Up to 60% of South African children have seen pornography by age 10; 20% of children have been subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation online; and harmful sexual behaviours among children, including rape and incest, are at crisis levels.
It’s been two years since South Africa participated in the global Disrupting Harm survey which identified the prevalence and impact of online child sexual abuse and exploitation (OCSEA) in the country, and a year since Daily Maverick sounded the alarm about children’s early and prolonged exposure to pornography and other harms children experience online.
They are harms that government appears to be taking seriously. In 2024, when it was a participant in the first global conference on ending violence against children and signatory to the resultant Bogota Call to Action – a global commitment to protecting children from violence – South Africa’s pledge included online safety.
Also in 2024, four regulatory entities launched the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and Media Regulators Forum, designed to protect children and vulnerable groups in digital spaces; the Film and Publications Board launched a WhatsApp hotline.
Moreover, online safety was included as a theme of the 2024 “16 Days of Activism for no violence against women and children”.
But even a cursory comparison of South Africa’s commitment to those of other Bogota signatories, and an evaluation of government’s presentation to the Parliamentary Committee on social development about what it has done to prevent and mitigate online harm, raises alarm bells.
Government’s strategy, which ignores the harm of children’s exposure to pornography and includes no mention of legislative or policy reforms, but instead focuses on education and awareness raising, is a long-game approach, akin to going door-to-door to warn people of an approaching hurricane.
It might be apposite if we weren’t already in the middle of the storm.
Problematic or harmful sexual behaviours
The reports came with depressing regularity over 2024. Concerned schools, ranging from elite private schools to quintile 1 and 2 government schools, sought help with problematic or harmful sexual behaviours often enacted in public spaces, at school, on camps and tours, and after hours between pupils.
Girls caught naked and kissing each other in school bathrooms; boys and girls masturbating in public spaces, either alone or in a group; boys experimenting together sexually on school camps, including a group of boys using bottles for anal penetration; reports of groping and fingering; sexual grooming of peers; and even full sexual assault, often in public places.
While some may argue that such behaviours aren’t uncommon among teens, these reports aren’t coming from high schools. Instead, every one of these incidents involved children aged between six and 11, neither legally able to consent to sex nor to be charged with a crime because they’re under the age of criminal capacity.
In one of the most concerning stories, John* a nine-year-old boy, sexually assaulted Ella*, an 11-year-old girl. The boy was bewildered about her reluctance to participate.
In another, a boy was seen sexually assaulting preschool girls on the side of the road.
The reports aren’t isolated. Experts are concerned that harmful sexual behaviours, defined as child-on-child sexual abuse or inappropriate sexual behaviours, are at epidemic levels among children.
In the United Kingdom, 50% of sexual assaults of children reported to the police have been committed by other children. South Africa lacks these disaggregated sexual assault statistics.
But, a recent study on harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) among South African children conducted by Jelly Beanz, an organisation dedicated to helping children impacted by trauma and abuse, found that in 2016, in almost a third of South African sexual abuse cases involving children, the perpetrator was another child. If South Africa is following international trends, that percentage has increased in the last eight years.
Exposure to online pornography
The HSB cases all have a common denominator – at least one of the involved children had been exposed to online pornography prior to the incident. In its book, South African Children and Pornography, designed to help practitioners manage the pornography crisis, Jelly Beanz explain that young children are particularly affected by viewing pornography and feel compelled to either co-watch with other children or to act out what they have seen. The consequences can be tragic.
In a well-publicised story published in the Sowetan in October 2024, a boy was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment after he began raping other children at age 12. His rapes included that of a 12-year-old classmate, an 11-year-old boy, a five-year-old girl and the attempted rape of an 11-year-old girl. Along with a violent family life, the boy confessed to watching pornography on his phone and then “putting what he saw into practice”.
For Edith Kriel, Managing Director of Jelly Beanz, the case epitomises an adult problem for which children are paying. Kriel lamented the institutional failure that resulted in this child not getting the help he needed to stop harming others. Social workers had an opportunity to intervene after the first rape, but misunderstood the legislated age of criminal capacity and failed to ask the right questions about how his online world was driving his behaviour.
At nine, John* had already been viewing pornography for several years. When asked about it, his heartbroken mother said that she had been aware of his pornography usage, but thought he had stopped watching.
As much victims as actors
The Harmful Sexual Behaviours study emphasises that children who commit these crimes when under 12, the age of criminal capacity, are “children at risk” and in many cases, “sad children not bad children”. Those whose behaviour originates in pornography viewing are as much victims as they are actors.
But this does not mitigate harm, and children may still end up in diversion programmes, if these are even available, and labelled a pervert or paedophile by their peers.
In at least one case, a 10-year-old boy was forced to leave his school because of bullying and name-calling from other boys and their parents after a shared and mutually initiated sexual experiment with three of his peers on a school camp.
The South African government urgently needs to acknowledge the link between pornography viewing and HSB drawn by multiple academic studies and the United Kingdom Children’s Commissioner, and act to protect children from exposure to pornography as part of its strategy to shield children from online harms. It’s critical because if South African statistics are accurate, and up to 60% of children are exposed to pornography by age 10, these incidents will not decrease without active government intervention.
Nor is HSB the only negative outcome of children viewing pornography. It is also linked to early sexual debuts in children, willingness to take more risks sexually, including anal sex, facial ejaculations, strangulation, unprotected sex and sexual violence.
A 2010 study which analysed the most watched pornography scenes found that 88% of them contained physical violence – 94% of this violence was directed towards women and in 96% of the scenes, the women portrayed pleasure when aggressed against.
In a country with such high levels of violence against women and children and such concerning rates of child pregnancies, including among children aged 10-14, policymakers cannot ignore the impact of pornography viewing.
Online exploitation
Further, exposure to pornography has been identified by frontline workers as the most significant risk factor in making children vulnerable to online child sexual abuse and exploitation (Ocsea).
The online harms that government does acknowledge, including online grooming, sexting and sextortion, are equally prevalent in South Africa. A global 2024 study done by the University of Edinburgh and the Human Dignity Foundation for Childlight found that more than 300 million, or one in eight children worldwide, had been subject to online solicitation in the past 12 months. This includes unwanted sexual talk such as non-consensual sexting, unwanted sexual questions, non-consensual taking, sharing and/or exposure to sexual images and videos, and requests for unwanted sexual acts by adults or other youths.
Of the regions surveyed, southern and East Africa had the highest measured rates of online solicitation of children in the past 12 months (which they defined as online grooming, online sexual harassment, pressure to obtain images, voluntarily provided images in a statutorily impermissible relationship, unwanted/non-consensual/pressured sexting, and unwanted sexual talk). The studies they cited showed that 20.4%, or one in five children in the region had been targeted over the previous 12 months.
This study mirrored the findings of the South African version of the Disrupting Harm study which indicated that in the year prior to the survey, 19% of the 9-17-year-olds surveyed were asked “to talk about sex or sexual acts with someone when they did not want to”; 22% had been asked to share sexual information about themselves; 16% said they had been asked to share a naked photo or video of themselves; and 7% had been extorted using naked photos or images (the latter two figures are likely to be higher because these crimes are frequently underreported).
Nor are online harms exclusively related to pornography or Ocsea. In 2024, Dr Jonathan Haidt’s book, the Anxious Generation detailed the rise of phone-based children, the loss of a play-based childhood, and how it’s affecting children.
Haidt, along with other experts in this space such as Dr Jean Twenge, Dr Becky Foljambe and Professor Gloria Mark highlight in stark detail how our children’s online world has resulted in a myriad of harms ranging through depression, loneliness, self-harm and suicide, high-risk behaviours, changes to sleep, relationships and academic performance, and compulsivity – all of which are impacting on children’s working memory, ability to concentrate, emotional regulation, judgement, impulsivity, cognitive skills and ability to learn.
SA’s high-risk environment
While these are global challenges, South Africa is a particularly high-risk environment because of the saturation of children with internet-enabled devices; the absence of care for many; the lack of tech-savvy caregivers who recognise that children are no longer safe “in their own rooms” and who have actively put protective mechanisms in place; the deficiency of budget for policing and prosecution of online crimes; and the dearth of legislation and policy to protect children online.
In response to these crises, government has focused on awareness and education. In December 2024, the Department of Social Development reported to the parliamentary portfolio committee that since the country became a member of the WeProtect Global Alliance in July 2020, government has trained almost 1,000 practitioners on online safety and run several workshops for children, caregivers and educators.
The South African government’s commitment to continue with this strategy is confirmed in its Bogota pledge which states that the country will “build capacity of different stakeholders on online safety including parents, caregivers, children, frontline workers, and strengthen the curriculum in schools promoting the online safety of children by 2027”.
Awareness-raising and education are mission critical for dealing with online harms, and a key action step highlighted in the evidence-based action report arising from the global Disrupting Harm study. But, as veteran child protection activist Joan van Niekerk points out, “in the absence of any reported monitoring and evaluation, it’s impossible to say how many of South Africa’s 21 million children have been reached through each trained practitioner.”
Problematic strategy
The strategy is problematic for other reasons too.
First, it is a painstakingly slow approach to a clear and present danger. Not only is the risk to children of delayed interventions immense, but the department doesn’t have the resources to provide restorative justice and support services for the number of children already exhibiting harmful sexual behaviours.
Equally, South Africa has neither the capacity in policing services nor the justice system to be able to assist children groomed and targeted online, often after being exposed to pornography.
Second, an education and awareness approach inadvertently places the burden of responsibility on children to keep themselves safe. Not only is this a devolution and avoidance of the state’s duty of care for vulnerable children, but it places children in an impossible situation.
The Disrupting Harm survey consistently found that children were aware of risks online and professed that they wouldn’t take them, but still did. For example, more than 50% of children said that it was very risky to talk to someone on the internet that they hadn’t met before, but equally, more than 50% reported that they had done so; 32% had shared their personal details including full name, address or phone number despite knowing that this could result in harm.
Kriel illustrates using the story of a 7-year-old who was exposed to pornography after he searched for the words “bum” and “boys peeing”, despite having signed a contract agreeing not to search for anything inappropriate on the school iPads. In response, the school blamed this Grade 1 for “breaking his promise”, thus deferring its fundamental responsibility to protect children when they access school tech.
As experts attest, children’s brains are still developing through childhood, and they cannot always predict the consequences of their actions. Equally, as studies are confirming, children who have been shielded from risk “in the real world” are often far more compelled to take risks online.
But most importantly, we are pitting children against the pornography industry that in 2023 was worth $1.1-billion in America alone; against programmed backdoors and sophisticated algorithms designed to trap children into viewing pornography; against big tech’s lack of accountability for allowing children’s natural curiosity about sex and sexuality to result in them being exposed to all genres of pornography, including rape and snuff pornography; against sexual predators; and against criminal syndicates preying on children’s need for belonging and identity and so effective that in one study, two-thirds of the 6,000 Gen Z youth and young adults surveyed across six countries had been sextorted.
State responsibility
It isn’t a fair fight, and we cannot make it children’s responsibility to stay safe. For this reason, pledges from other countries place the onus on the state to protect children.
For example, the United Kingdom’s commitment is to “international leadership to prevent child sexual exploitation and abuse in all its forms, including online child sexual abuse, through the implementation of legislation and the sharing of knowledge and insight with key partners across the world. This includes responding to the increasing threat of AI-generated child sexual abuse and exploitation and supporting innovative work from across the tech sector to use AI to detect and prevent this harm”.
Zimbabwe’s pledge includes legislation designed to protect children in the online space.
It is also the reason why Australia’s recently enacted ban on social media for children under 16 has no penalties for children or caregivers if they contravene the restrictions, but places the burden of responsibility squarely on technology companies to ensure that they do not permit underage use.
Failure to comply – as with the EU regulations, and the UK’s Online Safety Act which will be enacted in 2025 and is designed to protect children from exposure to pornography, self-harm and violent content – will result in huge financial penalties for the companies who transgress. In the case of the UK, that is up to 10% of their global revenue.
But perhaps the biggest problem with government’s approach is that, as with its other strategies to stop child violence, it represents a failure to use the power afforded to it to make systemic and societal change.
Suggested actions
The suggested action items from the Disrupting Harm study include governments investing in child protection services, budgeting for law reform and policy development, and financially capacitating first responders such as increasing the number and expertise of practitioners, dedicated police services including in cybercrimes, and child-friendly justice.
Further, it recommends using legislation amendments, new legislation and policy to address Ocsea and exposure to pornography.
Frustratingly, the South African Law Reform Commission has already done the work to draft the necessary legislation. As highlighted by Daily Maverick in December 2023, recommendations to protect children from exposure to pornography and other harms online have been gathering dust for the past three years.
No one in government has stated publicly why the legislation has never been actioned. But, if the minister of social development and the new minister of justice are committed to online safety for children, introducing the legislation to Parliament would be the most effective way to achieve this.
In a country with a myriad of child protection challenges and profound levels of exposure to violence, keeping children safer online could significantly minimise their risk of harm.
Surely it should be everyone’s goal? But achieving it requires government to add to its current education and awareness strategy, to enact the drafted legislation most likely to protect children, and ultimately, to capacitate the child protection system.
Does it have the motivation and political will to do so? Only time will tell.
On 5 November 2024, the second anniversary of Julio Mordoh’s suicide, civil summonses were served on his alleged abuser; his former school and principal, on the secure facility where he died; on the doctor tasked with his care; and on interested parties including the Anglican church and Department of Education. For his grieving parents, the goal is simple — accountability.
is January, millions of parents dressed their children in their school uniforms, took back-to-school pictures and waved them goodbye as they started the new school year. In so doing, they acted on the expectation that their child’s school will be in loco parentis, safeguarding their children as they themselves would.
But what happens when children aren’t kept safe by their educators and coaches, and when the school tasked with stopping the harm fails in its duty of care?
According to the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC), in the 18 months from April 2023 to October 2024, 65 educators in South Africa were fired for sexual misconduct, prompting the disturbing News24 headline, Teachers are not meant to turn pupils into lovers.
Despite the 65 being reported to the Department of Social Development to be listed on the National Child Protection Register as persons deemed unfit to work with children, only 16 educators were deregistered by the South African Council of Educators (SACE), the registering body for educators.
Without deregistration, the upshot is that some of those fired educators may continue teaching, possible because the child protection register is notoriously out of date and not all schools have recent form 29s for their staff.
But even if educators are listed on the register, they could still be providing private extra lessons, music lessons or sports coaching because parents cannot access the register to check on a potential educator’s status.
Even more alarmingly, the ELRC said that while it is the Department of Education’s job to report sexual misconduct to the police in terms of Section 54 of the Sexual Offences Act and Section 110 of the Children’s Act, it has no way of confirming if these teachers were reported and how many cases have resulted in criminal proceedings.
The upshot is that even when educators are fired for sexual misconduct, they may still have access to children.
Varied school responses
And those are the ones reported – many aren’t. During 2024, we were inundated with stories about sexual misconduct by teachers. The schools’ reactions could not be more varied.
Some responded with active engagement and full disclosure. For example in one case, the alleged perpetrator’s sexual abuse was divulged by the affected children in mid-October 2024, the school immediately reported the matter to the police on the children’s behalf and within two weeks, the former educator was arrested and remanded in custody.
On the other extreme, some schools threatened whistle-blowers with legal action if they proceeded with their reports. And in one troubling instance, staff from a school were called into a meeting following an anonymous report to authorities about the sexual abuse of a learner which led to an investigation by the provincial department of education and SACE.
The staff were told by a senior member of the management team that he had contacts, and that not only would he make the case go away, but that he’d also find the whistle-blowers, and when he did, he knew where they and their families lived.
Most schools fall somewhere between these extremes however, quietly investigating allegations internally, and often, equally quietly, letting the alleged perpetrator move on to become another school’s problem. This enabling has in one instance allowed an alleged perpetrator to abuse children in at least two different countries for more than 50 years.
While responsibility for the sexual abuse of children lies with the perpetrator, accountability for the harm lies with the system that either enables them or holds them responsible.
In a series of articles I will be writing, I ask: who is guarding the guardians, and what should the consequence be for schools, government and other institutions that fail in their duty of care?
Julio Mordoh
Julio Mordoh. (Photos: Supplied)
It’s been two long years since Teresa and Marcio Mordoh lost their son. Julio died, aged 20, after he hanged himself with his belt in a restricted area at a secure psychiatric facility. His untimely death came less than a year after he first disclosed that he had been groomed and sexually abused by his former head of pastoral care and rock climbing coach, and only weeks after he deposed an affidavit against the man he accused of abusing him from the ages of nine to 12 while he was in the Preparatory School at St John’s College in Johannesburg, the elite boy’s school where he spent most of his schooling life.
After years of suppressed memories, Julio’s disclosure of the abuse first occurred when his psychologist read him a letter written by St John’s College after another of the school’s former pupils came forward to allege sexual assault by the prep school teacher.
Tragically, Julio’s response to the letter was, “Oh, so there were other boys, I thought I was the only one.”
Writing from Julio Mordoh’s diary. (Photo: Supplied)
Less than a year later Julio was dead, having lost his brave battle with the post-traumatic stress and depression that characterised more than half of his short life.
Despite criminal charges being initiated against the alleged perpetrator on 15 November 2021, he is yet to plead to charges. In June 2024, due to jurisdictional wrangles, the criminal charges against him were temporarily dropped so the case could be centralised. This finally occurred in November 2024. Up to two decades after the abuse began for many of the St John’s victims, they are still awaiting a set down date in the Johannesburg high court. Justice seems very distant.
But even when the criminal case proceeds, Julio’s affidavit cannot be presented as evidence because his premature death means he cannot be cross-examined. Giving Julio a voice, and achieving justice for him, is one of the main reasons why his parents initiated a civil case.
In November 2024, they served civil summonses on the alleged perpetrator, on St John’s College and its board, on the former headmaster of the preparatory school where the abuse is alleged to have occurred, on the facility where he died and the psychiatrist treating him and on the Anglican Church, Anglican Board of Education, Department of Education and South African Council of Educators as interested parties.
John Smyth case
The timing of the case is significant. Summonses were served on the second anniversary of Julio’s death, only 10 days before the case would have prescribed. Unlike criminal cases, civil cases prescribe three years after the victim’s first disclosure. It was also initiated just days before the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby addresses General Synod delegates during the debate on gay marriage at The Church House on February 08, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Welby’s resignation came after revelations about the Anglican Church and his own personal failure in the duty of care to as many as 130 young men in the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and South Africa who were victimised by the late John Smyth for 40 years.
For Julio’s parents, the latter is particularly significant given that one of the goals of the civil case is to hold those who failed in their duty of care towards Julio accountable. As the Mordohs acknowledge, even if Julio’s alleged perpetrator is found guilty, it will not necessarily result in systemic change.
Schools and other institutions often swiftly close ranks against those who abuse children, but are less quick to recognise their own role in allowing predatory teachers and coaches to flourish, often for decades, and their failures to stop them when presented with evidence of wrongdoing.
Horrific beatings
This is painfully clear in the John Smyth case. Reports abound of Smyth’s sadistic and perverse behaviour towards the boys in his care. This included making them strip naked or taking their clothes off himself to acknowledge their sinfulness, and then lashing them for atonement, sometimes hundreds of times, depending on the “sin”. He was reported to have meted out 100 lashes for masturbation, 400 for pride and 800 for some undisclosed “fall”.
The stories told by victims read like tales of torture, blood splattering, long-term damage, adult nappies and attempted suicides. But at the end of every beating, Smyth would rub lotion on their wounds, kneel beside them to pray and kiss them on the shoulders and back.
These horrific beatings, often in his garden shed or in “bash camps”, became interspersed with careful grooming, team skinny-dips, showers and naked prayer sessions while Smyth decried masturbation and homosexuality.
Smyth’s son PJ, who was one of his father’s first victims, reports that the Anglican Church initially became aware of Smyth’s abuse in 1982 through the Rushton report which detailed the beatings of 22 young men over a four-year period, the same period that Smyth had been beating his son. The report resulted in a tearful Smyth, fearful of consequences, apologising to his son.
PJ’s beatings stopped, but there were no further sanctions or consequences for Smyth.
Despite the bravery of the victims who came forward and told the stories detailed in the Rushton report, the church did not act on it. Instead, they covered it up. Smyth was sent to Zimbabwe as a “missionary” in 1984. There his behaviour continued until in 1992, one of the young men in his care, Guide Nyachuru drowned in “suspicious circumstances”. The resultant culpable homicide case against Smyth collapsed, and again, he avoided consequences. But in 2001, he was forced to move, this time to South Africa after being barred from re-entering Zimbabwe.
Even when an investigative documentary by Channel 4 in the UK aired in 2017, the church was still slow to act. Smyth died in 2018 without having ever been disciplined or prosecuted for his 40 years of crimes.
Church failure
In his exposé book, Bleeding for Jesus, the author Andrew Graystone reported that Smyth’s abuse was known to many of the most senior clerics and clergy in the church but “obfuscation, cover-up, delay, words ‘on the quiet’, the side-lining or shutting out those who raised warnings, and straight enabling” were the order of the day.
Shielding Smyth, they failed to report his crimes to the UK police, to let authorities including church authorities in Zimbabwe and South Africa know about the crimes, to support the victims, or to give them justice.
These failures were confirmed by the 2024 Makin review which outlined the extent of Smyth’s crimes labelling them as “prolific and abhorrent”. Makin stated that “words cannot adequately describe the horror of what transpired”.
It also highlighted the church’s failure in its leadership, accountability and duty of care. The report reflected that “The Church’s reaction to the exposé of John Smyth’s abuse by Channel 4 in February 2017 was poor in terms of speed, professionalism, intensity and curiosity. The needs of the victims were not at the forefront.”
The Makin report’s key themes are the impact of failures of leadership, accountability and safeguarding; the effect of an extended cover-up of harm; and that abuse can be hidden in plain sight.
Significantly, when former Archbishop Justin Welby was forced to resign, it was the first time that anyone other than Smyth’s victims had experienced any consequences for his crimes.
It telegraphed a significant change in thinking, specifically that punitive actions should follow institutional failures and failures of leadership.
St John’s obligation
The timing is key given that St John’s is an Anglican school, and the church is named as an interested party in the summons. The civil summons reinforces the school’s legal obligation to report physical harm and sexual abuse to the police, and the Department of Social Development, or a designated child protection agency if it is aware of it.
For this reason, whether the school was aware of Julio’s abuse and that of other victims is one of the pivotal issues in the civil case.
St John’s declined to comment for this article stating that, “the subject matter involves ongoing legal considerations, and as a matter of principle and confidentiality, we are unable to disclose details concerning the civil claim. This position is essential for ensuring the legal integrity of the process. We remain committed to transparency where appropriate and will provide updates or information to the St John’s Community in a manner consistent with our legal and ethical obligations.”
However, in a previous right of reply sent to Daily Maverick in October 2023, the school stated that it only became aware of the sexual abuse on 13 October 2021 when one of the victims, as an adult, disclosed the abuse to his parents.
Despite the law stipulating that anyone with reasonable suspicion that a child had been sexually abused should report it, and St John’s being aware that the alleged perpetrator was a deputy head at another private school who therefore continued to have access to children, the matter was only reported a month later after an independent investigation instigated by the school resulted in other victims coming forward.
Case opened
The victims then opened a case with the SAPS’ Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) unit on 15 November 2021. Once charges had been laid, St John’s reported the teacher to the South African Council of Educators and informed its school community.
Nonetheless, it is not the school’s response to the first disclosure that is at issue. The key question to be answered in the civil trial is, was the school aware of inappropriate behaviour from the alleged predator, including sexual grooming, when he was teaching at the school, and did it act to stop that behaviour?
St John’s is adamant that it wasn’t aware. In its 2023 reply, it cited the independent inquiry into the matter conducted by retired Constitutional Court Justice Johan Froneman. A redacted summary of the report was sent to the school community in May 2022. In it, Judge Froneman concluded that: “There is nothing to indicate that the staff, Headmasters of the Prep and the College, or the Council failed to report criminal conduct that came to their knowledge. No boy or parent had reported any conduct of the kind to the school during the relevant period.”
‘Carefully groomed’
While that seems definitive, it’s worth noting that the boys in question were between the ages of nine and 13 and if Julio’s story is reflective of others, they had been carefully groomed by the alleged predator. I asked St John’s if its preparatory school boys had been educated about sexual grooming, about how to spot a potential predator and how to report someone if they had concerns. It was one of the questions that the school chose not to answer.
But, in the absence of an understanding about grooming (and even with it), we should not expect young boys who had been groomed to disclose abuse because they would typically feel isolated, confused and complicit, as evidenced by Julio’s belief that he was the only victim and therefore somehow to blame.
Equally, if the abuse took place on school property or at school events such as camps, tours and hikes, and the boys did not disclose, their parents would have no way of knowing that their boys were being abused.
Reports
For this reason, the lack of reporting from pupils and their parents is not convincing evidence that the school wasn’t aware of the abuse. What is more significant is if the school received reports from staff members raising concerns about the alleged predator.
The Froneman report seems to indicate that it did. The summary states that “two complaints were taken by Prep staff to their Head during the former teacher’s tenure at the Prep, and these were appropriately dealt with by the Prep Head at the time.”
The summary further states that: “Judge Froneman felt it important to stress that his review did not uncover improper management of the complaints against the former Prep teacher, by the Prep and Executive Headmaster or staff, given the knowledge available at the time regarding sexual and other abuse.”
St John’s has elected not to share the full report, even in redacted form, so it’s hard to know how these complaints were handled. In questions posed to the school, we asked if the boys who were referenced in these complaints had been interviewed in the presence of their parents, if the teacher had been disciplined, if a form 22 had been completed and if the school had instituted an investigation through SACE and, or the police. The school declined to answer, but Froneman’s reference in his report to “available” knowledge about sexual abuse raises red flags.
Sexual grooming has been a crime since 2008, so knowledge about it was available when Julio was at the preparatory school. If the complaints brought to management by staff members could have been construed as grooming behaviour by the alleged perpetrator, and the school did not follow due process as specified by the legislation, it could certainly be deemed to have failed in its duty of care.
The civil case will probably be lengthy and challenging for the Mordohs, and regardless of the outcome, nothing will make up for the loss of their son, nor the painful aftermath of their efforts to help him prior to his death and their own psychological challenges and permanent loss of earnings following his suicide.
But as Teresa emphasises, their goal is to ensure that “although Julio died in pain, he did not die in vain”.
No matter the outcome, if their civil case results in even one more institution prioritising the protection of their children over reputational risk, it will already be a victory.
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 theDaily 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
Ahead of the launch of the MNET documentary, School Ties, SAfm’s The Meeting Point explores the prevalence of sexual abuse in schools, specifically the use of grooming and gaslighting to abuse boys at elite schools and what can be done to keep children safer.
SAfm’s Meeting Point with Koketso Sachane
PARENTING: Sexual violation in schools exposed in “School Ties” documentary GUEST: Robyn Wolfson Vorster – Child protection Activist and Journalist (she contributed to the series)
Tomorrow will see the launch of a four-part documentary series in which leading South African experts unpack sexual abuse red flags. Titled ‘School Ties’, the harrowing docuseries is about the grooming and sexual abuse of learners at some of South Africa’s most prestigious boys’ schools. The docuseries, which airs on Thursday May 16, uncovers the truth behind grooming and abuse in schools across the country, the aftermath and what government, schools and society are doing to stop abuse in its tracks. Exploring how this worrying phenomenon has unexpectedly found its way into some of the country’s prominent boys schools and what the lifelong effects are in the series is a team of experts in children’s rights, child protection and other legal, psychological and law enforcement areas.
ABOUT ROBYN WOLFSON VORSTER – Child Protection Activist and Journalist For the Voiceless is a registered non-profit company and public benefit organization dedicated to advocating for vulnerable children by amplifying their voices and driving legislative and policy changes. Founded by Robyn Wolfson Vorster, a passionate child protection activist and journalist, the organization is committed to promoting the rights and well-being of children in need. For the Voiceless conducts in-depth research on children’s issues and collaborates with various stakeholders, including children’s rights organizations, academics, legal experts, and caregivers, to assess existing strategies and advocate for necessary reforms. Through lobbying efforts and storytelling, the organization aims to ensure that abused, abandoned, orphaned, neglected, and vulnerable children receive the care and support they deserve. Driven by a mission to challenge authorities and effect positive change, For the Voiceless serves as a powerful advocate for the most marginalized children, striving to create a safer and more just world for all.
Sexting, shared nudes and sextortion are part of a worrying trend among many South African and overseas kids and teens, despite big tech’s promises that it’s taking steps to protect children online. Peer pressure, bullying and even voluntary participation is on the rise. But parents can do something about it.
In 2022, an audit of websites containing sexual photos or videos of children found that 92% included content that children had created themselves. Almost 60% of self-generated sexual abuse images were of children aged between 11 and 13, and more than a third were of children aged seven to 10. The youngest victim was only three.
Children euphemistically call them “nudes”. They are naked photos or videos that children take and share of themselves. Sexting ranges in severity from images taken of their naked bodies, to those involving penetrative sexual activity, including sadism and bestiality.
They have become a pervasive part of our children’s lives.
In the documentary Childhood 2.0, American teens describe how many relationships now begin with the sharing of nudes. Chatting, holding hands, going on a date, hugs and kisses, and other courtship rituals are preceded by the exchange of naked photos.
And, like a job interview, the image becomes a gateway into the relationship, or the barrier to entry.
Teens interviewed for the documentary describe how girls who share nudes are called sluts and those who don’t, prudes. Boys, who often initiate contact by sending a “dick pick”, trade the nudes they receive like baseball cards.
While the perpetrators are often criminal syndicates, one of South Africa’s most notorious sextorters was a middle-aged Afrikaans housewife who preyed on boys in her community.
A study by ECPAT, a global network of civil society organisations dedicated to ending child sexual exploitation, included this testimony from a 17-year-old girl:
“I’ve been sent hundreds of dick pics I haven’t asked for. When I was younger, I chatted with dozens of paedophiles, I told them my age (11–13) and they wanted nudes… or [to] meet in real life to have sex.”
The report noted that “nude photographs of girls are viewed as a form of capital that gives status to the recipient”. This increases the pressure placed on girls “to share naked photos” and on boys “to share them if and when they receive them”.
For many of these boys, admission into peer groups is now predicated on sharing a nude or adding it to an online folder of images. These are then accessible to other boys who’ve gone through a similar rite of passage.
Peer pressure school practices
At an upmarket high school in Pretoria, Grade 10 boys formed a WhatsApp group, which boys were only allowed to join if they shared a naked photo of a girl. Girls describe being pressurised to share naked photos with their boyfriends so the boys could be accepted into the group. And at a prestigious boy’s school in Johannesburg, a Grade 8 boarder spent his school holidays trying to “collect nudes” to be included in a closed group of his new peers.
During a campaign called “Because you asked”, run by Jelly Beanz, who provide help for abused children, 12-and 13-year-old children shared their experience of sexting.
Weeks later, Nathan learnt that more than 50 Grade 9 boys at his school had been sextorted by the syndicate. Ashamed, humiliated, and unable to tell his parents, one boy had been hospitalised after attempting suicide.
One Grade 7 girl described how an older boy at school bullied, manipulated and threatened her, protesting that if she loved him, she’d share nudes. When she eventually capitulated, he told the whole grade, adding that she sleeps around. She felt judged and mortified, but afraid that if she sought help from adults, it would change their opinion of her and they would take away her phone.
Two Grade 6 girls reported sexting with “boys” on Snapchat and TikTok, who complimented them on their bodies, but turned out to be masturbating middle-aged men.
Another 12-year-old “met” a boy on Instagram who seemed cute and her age. He asked for her number, requested selfies to “see her beautiful face”, then asked for nudes. When she declined, he used Facebook and Instagram to add and message her friends and family members, instructing them to make the girl obey him, and asking her friends for naked pics. One, aged nine, complied.
Desperate, the 12-year-old thought if she sent him a picture of herself in her swimming costume, he’d stop harassing her. Instead, he posted the pic and her phone number on a pornographic site, then sent her a screenshot. After three calls from men asking to meet up, she finally sought help from her mother.
Albeit regretful that her child hadn’t spoken up sooner, her mother comforted her and reported the abuser to the police who helped them remove the post and block the perpetrator from the child’s social media. But he was let off with a warning.
As this child experienced, once shared, many images and videos end up on sites containing child sexual abuse material.
Previously called “child pornography”, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) includes any images or videos which depict children under 18 engaged in sexually explicit acts.
Global internet watchdog
Global internet safety watchdog Internet Watch Foundation reports that 10 years ago there was no self-generated content on sites containing CSAM. But in 2022, it found 275,655 websites containing CSAM, 92% of which included photos or videos that children had generated themselves. Almost 60% of reported images were taken by children aged 11-13, more than a third were seven to 10-year-olds, and 4% of images were taken by three to six-year-olds.
The charity’s CEO explains: “That’s children in their bedrooms, where they’ve been tricked, coerced or encouraged into engaging in sexual activity, which is then recorded and shared by child sexual abuse websites.”
Reporting an image on a social media platform is often ineffectual, leading to ongoing revictimisation. A National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) study found that one image was shared 490,000 times after it had been reported.
Experts explain that self-generated child abuse images can be shared intentionally, accidentally, through coercion, maliciously, or a combination of these factors.
Already common among girls, extortion of boys for images or money is becoming increasingly widespread.
The NCMEC describes sextortion as a form of child sexual exploitation in which children are blackmailed using nude or sexual images of themselves, in exchange for more illicit material, sexual acts or financial gain. The US Department of Justice reported that in 2022, more than 3,000 minors, primarily boys, had been targeted globally using financial sextortion, a sharp increase from previous years. More than a dozen victims had died by suicide.
In a 2023 study by Snap Inc, more than two thirds of the 6,000 Gen Z children and young adults surveyed across six countries said that they had been sextorted. In Canada, 92% of sextortion cases in 2023 involved boys or men. In the UK, sextortion cases reported to the police increased by 390% in two years. Experts believe that approximately 100 UK children a day are falling victim.
While the perpetrators are often criminal syndicates, one of South Africa’s most notorious sextorters was a middle-aged Afrikaans housewife who preyed on boys in her community.
And, in a worrying new trend, criminals are recruiting and paying children to sextort other children.
Britain’s National Crime Agency confirms how enticing sextortion scams are and that predators now use AI to make their conversations more convincing.
One affected boy is Nathan*, a Grade 9 learner, who was surprised when he was friended by an attractive unknown teenage girl on Instagram, who said she was new to the province and was given his details by a mutual friend.
Nathan, who’d never had a girlfriend, was delighted, and they chatted about school, family and friends every day, initially on Instagram, and then, after she told him her mom had restricted her Instagram screen-time, on WhatsApp. Before long, they were exchanging pictures of their daily activities. Then she asked if he’d like to see her in her bikini. A week after they “met”, in a flirty conversation, she asked if they could exchange nudes.
He only hesitated for a moment.
She responded with a heart, but minutes later texted that if he didn’t pay R2,000 within 24 hours “she’d” be sharing his picture on Instagram, and with his friends and family. Horrified, and under time pressure, he emptied his meagre bank account and begged to have the photo deleted.
Instead, follow-up messages instructed him to pay more or send pics of himself in specific sexual poses. After sharing a photo of himself masturbating, he contemplated taking his own life, before reluctantly choosing to tell his mom.
Despite her initial shock, she immediately sought professional help. Internet safety experts coached Nathan about how to respond to his extorter and how to block and report “her” to the specialised police cybercrimes unit.
Weeks later, Nathan learnt that more than 50 Grade 9 boys at his school had been sextorted by the syndicate. Ashamed, humiliated, and unable to tell his parents, one boy had been hospitalised after attempting suicide.
Not all children survive though. Ronan, 17, from Northern Ireland, committed suicide after being targeted on Facebook. Told to send the perpetrators £3,400 in cybercurrency, he protested that he was only a child, and begged for mercy. They responded: “Foolishness has a price. And you’ll pay. You have 48 hours. Time is running out.”
Tragically, Ronan saw no way out.
Sextorters routinely encourage suicide and threaten violence. One 16-year-old boy reported: “I’ve received death threats a couple of times, and they’ve also threatened to kill my family if I don’t send photographs.”
Nevertheless, not all children think sharing nudes is risky.
Nudes = in love
Unlike Nathan, Sindi*, 13, wasn’t tricked or manipulated into sexting. For her, exchanging “nudes” was a normal expression of being in love.
While only 5% of children surveyed in the South African Disrupting Harm study confessed to sexting in the previous year (compared to 50% of the children in the Scandinavian study, so there is probably under-reporting), half said they shared nudes because they were in love, or flirting and having fun.
Confirming the Scandinavian findings, these children deemed sexting unproblematic. They saw it as a positive experience, part of a healthy relationship, good for their self-esteem, and a way of “gaining affirmation and creating intimacy with people they like”.
To quote one 16-year-old girl, “it’s happened a hundred times… usually just flirting online and then you take more and more daring photographs until the guy asks for a nude and I’m like yeah, no big deal, if we’re both fine with it.”
Children who willingly share nudes aren’t immune from harm thereafter though.
Sindi and her boyfriend exchanged nudes for six months, using Snapchat to ensure that their parents didn’t find out. But she was unaware that her boyfriend had made screenshots of every image and shared her photos with his friends.
Then, after the relationship ended, his jealous new girlfriend found Sindi’s photos, shared them with Sindi’s parents and posted them onto a grade WhatsApp group. Before they could be deleted, they’d already been reshared and saved by many other children in the grade.
Devastated, Sindi was forced to leave the school.
As the lines between intentionality, accidental sharing, and malicious sexting blur, experts have identified another growing trend where children are filming other children having consensual sex, and then forwarding those videos.
Children also document and share the sexual assault and rape of other children, with devastating impact, as seen in the documentary Audrie and Daisy. The girls’ sexual assaults were filmed, and images circulated. It resulted in tragedy, first Audrie’s death by suicide, and then Daisy and her mother taking their own lives after the documentary aired.
While most children unwittingly share their images publicly, Tami*, discovered at age 12 that she could make money through TikTok videos of herself dancing naked.
US tech Senate hearings
Despite the CEO of TikTok testifying before the US Senate hearings that children under 13 are protected on the app, under sixteens automatically have privacy settings restricting their sharing to friends only, and under eighteens cannot live-stream or receive remuneration, Tami easily circumvented these restrictions.
Tami received thousands of likes from strangers for her publicly posted videos. Many asked if they could see more of her. As she slowly got braver, taking off pieces of clothing and making sexual moves, viewers began to tip her.
By age 15, she was paying for transport, groceries, airtime and new outfits with the proceeds of her videos.
In 2021, a Unicef SA and Department of Social Development commissioned survey by Unisa’s Bureau of Market Research found that one-third of SA children were at risk of online violence, exploitation and abuse, and 70% of children surveyed used the internet without parental consent.
Preventing or minimising the harm is therefore critical. Experts, who caution parents to avoid panic policing or believing that it’s “not my kid”, emphasise that it takes a team effort to keep children safe.
Denial, they say, is particularly damaging. Your child’s developing brain, unsupported, pitted against criminal syndicates, perpetrators, manipulation, and the multibillion-dollar pornography industry, isn’t a fair fight.
Dr Marita Rademeyer, a clinical psychologist who has worked with children and families affected by abuse for 30 years, says that given the exploding numbers of under thirteens sexting, parents should try to delay giving their child a smartphone and allowing access to social media, instead opting for an old-school handset for communication.
Rademeyer recommends that if children already have smartphones, parents limit their screen time.
In addition, experts advise parents to manage when their children are online, preventing use of devices late at night, and behind closed doors in bedrooms and bathrooms.
Internet safety tools can assist with managing use, content and contact. Tech giants Instagram, Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snapchat and Discord also have parent-partnering centres where parents can manage in-app screen time, which topics their child can access, who can view their posts, and friend requests.
Wired to push boundaries
Rademeyer stresses however that while parents often rely on fear and control to police sexting, the adolescent brain is wired to push boundaries. So, although restrictions and protective apps are effective for very young children, control is often unsuccessful for older children.
A relationship is critical for protecting children, and restrictions without relationship can drive the behaviour underground.
She explains that the problem isn’t just the naked pics, nor is it helpful to instruct children to simply avoid taking or sharing pics. Instead, she says, “it is the sexualisation of children online which desensitises them to the potential impact of sharing images of themselves.”
Rademeyer advises parents to begin speaking to their children early and often about sex and sexuality, starting as young as age five, and to chase the “why” behind their child’s behaviours.
Explaining that children often share nudes because they have a need for acceptance and belonging and because they are looking for affirmation that they aren’t getting elsewhere, she confirms that the need can easily outweigh even the strongest and most sustained safety messaging. By contrast, addressing that need can help minimise risky behaviours.
The tweens who participated in the ‘Because you asked’ study cautioned children to be careful about what they post online and who they follow and friend, to prepare for “bad things”, and to confide in a trusted adult.
But only 6% of children do tell caregivers about online child sexual exploitation and abuse. Many tell peers, but most tell no one for fear of humiliation, or their devices being confiscated.
Caregivers should therefore avoid warning, shaming and blaming, and banning phones or the child’s access to their online world, which results in secrecy and children concealing harm.
How to deal with disclosure
If your child discloses that they’ve been targeted, try to stay calm and remember that your child is the victim, not the villain.
Carefully document the interactions, tell the perpetrator you will be contacting the authorities, then block and report the account. If your child’s images and videos have already been posted online, use IWF’s “Report remove” site, or Take it Down to get the content flagged and removed from the internet.
Both services are focussed on children, but if you want an explicit image taken when you were over 18 deleted, get help at stopncii.org.
Lasting change will require legislation and litigation-driven accountability by big tech for the safety of its billions of users. Like the UK, a slew of legislation is in process in the US to keep tech companies accountable and allow them to be sued or fined if their users, especially children, are harmed.
But progress is proving slow, and in South Africa, it isn’t even on our legislative radar (proposed law reforms haven’t been actioned two years after drafting).
Millions of local children cannot wait for legislators to catch up, or for curriculum changes to educate them about inherent dangers of online use (which sometimes outweigh the positives). What’s urgently needed is a community, school, family and child partnership to keep them safe.
The time for looking away is over — if sexting is our children’s new normal, and adults remain in denial, they’ll reap the whirlwind and ultimately, so will we.
