
The 2011 National Youth Risk Behaviour Survey found that 17.6% of South African learners had considered attempting suicide in the six months before the survey, 15.6% had made a plan to commit suicide, 17.8% had made one or more suicide attempts and of those who had attempted suicide, 31.5% required medical treatment. Most suicides occur between the ages of 15 and 29.
Nationally, the overall death rate by suicide is approximately four times higher for men than for women.
But no one expected Thomas Kruger to take his life.
Bright, talented, personable and kind, he seemingly had everything to live for, so the phone call his parents received from St Andrew’s College on Sunday morning, 18 November 2018 came like a bolt from the blue. Thomas had been found hanging from the window of the sanatorium at the school. He was dead.
Thomas wasn’t even supposed to be at the school, he was supposed to be on a hiking adventure with the rest of his Grade 10 group. Instead, his body was found in the place where he should have been safest.
His heartbroken father, Charl Kruger, spent the next three years searching for answers to his death which led to an investigative podcast, an independent review, and a change of leadership at the school. But five years after Tom’s death, questions about why he died and who, if anyone is to blame, still loom large.
Kruger describes Tom as a caring, empathetic, mischievous and loving boy whose dream was to live on an island caring for as many adopted children and abandoned pets as possible. He explains how Tom championed children with disabilities during primary school, spent his high school holidays volunteering at a place of safety for abandoned children, and would walk to the shops on cold Gqeberha days to buy lemon cream biscuits, tea and sugar and then inspan his dad to trawl the streets handing out tea and biscuits to homeless people.
Charl and Thomas Kruger. (Photo: Supplied)
He was remarkable in other ways too. An all-around sportsman who excelled at water polo, cricket and hockey and was strong academically, he was awarded the prestigious Duthie Memorial Scholarship to St Andrew’s College in Makhanda.
Kruger says that Tom was very excited about attending St Andrew’s and that as a family, they loved the school’s traditions and culture of excellence, and were impressed by the quality of men in the St Andrew’s alumni.
Once he settled, Tom shone at St Andrew’s, in his sporting achievements, academically and socially. He was well-liked by his peers and teachers.
Thomas Kruger was regarded as an excellent sportsman at St Andrew’s College. (Photo: Supplied)
Withdrawn and secretive
But within months Tom’s behaviour began to change. Charl describes how his son, who had shared everything with him, became more private, withdrawn and secretive. An affectionate child, he started to resist being hugged. The family attributed it to his age, but his father also noticed an uncharacteristic hardening in his son.
Like the Mordohs, Tom’s parents thought the separation was a natural part of growing up. They also believed that the man St Andrew’s had entrusted with mentoring and providing him with pastoral care, his assistant housemaster and water polo coach, David Mackenzie, would give him the guidance and support he needed.
Describing Mackenzie as approachable and charming, Kruger says that he formed a very strong bond with the boys from his boarding house, Espin House, and the water polo team he coached. Kruger says Mackenzie took a special interest in Tom, who was in Espin House and played water polo for the Under-14A team. Tom seemed able to relate to him, and Tom’s family felt that Mackenzie, who treated Tom more like a younger brother to nurture and develop than a pupil, always appeared to have “Tom’s back”.
But behind the scenes, things may not have been quite what they seemed. Mackenzie was hosting secret parties in his flat which was adjacent to the Grade 8 dormitories in Espin House. Under the guise of Harry Potter, Peaky Blinders and Fast and Furious showings, Mackenzie allowed the boys to drink and smoke in his flat and on sports tours.
In 2017, when he was in Grade 9, Tom had an opportunity to spend a night at home, a rare treat for termly boarders. He gave it up to attend “fitness practice”, which Tom explained was a movie night for the water polo boys hosted by Mackenzie in his flat.
Kruger says that code words and names were part of Mackenzie’s relationship with the boys and that the boys in his inner circle all had nicknames.
During the independent review convened by Judge Dayalin Chetty in November 2021 after Tom’s death, Mackenzie described activities at the flat captured in photos on his phone as “harmless fun over a couple of beers”, and while “decrying any notion of sexual impropriety, candidly admitted to multitudinous instances of him and the boys cavorting, drinking and smoking in his flatlet”.
But Chetty remarked that the photos “evoke deep disquiet.”
According to Kruger, Mackenzie also appeared to use selection for the top water polo teams and tours as leverage over the boys. When Tom — who had represented his province with Mackenzie as his coach at the under-14 level and had been chosen in a first and second-team development squad which toured Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro in Grade 9 — was not selected for the first-team squad at the end of that year, his family say that he was uncharacteristically distressed.
Kruger explains that it wasn’t because Tom felt entitled to play for the team, but because he felt personally let down by Mackenzie.
The family, who knew Mackenzie well, followed up with him. Kruger says Mackenzie responded that if it was “entirely up to him Tom would have made the team, but the decision was not his alone”. Nonetheless, to his delight, Tom was included in the water polo camp before the start of his Grade 10 year after all.
Thomas Kruger became distant and withdrawn. (Photo: Supplied)
Signs of depression
Shortly after that, things began to unravel. In March, Tom showed signs of depression and told the family that he no longer wanted to be at boarding school.
In the same month, on Tom’s 16th birthday, he showed his family Pride Rock. It was about 6km outside of St Andrew’s, in a remote place off a dirt road accessed by an isolated parking lot. Describing it as a breathtakingly beautiful place, a rock overhanging a mountain and overlooking a lovely valley, Kruger says that Tom told him, “It’s mine and Mr Mackenzie’s rock this, Dad”.
Months later, after Mackenzie had abruptly resigned from the school, Kruger found his son on Pride Rock on a bitterly cold July night. Tom had cycled along the N1 highway to Pride Rock at 3.30am in the pitch dark.
Kruger’s frantic search brought him to the rock where he says he found his son shivering and crying. He hugged Tom and they cried together for about an hour.
The Kruger family did everything they could to intervene. They’d moved to Makhanda so Tom could be a day pupil at the school. But after Tom’s night visit to Pride Rock, they took him back to Gqeberha. He received psychiatric and psychological care for depression and then, when he felt up to returning to school, he chose not to go back to St Andrew’s but to attend Grey High School instead.
Kruger says that when Mackenzie left St Andrew’s, Espin House parents received a letter from the school stating that it had initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mackenzie after he had “allegedly facilitated the bunking out of a boy from the sanatorium” and “was allegedly complicit in assisting a boy to break College and Espin House rules”.
According to Kruger, Mackenzie, who emphasised how many alternative job offers he had received, told the Krugers that he thought St Andrew’s had too many rules.
After Mackenzie accepted a job at Grey College in Bloemfontein, Tom asked if he could move to Grey Bloemfontein because Mackenzie wanted him there to play water polo and would organise a full scholarship for him. Tom’s parents said no to the move.
Tom was happier after leaving St Andrew’s. But, despite no longer being Tom’s teacher, Mackenzie seems to have remained a part of his life. He organised surprise visits to Tom’s home and took him to play tennis (a sport which Tom’s dad says he didn’t normally play), or to a gym.
And, when the Krugers visited Grey College in Bloemfontein where Tom’s younger brother was playing a water polo tournament, Kruger describes his dismay when Mackenzie whisked Tom off for hours.
Shortly thereafter Tom asked to return to St Andrew’s which he did in time for the school’s annual Grade 10 Journey, a hiking, kayaking and swimming adventure from the source to the mouth of the Fish River. Tom was welcomed back with joy, but within two days of starting the journey he handed in some contraband (nicotine and vaping equipment) to a master in charge. It earned him a trip back to the school.
Because all the Grade 10 boys were on the journey, the Grade 10 dorm was empty, so Tom stayed the night in the school’s sanatorium. He spent the evening watching the Springboks play rugby, chatting to another boy in the sanatorium and then fell asleep on the couch.
He was scheduled to have a disciplinary hearing in the morning and then, when the hearing was complete and the sanction agreed upon, he would probably have rejoined the hike.
But Tom didn’t return to the journey. Early on Sunday morning, 18 November 2018, at the age of 16, Tom, who had never been placed on suicide watch by his healthcare professionals, squeezed out of a tiny unbarred window of the school sanatorium and hanged himself.
Evident in Kruger’s story is that Tom was let down by those in authority. Five years after Tom’s death the family are yet to get an official report on his death. In its absence, they have had to piece together information from an initial briefing and eyewitness accounts.
Headmaster’s response
In his written response to Daily Maverick, Ian Thompson, the then headmaster of St Andrew’s said that a report had been compiled but that the family may not have received it because they had declined contact with the school after Tom’s death.
Further, in October 2017, a year before Tom’s death, St Andrew’s had commissioned a review of Mackenzie’s behaviour by an HR consultant after receiving complaints about him from parents of other St Andrew’s pupils, and the resultant report found no evidence of wrongdoing by Mackenzie. The consultant instead asserted that the complaints “served only to muddy the waters”.
Judge Chetty’s review, in November 2021, concluded, however, that the findings of that investigation had been “predetermined”.
Judge Chetty’s report concluded that Thompson had failed to respond to multiple complaints laid against Mackenzie by St Andrew’s parents and teachers over 18 months, including the assault of a pupil, “inappropriate familiarity with the boys” and concerns about boys being alone in Mackenzie’s flat at night.
In his written responses, Thompson emphasised that none of the complaints he received against Mackenzie were related to sexual abuse or grooming. Thompson’s testimony during the review was that he ascribed Mackenzie’s behaviour to the inexperience of a young teacher “finding his way in the first years of being a teacher”, and “having to come to terms with a narrow gap” between himself “and the boys he was teaching”.
He further stated that while he was familiar with the concept of grooming, he saw Mackenzie’s behaviour “not as a flag for grooming” but as “a learning and developmental moment”.
Judge Chetty however said he found this testimony “incomprehensible”.
When disciplinary proceedings were finally brought against Mackenzie after he signed a boy out of the sanatorium so he could spend the night in his flat, Thompson says that the legal advice received by the school was that the matter was not reportable.
Mackenzie was allowed to resign rather than face disciplinary action.
The panel’s report includes a WhatsApp conversation conducted from 9pm to 10.30pm between Mackenzie and one of the pupils.
In the conversation, which formed part of the disciplinary process, Mackenzie says: “I loved the last 24 hours [redacted name of pupil] but this is impacting my job. I want to talk to you every day and see you every day. We just have to be clever now nothing changes between us I promise.”
While Mackenzie insisted that there was an innocent explanation for the exchange, this was rejected by Judge Chetty, who said Mackenzie’s explanation was “contrived and falls to be rejected”.
Despite the seriousness of the allegations that led to Mackenzie leaving St Andrew’s College, his conduct was not reported to the SA Police Service or the South African Council for Educators (SACE) and he continued to teach at other schools until he was dismissed from Reddam House Bedfordview in Johannesburg for “gross misconduct and misrepresentation” following the publication of the My Only Story podcast.
The independent review report states that Thompson failed in his duty of care because he had inadequately responded to the complaints brought against Mackenzie. Judge Chetty concluded that evidence reported to Thompson “showed quite unequivocally that Mackenzie was guilty of grooming boys”.
Thompson stepped down from leading the school and has since taken senior posts at other schools.
Although Judge Chetty’s report asserts that “the evidence establishes that the youths who frequented Mackenzie’s flatlet during the review period in all probability suffered psychological harm”, it makes no ruling about why Tom died. To date, Mackenzie has not been charged with any criminal offence either related to Tom or any other boy at St Andrew’s. And, in the absence of a suicide note, it is hard to know what led to Tom’s suicide.
Grave questions
Experts list the leading reasons for teenage suicides as depression, exposure to violence, feelings of hopelessness and acute loss or rejection. Grooming or sexual abuse is just one possibility. But the presence of an adult in a position of authority against whom serious complaints of boundary violations have been laid raises grave questions.
Far more should have been required from those entrusted with Tom’s care.
According to Luke Lamprecht, the head of advocacy at Women and Men Against Child Abuse, to prevent grooming and potential abuse, and to ensure that educators who are abusing children are reported, educators, caregivers and children need to recognise violations of professional boundaries.
Schools should use training and performance management to manage boundary violations. Failing that, any boundary violation by a teacher or coach should be dealt with through the disciplinary process.
Lamprecht says that schools need to pay particular attention to the possibility of grooming, which includes secrets and taboos. This can be part of testing the victim and a gateway to contact sexual abuse.
Dr Joan van Niekerk, a veteran child protection and child rights consultant, explains that grooming is outlined in section 18 of the Sexual Offences Act and that, as such, it is a reportable offence in terms of section 110 of the Children’s Act and section 54 of the Sexual Offences Act.
Schools, therefore, need to understand acceptable professional boundaries because they are obligated to report a teacher to the SAPS or the provincial Department of Social Development, and Sace, if they have reasonable suspicion of grooming. Experts also urge schools not to conflate the disciplinary process with reporting. Regardless of internal processes, schools still need to report.
Lamprecht says the standard for reporting in the Sexual Offences Act is “reasonable belief or suspicion”, and that requesting an investigation is not akin to an accusation. The person reported is still innocent until proven guilty. Because of the difficulty schools experience proving grooming, reporting is often the key to stopping the abuse and preventing further harm.
Edith Kriel, the executive director of Jelly Beanz, which provides mental health services to children affected by sexual abuse and trauma, emphasises that sexual abuse does not have to include contact. While acknowledging the complexities of dealing with sexual abuse where there’s no immediate evidence of contact sexual abuse, Kriel explains that this is why schools need the police to investigate these crimes.
Although there are differences between Tom and Julio’s stories, both involve adults using secrecy, loyalty and blame to manipulate, isolate and seemingly disincentivise sharing.
The behaviour of both boys also provided warning signs that pointed to the possibility of grooming. These include sudden changes of behaviour, becoming secretive, receiving gifts from adults, substance abuse, becoming withdrawn or upset and mental health problems.
Kriel explains that grooming often takes place within a relationship which the child may treasure because they are made to feel special by the offender. The child does not understand that the grooming is in service of the ensuing abuse, but is led to believe that the relationship with the child is paramount to the offender.
Experts confirm that children who have been victimised and experienced grooming are likely to “suffer from serious long-term mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and suicidal thoughts”.
Kruger believes that, had the school exposed its investigations, Tom’s family could have treated him as a potential victim of abuse, and sought appropriate help. He might be alive today.
Mackenzie questions Judge’s findings
According to David Mackenzie’s attorneys, Gouws Attorneys, who define sexual abuse as “unwanted sexual behaviour by a perpetrator upon another”, Judge Chetty’s investigation was not tested as it would have been before a court of law. Further, they state, Mackenzie was investigated following Tom’s death, but the National Prosecuting Authority declined to prosecute, and he has been incorrectly linked to Operation Nemo which is investigating alleged grooming and sexual abuse in elite schools and the water polo community.
In November 2022, the Krugers filed civil charges against Mackenzie, along with St Andrew’s College, Alan Thompson, the Minister of Education and the South African Council of Educators. A year later, in November 2023, Mackenzie responded by counter-suing the Krugers and other parties for reputational risk. Both cases are still in process.
Despite providing comprehensive written responses for this article, both St Andrew’s College and former headmaster Thompson noted that they were constrained in their replies by pending legal action.
Thompson, who when he stepped down from St Andrew’s stated that he had been “misled and deceived by Mackenzie”, conveyed his desire for justice to be served for Tom and his family.
Tom Hamilton, who replaced Thompson as headmaster of St Andrew’s, expressed the hope that Tom Kruger could be memorialised at the school. He stressed that following the review board’s report on the failure in duty of care surrounding Mackenzie, St Andrew’s College had instituted significant changes to the school’s safeguarding policies and practices, and underlined the school’s commitment to exemplary duty of care.
Like Julio, Tom would have turned 22 this year. But five years after his death, Tom’s family still don’t know why he died. Kruger says that he felt that Tom, who used to tell him everything, must have been carrying a burden too great to share, even with his dad. He clearly saw no other way out except to end his life.
If Kruger is correct, Tom took that burden to the grave and if anyone who shared his life at St Andrew’s knows what it was, they are not telling.
Until they do, justice for Tom seems a long way off.
Julio, Ben*, Bradley and Tom, all boys with promising futures and loving families whose lives were forever defined, and for all but one, cut short after their experiences at some of South Africa’s leading boys’ schools. As seen in Ben’s story, seeing justice served against their alleged abusers is a welcome first step, but even that won’t suffice. Meaningful change requires elite schools to publicly acknowledge their failures in safeguarding their learners and to actively transform school culture and how they care for their learners.
We owe that much to them, and every other boy that will come after them.
This article was first published in the Daily Maverick 22.05.24
If a child you know has been affected by sexual or physical abuse or is at risk for suicide, please contact Childline’s Helpline 24/7 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: 8/1/2002 to 5/11/2022
Thomas Kruger: 20/3/2002 to 18/11/2018
Bradley Skipper: 18/12/1989 to 30/12/2017
*Name changed to protect the identity of the victim
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
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jan 28, 2020 | Child Abuse
hen Enock Mpianzi drowned on a school orientation camp, it was not because he was poor, black and foreign. Nor was it, as leadership of the Nyati Bush and Riverbreak Lodge has stated, ‘a terrible accident’ and ‘no one’s fault’. It was the result of a series of actions and decisions made by the adults entrusted with his care. These decisions were at best poor, and at worst reckless and negligent. Tragically, the result was foreseeable.
Listen to this article: BeyondWords
The parents of Grade 8 learners at Parktown Boys High School (PBHS) would have had some minimum expectations when they signed the indemnity form and sent their son on the school’s orientation camp. These include: that safety standards (both legal and reasonable) would be adhered to; that the school had conducted a due diligence on its chosen camp to ensure that it was a secure environment, and that the school would know the nature of activities taking place on camp and check with parents if their boys had the skill and ability to participate.
They would also have expected teachers to compile a comprehensive list of the boys on the camp and that the list, along with the boy’s indemnity forms, would always be in their possession; that the school would use systems like regular head counts and a buddy system to check that all of the boys were present at all times; and that in the unfortunate event of an incident, the school would react immediately, and provide them with comprehensive and timely updates.
Most of all, they would have expected their sons to come home.
Yet, incomprehensibly, a school described by Panyaza Lesufi as “one of our best schools in the province” seems to have violated most, if not all, of these expectations in the incident that led to Enock’s death, the 24-hour wait before anyone started looking for him, and the investigations that followed his body being recovered.
In the days since Enock died, the media has uncovered significant information about the events around his death and some answers to two crucial questions: how did he die and why was his body not found sooner?
Much of what has emerged seems incredible: facilitators at Nyati Bush and Riverbreak Lodge decided to put boys into the Crocodile River without life jackets, there was no apparent risk assessment to determine if the conditions in the river were safe, facilitators didn’t evaluate the boys’ swimming abilities before placing them in the water, teachers did not have an accurate list of camp attendees to check after the water activity, and there was an inexplicable unwillingness to believe that Enock was missing and look for him sooner.
In addition, there were a number of seemingly banal, but important, factors that contributed to his death. They included the school’s apparent unpreparedness for the camp (necessary permission was not obtained from the Gauteng Department of Education but the trip still went ahead, it’s uncertain if the school conducted due diligence before choosing the site, and buses arrived late to the camp). From Nyati’s side, camp facilitators were all young, between the ages of 19 and 25, and had received internal training but were not required to have any formal qualifications such as life-saving or First Aid. Facilitators also failed to get to know the boys prior to the first exercise.
Eyewitness accounts have confirmed that Enock died during the water component of a “rescue” exercise. The boys were placed into groups (of between 11 and 15 boys depending on whose account you believe), and tasked with building a stretcher to transport an “injured” boy to safety. The stretchers were made out of logs and materials that the boys could find, most were lashed together with shoelaces. One boy was then transported to “safety” through the water on the makeshift raft, which was balanced on an inner tube, while the rest of the boys were in the water. There is no record of facilitators having done a risk assessment about the conditions (despite recent rains which had made the currents in the river stronger).
In a statement to Eyewitness News (EWN), Nyati manager Anton Knoetze said that boys were told to sit out the water part of the exercise if they couldn’t swim. But no one evaluated the swimming ability of boys (like Enock) who could swim, and no one asked if they had swum in open water before. By Knoetze’s own admission none of the boys were wearing life jackets (none was requested for the camp, and none was provided by the facility). This, despite life jackets being a legal requirement for all open water activities. Eyewitness accounts indicate that at least one of the boys noticed life jackets at the camp pool and asked if they needed them for the exercise. They were told that life jackets were not necessary because they would be staying in the shallows.
Nyati’s press statement from 22 January stated that the boys had disobeyed this instruction, becoming competitive and trying to overtake other groups and finish first. It was a bizarre deflection, not just because it failed to acknowledge the legal requirement for safety devices, but also because, as water safety expert Graeme Addison pointed out on Carte Blanche, the boys would have had no way of knowing what was shallow water, and what was deep water.
It’s also worth remembering that these were 13-year-old boys, who were new to the school, unfamiliar with each other, and trying to prove themselves on their first activity on camp. It seems astonishing that Nyati would blame them for excited and competitive behaviour when it was surely a typical response, one that should have been foreseeable for any experienced facilitator.
What was also predictable was that the makeshift stretchers would break up in the open water. Some boys were able to grab onto the inner tube, but not all did. Many of the boys were swept down the river. Depending on who you believe, between 30 and 50 boys (up to a quarter of the boys on camp) had to be rescued. Many boys were rescued by other Grade 8 learners because the eight facilitators deployed by Nyati at the riverbank were not in the water and, according to one eyewitness, no teachers were present. The Grade 12 learners on the camp were also not present at the water activity. They were apparently in a session with child protection activist, Luke Lamprecht, who was briefing them on leadership, and how to instil culture and the “Parktown way” without the need for hazing.
Even strong swimmers reported that they thought that they were going to drown. Boys were screaming for help, and one eyewitness stated that some boys were clinging to an island but were told by the two facilitators who jumped into the water to “let go”, so they could “catch them”.
Given the river conditions, the lack of safety equipment and the lack of oversight, it seems miraculous that more lives were not lost.
If the exercise was ill-judged, what happened next seems even more unbelievable. Given the number of boys who were swept down the river and the trauma of the experience, the most obvious course of action by facilitators and teachers should have been to place boys into their original groups, check that all were present, comfort the boys who were vomiting and coughing uncontrollably, administer First Aid and, if all were present, debrief them about what had happened. If this had occurred, they would have known immediately that Enoch was missing.
But by Knoetze’s own admission the facilitators did not “know the children and their names”. This may have been a tragic (but again foreseeable) consequence of the Lodge cancelling planned “ice breakers” and “getting to know you” exercises because PBHS buses had allegedly arrived late for the camp. Instead, facilitators proceeded straight to a survival activity with groups of unfamiliar boys whose names they didn’t know.
Shockingly, it seems that they also didn’t know the number of boys in their groups. Facilitators wrote a group number on each boy’s hand to keep the boys together. But at the end of the exercise, the facilitator of Group 4 (Enoch‘s group) appeared not to notice that one of the 14 boys in the group was missing. When told by Enock’s friends that they didn’t know where he was, the alleged reply was that he had probably joined another group. It’s a bewildering response. Enock would have known his group number so even if it had washed off his hand, all the facilitator needed to do to find him (or confirm that he was missing) was ask the other facilitators if they had a boy from Group 4 in any of their groups.
But, they didn’t, and along with the failure to take proper safety precautions, it’s likely that this refusal to respond to an eyewitness account that a boy was missing resulted in his death.
The upshot was that Enock’s absence was not noticed at the river, at the point where he was most likely to be rescued alive. But even so, it seems incomprehensible that his absence was not noticed when roll call was taken by the headmaster, Malcolm Williams, two hours after the exercise began. There’ve been a number of explanations mooted for the headmaster taking roll call from the full list of Grade 8 learners attending Parktown Boys, rather than a camp attendees’ list. Some news stories have proposed that no roll call was taken prior to the camp. It’s possible (albeit alarming), but even if there was no roll call, a list of camp attendees could still have been compiled from the boys’ indemnity forms.
What is most plausible is that neither the roll call list nor the indemnity forms were at the camp when Enock went missing. An article in the Star cited credible evidence that the head teacher, Alex Meintjies, left the roll call list and indemnity forms on the hired Bus 2000 bus, which then returned to Johannesburg. Journalists from Daily Maverick have also confirmed that the school contacted the bus company after it returned to Johannesburg to report that “they left a list on the bus”.
The bus company is now refusing to comment further on the nature of the documents, as is the School Governing Body (SGB).
The impact of this act of carelessness was enormous. Had roll call been completed from the camp attendee list, it would have been glaringly obvious that Enock was missing. But several boys were unable to attend the camp, so when roll call was done from the full Grade 8 list, there would have been as many as 10 boys who did not respond when their names were called.
As an aside, two other outcomes of this “oversight” were that it resulted in the devastating 10am phone call to Enock’s parents on Thursday 16 January asking if he was on camp (staff would have had to contact the parents of all the boys who did not respond to roll call).
In addition, the other consequence (and possibly the reason why the SGB responded with such hostility to the Daily Maverick’s request for comment), was that almost 200 young boys would have been on camp overnight without the indemnity forms which not only contained permission for the children to be on the trip, and emergency contact details, but also their medical information, including details of chronic medication requirements and life-threatening allergies. Given the heart-stopping resultant risk, the school is probably fortunate that more boys were not hurt during this camp.
What’s critical is that even if Enock’s absence was not obvious to facilitators, teachers or the headmaster at the river or during roll call (as intimated), there has been no explanation for why they all failed to listen to, or believe, Enock’s friends who told them multiple times over a 24-hour period that Enock was missing. Surely even if the boys were mistaken, it was incumbent on the staff to investigate their claims. Speculation has abounded about why they didn’t, but it’s one aspect of this story that no amount of investigative journalism can uncover, because the responsible people aren’t talking.
The other mystery is why a school with a history of abuse and conflict over orientation camps would select Nyati for its orientation camp. As recently as 2018, the Grade 8 camp was scrapped because of the potential risk to boys. But the SGB allegedly fought to have the camp reinstated in 2019, prompting an attorney representing concerned parents to state: “I have always believed that it will take the death of an innocent child for the government to realise exactly what is going on at Parktown.” Despite these concerns, the camp was still planned for 2020, albeit with a venue change because of the identified risk to learners at the previous camp site where teachers were housed too far away from the boys.
So why, given the need to protect the boys, and the history of abuse in the school, did Parktown Boys fail to apply for permissions to hold the camp in the time frame required by the GDE, and why did the camp go ahead despite permission not being granted? Equally, where is the school’s due diligence on Nyati? One should have been completed by teachers prior to selecting the venue and, as Panyaza Lesufi has pointed out, even a cursory search on Nyati would have uncovered damning information about the camp (including the 2010 death of Mellony Sias and reports that the camp could be militaristic and rigid – a significant problem given Parktown Boy’s history with initiation). Although it wasn’t common knowledge at the time that Enock was the fifth child to die at the camp, surely one fatality would have raised red flags, as would the lack of formal qualifications and youth of the facilitators.
If the school did not compile a detailed due diligence on the camp (including police clearances and form 30s for all facilitators, a list of qualifications and a list of activities to be performed), it certainly failed in its duty to protect its new Grade 8s from harm.
While the picture of what occurred on 15 January is only emerging now, what’s been clear from the outset is how poorly the school has handled the crisis. It’s now common knowledge that the boys were told not to tell anyone (not even their parents) about what for many had been the worst experience of their lives. According to Francis Herd, news anchor and commentator on crisis management, the first tenet of crisis management is to stop the harm. But this instruction would have produced more pressure and fear in already traumatised boys.
Teachers were also instructed not to comment, and parents were invited to a meeting on 20 January only to be told that they could not ask questions. In addition, the headmaster asked the media to refrain from writing about Enock’s death “out of respect for the family”.
But, it’s hard to argue that the interests of Enock’s family are best served by silence, or by waiting the promised three months for the result of the investigations into his death, especially since information disclosed by Parktown Boys has been incomplete and improbable. Herd says that best practice at a time of crisis is full and open disclosure to the media and the public to avoid appearing untrustworthy. Had the school revealed what it knew instead of obfuscating and concealing evidence, it would have built trust and avoided the extraordinary levels of media scrutiny. Instead, Parktown Boys’ reticence to share information while others were talking made it appear that the school had something to hide.
In a painful interview on 702, Enock’s great-uncle explained how the school could not tell them at what point Enock had disappeared (despite the boys saying he had not been seen after the water event, staff still speculated that he may have got lost on the hike), or how he died. He described the heartbreak of finding Enock’s body two days after he died, and the feeling that Enoch’s death had gone “unnoticed”. He also articulated a conviction that if journalists hadn’t intervened and organised a discussion with Enock’s friend, the boy who was brave enough to give his eyewitness account, the family may never have known what happened to their son.
Herd believes that the school has lost control of the crisis, and can no longer be an authoritative voice. She is therefore not surprised that the previous crisis at PBHS, involving sexual misconduct, has come up again in public perception and the press. Given the level of distrust from the previous crisis, she contends that Parktown Boys should have been extra responsive this time around.
So, instead of creating the impression of protecting Enock’s family, the injunction for silence seems to be part of an overall bid to keep the story quiet to protect people who may be guilty of gross negligence. It’s a truism, but those with nothing to hide, hide nothing. Instead, to quote Rams Mabote, a parent at PBHS and mentor, the “conspiracy of lies” remains at Parktown Boys.
Regardless of what happens next, it’s hard to overstate the damage done. A child, a treasured son and brother, who wanted to be an attorney so he could help people and who could not sleep the night before the camp because he was so excited, is dead. Described as a “quiet, friendly and obedient child”, he was able to form friendships in less than a day that were so strong that his friends were willing to risk everything for him.
Despite the school organising counselling, many boys who attended the camp are suffering from nightmares, and counsellors had to intervene to get the annual school gala cancelled because many boys were too traumatised to get into the water. The lives of boys in all grades have also been compromised as their school is once again producing infamous headlines, and since daily life has been disrupted by (admittedly justified) protests at their gates, interruption of schooling and the inescapable conclusion that their staff and management cannot be trusted to make good choices for them.
It’s now up to the GDE, SGB, and, ideally, parents, to decide what happens next at Parktown Boys. We can only hope that these adults make better decisions than those made on that fateful camp, the Grade 8s of 2020 and all of their peers deserves nothing less. DM
First published in the Daily Maverick: 28.01.2020
To cite please use the author’s name, the year of publication, the title of the article, name of publication, date of publication.
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jan 7, 2019 | Child Abuse
One of the most significant events of the 2018 ‘16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children’ was the sentencing of Collan Rex, the abuser of 23 Parktown Boys’ pupils between the ages of 13 and 16, to an apt 23 years in prison. But as welcome as the sentence was, there is much about the case that is still troubling for child protection activists. Particularly concerning are the failure of the abuser and the structures that supported him to acknowledge the impact of the abuse, and the role of the school and its traditions in allowing Rex to flourish. As the 2019 school year begins, holding all parties accountable is critical, not only for the boys’ healing, but also to prevent future incidents of abuse.
Listen to this article: BeyondWords
The noise that the wooden stands made when hundreds of boys in black blazers and boaters stamped out the rousing school anthem Arise, Arise, Parktown whenever their team played rugby is an enduring memory from my childhood. Fast forward to rugby season 2018, and another generation of Parktown Boys was chanting their anthem. But this time the response of their biggest rivals, King Edwards and Jeppe Boys, was to chant back, taunting them, calling them “gay”, “homos” and “faggots”.
It was an ugly consequence of the sexual abuse scandal involving the school’s water polo coach that has kept Parktown Boys in the news. It may be one of the reasons why in September 2018, Parktown’s School Governing Body (SGB) declined an interview on SABC news to talk about testimony given by Collan Rex in his own defence, stating that they were hoping that the story would “quieten down” if they didn’t speak. Child protection activists disagree. They maintain that the story needs to remain in the public domain, not, as some might assume to the detriment of the boys, but for two important reasons.
The first is that while Parktown Boys has been in the spotlight because of the case, the practices and structures that led to this predator not just surviving, but thriving, are common to many boys’ schools, even to co-ed schools with strong traditions. In his pivotal report on the Parktown Boys abuse case, veteran activist Luke Lamprecht explained how the purpose, culture and structure of boy’s schools enable and sometimes tacitly condone abuse. He drew the troubling conclusion that although the focus is currently on Parktown Boys, these factors are present in most traditional boy’s schools.
The boys chanting “faggots” at those rugby matches could also be in danger if practices of initiation, institutional rigidity and the culture of secrecy exist in their schools, and aren’t addressed. Secondly, although Parktown Boys would understandably like to argue that the current scandal is linked exclusively to one individual and his deviant practices, reports from child protection activists belie this. And despite admirable measures from the school to protect boys going forwards, failure to address the long-term nature of the problems facilitate a culture where predators can thrive.
In his report, Lamprecht explains how traditionally, boys’ schools were designed to produce boys ready for military service. The resultant patriarchal and misogynistic structures are programmed for obedience and secrecy. Schools form boys into an “elite” that needs to be protected from outsiders, often through a code of silence: in the case of Parktown Boys: “what happens at Parktown, stays at Parktown”. It is a culture that is maintained by teachers and older boys, who have often been subjected to the same rituals and practices in the past, and who have internalised the code. In many cases, teachers at Parktown Boys chose not to respond to boys’ reports of physical and sexual abuse despite Section 110 of the Children’s Amendment Act and the Sexual Offences Act making it compulsory for them to report it.
In addition, older boys perpetuate the culture through the age-old practice of “fagging”. Fagging was defined in the 1800s by the then headmaster of Rugby School “as the power given by the authorities of the school to (the oldest boys), to be exercised over younger boys… reminiscent of the relationship between squire and knight in the Middle Ages.” In Parktown Boys, it can be clearly seen in the “old pot, new pot” system. The fag system is reinforced through initiation practices, which can range from relatively benign pranks to protracted patterns of behaviour that rise to the level of abuse or criminal misconduct. Initiation may include physical or psychological abuse, nudity or even sexual assault.
The most extreme version is hazing which can involve severe aggression and sexual perversion, both of which have been identified at Parktown Boys, especially on sports camps and in the hostel. Add to that the total institution found in a hostel environment, where boys’ lives are controlled and regulated in every way, and it is easy to see how boys could be induced into acts that violated their own boundaries. Total institutions also provide a unique environment for perpetrators to hide abuse. In Rex’s case, he had unfettered access to the boys he abused and absolute power to control them and make them compliant.
According to Lamprecht, two of the most important prerequisites for abuse to occur are for the abuser to avoid external inhibitors like possible legal implications, and to overcome the inhibitions of the child, sometimes done through force, but usually through the processes of grooming and gaslighting. In addition, the culture of secrecy, which Lamprecht describes as the “power of abuse”, shortens the activity of grooming because it is all bracketed within the initiation process and “what happens at Parktown, stays at Parktown”.
Grooming occurs when the offender overcomes the child’s resistance by making the child their “favourite”, giving them special treatment, isolating one or a small group, and gradually using boundary and taboo violations to blur a normal caring relationship into one that meets the offender’s sexual needs. Grooming is also premised on the sharing of secrets, often illicit drinking, drugs or the use of pornography. These are usually introduced or permitted by the abuser, followed by the promise that, “I won’t tell anyone, it will be our little secret”. The little secret then shifts to include a bigger secret, namely the abuse. Both aspects of grooming make the child feel a sense of responsibility for the abuse, resulting in guilt and shame, and become a barrier to purposeful disclosure.
The script of Rex’s abuse is textbook. He was only slightly older than the boys he abused, and therefore potentially “cool”. He was ostensibly a peer, with the mentality of a teen. But he had authority over the boys, a sports coach and junior hostel master with the power to make favourites in the hostel and the swimming pool, access to introduce illicit behaviour, and the physical strength to subdue them.
Add to that Rex’s use of gaslighting, which Lamprecht defines as “manipulation of someone by psychological means into doubting their own sanity”, and Rex’s denial (in particular his denial of the impact of the abuse, something he clearly communicated to the boys, and evident in them referring to his behaviour as the “Rex way”), and it is easy to see why the boys’ testimony may have seemed uncertain at times.
During the trial, the boys testified how Rex’s behaviour overstepped boundaries including introducing pornography and adult content such as Fifty shades of Grey, drugs, and even a stripper being brought to school. Rex justified pulling down boys’ costumes and rubbing up against boys in the pool as being “just part of the sport”. It is particularly telling that one of the boys reported his abuse to a teacher, but only much later because he “wasn’t sure”. This evidence should have been interpreted as classic indicators of grooming and gaslighting, but it wasn’t. Instead, the magistrate dismissed the boys’ evidence as not credible, much to their deep distress given that they had risked everything to testify. The legal system’s choice not to interpret their testimony in the context of grooming and gaslighting was evidence of how effective Rex’s abuse was.
For his part, Rex admitted to the content of the charges against him, but he did not plead guilty. Instead, he minimised the impact of the abuse by blaming the water polo culture for his actions. His contention was that the touching of genitals was a necessary part of the sport. In addition, he attributed his abusive ways to his own experience of being molested at the school, using what psychologists refer to as the “vampire myth” to effectively claim that the “Rex way” and the “Parktown way” were the same.
But according to Rees Mann from the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse, the argument that all abusers go on to abuse others is incorrect. Mann questions why we believe it of abused men but not of abused women. Lamprecht contends that the vampire myth arose from very limited studies of incarcerated sexual offenders who had the motive to blame their behaviour on prior abuse, and in many cases, no evidence to support it. But the vampire myth not only takes away the agency of the abused, but it also implies that boys cannot be simply viewed as vulnerable victims, instead they become “abusers in waiting”.
Interestingly, the magistrate did not accept this as a defence in mitigation of sentencing and held Rex completely responsible for his actions, sentencing him to 144 counts of sexual assault and 12 counts of common assault. But, crucially, the ruling does not clear the school of culpability. What is clear from extensive studies of the school is that Rex did not form Parktown Boys, he was formed by the school. Instead of excusing his crimes, his history of abuse widens the list of those culpable for his actions to include his own abusers, and more importantly, the school that produced him, and chose not to vet him appropriately.
It is no coincidence that the last major scandal at Parktown Boys occurred in 2009, the year that Rex entered the school. It involved Grade 11 learners from the hostel who were seriously assaulted during an initiation ritual. The initiation took place at night, apparently unsupervised by staff but educators were very clearly complicit. Labelled a rite of passage, whose stated goal was to make the Grade 11s earn the privilege of having a kettle, the victims were taken out of their beds at night, physically beaten with bats and clubs and had Deep Heat rubbed into their genitals. In response, Pene Kimber, the mother of one of the Grade 11 boys who was assaulted in this ritual, pressed charges against the Grade 12 boys involved. What is significant according to Lamprecht is that although the assault was both sexual and physical, only the physical was publicly emphasised, and the school obtained a civil settlement which included a non-disclosure agreement. And troublingly, the case prompted staff, management and Old Boys to close ranks around the perpetrators and the school traditions.
High-profile arguments for the right of the school to continue initiations and “it happened to us and look how well we turned out, so what is wrong with you”, dominated the narrative, and the family who made the allegations public were subjected to ridicule and death threats. The upshot was that although the school had a significant opportunity to transform its culture in 2009, it actively resisted change. The ethos of secrets, initiation and violence was still prevalent when Collan Rex entered the school, with devastating results. Some may even argue that it worsened as a knee-jerk response to the Kimber case.
Peter Harris, who presented the Harris, Nupen, Molebatsi report, commissioned by the Gauteng Department of Education in response to parent outrage about how the abuse of the “Parktown Boys 23” occurred, confirms this belief: “Unfortunately, since 2009, initiation practices that involved quite severe assaults have taken place and…there have been allegations of severe initiation practices taking place at various camps on various occasions and in various sporting teams over the years”.
When considering accountability for this case, it is also crucial to acknowledge that when Rex’s abuse was accidentally uncovered by a boy viewing security footage of the hostel common room in the hope of finding lost water polo caps, the school again tried to use a civil case to cover it up.
Nor are these the only instances of abuse in the school’s history. The South African Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse has a sexual abuse case from the school dating back as far as 1969. But the inception of the sexual abuse at Parktown is widely believed to be the late 1980s when the hostel was opened. The implication is that some of the boys who were proudly chanting on the stands when I was a child were already being molested. In his report, Harris detailed a long history of abuse. Practices included “sexually predatory behaviour” by senior pupils against junior pupils, a culture of assault and sexual assault under the guise of “initiation practices” and “profoundly shocking” utterances made by teachers in the presence of pupils.
“While it is a problem at most schools, it would appear that this has become a generational practice at Parktown Boys,” Harris said.
In 2006, a boy was badly assaulted in a prefect’s assembly. His mother reported the abuse to the school and the department, and was informed by the department that she was trying to destroy the school. Tragically, her son didn’t ever recover from the abuse, and he took his own life in December 2017. According to Harris, some of the most troubling incidents they uncovered involved sexually predatory behaviour by senior pupils against junior pupils in 2014 and 2015, and the lashing of a boy during a water polo camp as recently as 2017.
And it isn’t just the long history of hidden physical and sexual abuse at Parktown Boys that is troubling. In an interview on 702, Eusebius McKaiser presented a cogent concern that there has not been a sufficient apology or full disclosure from Parktown Boy’s management, and in its absence, there are a number of lingering worries about the abuse.
One of the most critical questions is why Rex was employed in the first place. Lamprecht’s report indicated that Rex had a history of being abused and being abusive. When he was at the school, his peers, who apparently all knew about his abusive behaviour, warned younger boys to be careful when they were with him because he was “touchy and possibly gay”. He also reportedly went to the younger boys’ rooms, and as he got older and wielded more power and authority (as was set up in the school and hostel system), he began to demonstrate many of the actions that led to the abuse of the 23 boys when he later became an assistant hostel master.
Also, while Rex was at high school, one younger boy told his peer that Rex often lay on his bed and touched him inappropriately on his private parts in the guise of wrestling. He would later get a “joke award” for this as an assistant master when the boys began to refer to his behaviour as “the Rex way”. But given that this conduct was already so evident when he was a pupil, it is hard to see how the school could have missed his abusive tendencies. School management would surely have reviewed his history prior to recruiting him. But even if they did overlook it, it appears that he made little attempt to hide his behaviour when he was an assistant master. The question of culpability becomes an important one. How did the responsible adults in the hostel and the school miss the abuse? Or did they note it and just turn a blind eye?
The Harris Nupen Molebatsi report indicates that as with historical abuse, some educators at the school were aware of what was occurring, and failed to report it, and some enabled it. Others mocked the boys for telling their stories and for their “perceived weakness”. The boys were infantilised for expressing their pain and labelled as “cry babies”, and victims were humiliated, insulted and warned that “snitches get stitches and fall into ditches”. Allegations against staff articulated in the report include condoning and encouraging initiation practices on sports tours, and bringing alcohol and even a stripper on to school property.
Harris noted that “it is quite conceivable that certain of the initiation practices, the code of silence, as well as certain of the assaults perpetrated by senior boys on junior boys may well have taken place with the tacit if not complicit consent of certain staff members, who themselves, when they were boys at the school, suffered a similar fate”. Concerningly, at the inception of the 2019 school year and more than four months after the reading of the report (it has still not been released), parents of the school allege that some of the educators named in the report remain at the school, while others continue to be employed in other schools.
Nonetheless, the school and the Gauteng Department of Education have taken some commendable steps to make the boys safer, especially in the hostel. The hostel is under new management and the school has increased the number of security cameras in common places, introduced the Guardian app to allow boys to report bullying and abuse anonymously, and the proper evaluation and psychological assessment of staff members at recruitment.
Initiation practices have also been banned, with the school focusing on older learners earning respect rather than demanding it. But the practices are hard to eliminate, and the school has an ongoing challenge of policing culture, especially in an environment where some old boys and teachers condone initiation. There also remains the question of who will be the first generation of Grade 12s to say, “it was done to us, but we won’t do it to anyone else”.
The parents of the “Parktown Boys 23” argue that despite Rex’s sentence, the lack of acknowledgement of culpability from the perpetrator and the school remains a barrier to healing. They also contend that the changes are “too little, too late” for their boys, many of whom suffered tertiary trauma through testifying, and the appallingly slow and inept Department of Social Development process of gathering evidence to ascertain the impact of Rex’s crimes. Several of these boys remain depressed, detached and on suicide watch.
Nonetheless, these parents continue to fight for the class of 2019, especially the new Grade 8 intake, and all the boys whose lives will be impacted one way or another by Parktown Boys. In the end, nothing short of an end to initiation, cadets, the code of secrecy and the toxic masculinity it produces will effect a change in culture. If Parktown Boys and the other boy’s schools like it don’t make the changes required, more predators like Rex will thrive, and the boys produced by the system will not become proud old boys, but rather, broken men. DM
First published in the Daily Maverick: 07.01.2019
To cite please use the author’s name, the year of publication, the title of the article, name of publication, date of publication.
