by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jan 29, 2025 | Child Abuse
On 5 November 2024, the second anniversary of Julio Mordoh’s suicide, civil summonses were served on his alleged abuser; his former school and principal, on the secure facility where he died; on the doctor tasked with his care; and on interested parties including the Anglican church and Department of Education. For his grieving parents, the goal is simple — accountability.
is January, millions of parents dressed their children in their school uniforms, took back-to-school pictures and waved them goodbye as they started the new school year. In so doing, they acted on the expectation that their child’s school will be in loco parentis, safeguarding their children as they themselves would.
But what happens when children aren’t kept safe by their educators and coaches, and when the school tasked with stopping the harm fails in its duty of care?
According to the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC), in the 18 months from April 2023 to October 2024, 65 educators in South Africa were fired for sexual misconduct, prompting the disturbing News24 headline, Teachers are not meant to turn pupils into lovers.
Despite the 65 being reported to the Department of Social Development to be listed on the National Child Protection Register as persons deemed unfit to work with children, only 16 educators were deregistered by the South African Council of Educators (SACE), the registering body for educators.
Without deregistration, the upshot is that some of those fired educators may continue teaching, possible because the child protection register is notoriously out of date and not all schools have recent form 29s for their staff.
But even if educators are listed on the register, they could still be providing private extra lessons, music lessons or sports coaching because parents cannot access the register to check on a potential educator’s status.
Even more alarmingly, the ELRC said that while it is the Department of Education’s job to report sexual misconduct to the police in terms of Section 54 of the Sexual Offences Act and Section 110 of the Children’s Act, it has no way of confirming if these teachers were reported and how many cases have resulted in criminal proceedings.
The upshot is that even when educators are fired for sexual misconduct, they may still have access to children.
Varied school responses
And those are the ones reported – many aren’t. During 2024, we were inundated with stories about sexual misconduct by teachers. The schools’ reactions could not be more varied.
Some responded with active engagement and full disclosure. For example in one case, the alleged perpetrator’s sexual abuse was divulged by the affected children in mid-October 2024, the school immediately reported the matter to the police on the children’s behalf and within two weeks, the former educator was arrested and remanded in custody.
On the other extreme, some schools threatened whistle-blowers with legal action if they proceeded with their reports. And in one troubling instance, staff from a school were called into a meeting following an anonymous report to authorities about the sexual abuse of a learner which led to an investigation by the provincial department of education and SACE.
The staff were told by a senior member of the management team that he had contacts, and that not only would he make the case go away, but that he’d also find the whistle-blowers, and when he did, he knew where they and their families lived.
Most schools fall somewhere between these extremes however, quietly investigating allegations internally, and often, equally quietly, letting the alleged perpetrator move on to become another school’s problem. This enabling has in one instance allowed an alleged perpetrator to abuse children in at least two different countries for more than 50 years.
While responsibility for the sexual abuse of children lies with the perpetrator, accountability for the harm lies with the system that either enables them or holds them responsible.
In a series of articles I will be writing, I ask: who is guarding the guardians, and what should the consequence be for schools, government and other institutions that fail in their duty of care?
Julio Mordoh
Julio Mordoh. (Photos: Supplied)
It’s been two long years since Teresa and Marcio Mordoh lost their son. Julio died, aged 20, after he hanged himself with his belt in a restricted area at a secure psychiatric facility. His untimely death came less than a year after he first disclosed that he had been groomed and sexually abused by his former head of pastoral care and rock climbing coach, and only weeks after he deposed an affidavit against the man he accused of abusing him from the ages of nine to 12 while he was in the Preparatory School at St John’s College in Johannesburg, the elite boy’s school where he spent most of his schooling life.
After years of suppressed memories, Julio’s disclosure of the abuse first occurred when his psychologist read him a letter written by St John’s College after another of the school’s former pupils came forward to allege sexual assault by the prep school teacher.
Tragically, Julio’s response to the letter was, “Oh, so there were other boys, I thought I was the only one.”
Writing from Julio Mordoh’s diary. (Photo: Supplied)
Less than a year later Julio was dead, having lost his brave battle with the post-traumatic stress and depression that characterised more than half of his short life.
Despite criminal charges being initiated against the alleged perpetrator on 15 November 2021, he is yet to plead to charges. In June 2024, due to jurisdictional wrangles, the criminal charges against him were temporarily dropped so the case could be centralised. This finally occurred in November 2024. Up to two decades after the abuse began for many of the St John’s victims, they are still awaiting a set down date in the Johannesburg high court. Justice seems very distant.
But even when the criminal case proceeds, Julio’s affidavit cannot be presented as evidence because his premature death means he cannot be cross-examined. Giving Julio a voice, and achieving justice for him, is one of the main reasons why his parents initiated a civil case.
In November 2024, they served civil summonses on the alleged perpetrator, on St John’s College and its board, on the former headmaster of the preparatory school where the abuse is alleged to have occurred, on the facility where he died and the psychiatrist treating him and on the Anglican Church, Anglican Board of Education, Department of Education and South African Council of Educators as interested parties.
John Smyth case
The timing of the case is significant. Summonses were served on the second anniversary of Julio’s death, only 10 days before the case would have prescribed. Unlike criminal cases, civil cases prescribe three years after the victim’s first disclosure. It was also initiated just days before the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby addresses General Synod delegates during the debate on gay marriage at The Church House on February 08, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Welby’s resignation came after revelations about the Anglican Church and his own personal failure in the duty of care to as many as 130 young men in the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and South Africa who were victimised by the late John Smyth for 40 years.
For Julio’s parents, the latter is particularly significant given that one of the goals of the civil case is to hold those who failed in their duty of care towards Julio accountable. As the Mordohs acknowledge, even if Julio’s alleged perpetrator is found guilty, it will not necessarily result in systemic change.
Schools and other institutions often swiftly close ranks against those who abuse children, but are less quick to recognise their own role in allowing predatory teachers and coaches to flourish, often for decades, and their failures to stop them when presented with evidence of wrongdoing.
Horrific beatings
This is painfully clear in the John Smyth case. Reports abound of Smyth’s sadistic and perverse behaviour towards the boys in his care. This included making them strip naked or taking their clothes off himself to acknowledge their sinfulness, and then lashing them for atonement, sometimes hundreds of times, depending on the “sin”. He was reported to have meted out 100 lashes for masturbation, 400 for pride and 800 for some undisclosed “fall”.
The stories told by victims read like tales of torture, blood splattering, long-term damage, adult nappies and attempted suicides. But at the end of every beating, Smyth would rub lotion on their wounds, kneel beside them to pray and kiss them on the shoulders and back.
These horrific beatings, often in his garden shed or in “bash camps”, became interspersed with careful grooming, team skinny-dips, showers and naked prayer sessions while Smyth decried masturbation and homosexuality.
Smyth’s son PJ, who was one of his father’s first victims, reports that the Anglican Church initially became aware of Smyth’s abuse in 1982 through the Rushton report which detailed the beatings of 22 young men over a four-year period, the same period that Smyth had been beating his son. The report resulted in a tearful Smyth, fearful of consequences, apologising to his son.
PJ’s beatings stopped, but there were no further sanctions or consequences for Smyth.
Despite the bravery of the victims who came forward and told the stories detailed in the Rushton report, the church did not act on it. Instead, they covered it up. Smyth was sent to Zimbabwe as a “missionary” in 1984. There his behaviour continued until in 1992, one of the young men in his care, Guide Nyachuru drowned in “suspicious circumstances”. The resultant culpable homicide case against Smyth collapsed, and again, he avoided consequences. But in 2001, he was forced to move, this time to South Africa after being barred from re-entering Zimbabwe.
Even when an investigative documentary by Channel 4 in the UK aired in 2017, the church was still slow to act. Smyth died in 2018 without having ever been disciplined or prosecuted for his 40 years of crimes.
Church failure
In his exposé book, Bleeding for Jesus, the author Andrew Graystone reported that Smyth’s abuse was known to many of the most senior clerics and clergy in the church but “obfuscation, cover-up, delay, words ‘on the quiet’, the side-lining or shutting out those who raised warnings, and straight enabling” were the order of the day.
Shielding Smyth, they failed to report his crimes to the UK police, to let authorities including church authorities in Zimbabwe and South Africa know about the crimes, to support the victims, or to give them justice.
These failures were confirmed by the 2024 Makin review which outlined the extent of Smyth’s crimes labelling them as “prolific and abhorrent”. Makin stated that “words cannot adequately describe the horror of what transpired”.
It also highlighted the church’s failure in its leadership, accountability and duty of care. The report reflected that “The Church’s reaction to the exposé of John Smyth’s abuse by Channel 4 in February 2017 was poor in terms of speed, professionalism, intensity and curiosity. The needs of the victims were not at the forefront.”
The Makin report’s key themes are the impact of failures of leadership, accountability and safeguarding; the effect of an extended cover-up of harm; and that abuse can be hidden in plain sight.
Significantly, when former Archbishop Justin Welby was forced to resign, it was the first time that anyone other than Smyth’s victims had experienced any consequences for his crimes.
It telegraphed a significant change in thinking, specifically that punitive actions should follow institutional failures and failures of leadership.
St John’s obligation
The timing is key given that St John’s is an Anglican school, and the church is named as an interested party in the summons. The civil summons reinforces the school’s legal obligation to report physical harm and sexual abuse to the police, and the Department of Social Development, or a designated child protection agency if it is aware of it.
For this reason, whether the school was aware of Julio’s abuse and that of other victims is one of the pivotal issues in the civil case.
St John’s declined to comment for this article stating that, “the subject matter involves ongoing legal considerations, and as a matter of principle and confidentiality, we are unable to disclose details concerning the civil claim. This position is essential for ensuring the legal integrity of the process. We remain committed to transparency where appropriate and will provide updates or information to the St John’s Community in a manner consistent with our legal and ethical obligations.”
However, in a previous right of reply sent to Daily Maverick in October 2023, the school stated that it only became aware of the sexual abuse on 13 October 2021 when one of the victims, as an adult, disclosed the abuse to his parents.
Despite the law stipulating that anyone with reasonable suspicion that a child had been sexually abused should report it, and St John’s being aware that the alleged perpetrator was a deputy head at another private school who therefore continued to have access to children, the matter was only reported a month later after an independent investigation instigated by the school resulted in other victims coming forward.
Case opened
The victims then opened a case with the SAPS’ Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) unit on 15 November 2021. Once charges had been laid, St John’s reported the teacher to the South African Council of Educators and informed its school community.
Nonetheless, it is not the school’s response to the first disclosure that is at issue. The key question to be answered in the civil trial is, was the school aware of inappropriate behaviour from the alleged predator, including sexual grooming, when he was teaching at the school, and did it act to stop that behaviour?
St John’s is adamant that it wasn’t aware. In its 2023 reply, it cited the independent inquiry into the matter conducted by retired Constitutional Court Justice Johan Froneman. A redacted summary of the report was sent to the school community in May 2022. In it, Judge Froneman concluded that: “There is nothing to indicate that the staff, Headmasters of the Prep and the College, or the Council failed to report criminal conduct that came to their knowledge. No boy or parent had reported any conduct of the kind to the school during the relevant period.”
‘Carefully groomed’
While that seems definitive, it’s worth noting that the boys in question were between the ages of nine and 13 and if Julio’s story is reflective of others, they had been carefully groomed by the alleged predator. I asked St John’s if its preparatory school boys had been educated about sexual grooming, about how to spot a potential predator and how to report someone if they had concerns. It was one of the questions that the school chose not to answer.
But, in the absence of an understanding about grooming (and even with it), we should not expect young boys who had been groomed to disclose abuse because they would typically feel isolated, confused and complicit, as evidenced by Julio’s belief that he was the only victim and therefore somehow to blame.
Equally, if the abuse took place on school property or at school events such as camps, tours and hikes, and the boys did not disclose, their parents would have no way of knowing that their boys were being abused.
Reports
For this reason, the lack of reporting from pupils and their parents is not convincing evidence that the school wasn’t aware of the abuse. What is more significant is if the school received reports from staff members raising concerns about the alleged predator.
The Froneman report seems to indicate that it did. The summary states that “two complaints were taken by Prep staff to their Head during the former teacher’s tenure at the Prep, and these were appropriately dealt with by the Prep Head at the time.”
The summary further states that: “Judge Froneman felt it important to stress that his review did not uncover improper management of the complaints against the former Prep teacher, by the Prep and Executive Headmaster or staff, given the knowledge available at the time regarding sexual and other abuse.”
St John’s has elected not to share the full report, even in redacted form, so it’s hard to know how these complaints were handled. In questions posed to the school, we asked if the boys who were referenced in these complaints had been interviewed in the presence of their parents, if the teacher had been disciplined, if a form 22 had been completed and if the school had instituted an investigation through SACE and, or the police. The school declined to answer, but Froneman’s reference in his report to “available” knowledge about sexual abuse raises red flags.
Sexual grooming has been a crime since 2008, so knowledge about it was available when Julio was at the preparatory school. If the complaints brought to management by staff members could have been construed as grooming behaviour by the alleged perpetrator, and the school did not follow due process as specified by the legislation, it could certainly be deemed to have failed in its duty of care.
The civil case will probably be lengthy and challenging for the Mordohs, and regardless of the outcome, nothing will make up for the loss of their son, nor the painful aftermath of their efforts to help him prior to his death and their own psychological challenges and permanent loss of earnings following his suicide.
But as Teresa emphasises, their goal is to ensure that “although Julio died in pain, he did not die in vain”.
No matter the outcome, if their civil case results in even one more institution prioritising the protection of their children over reputational risk, it will already be a victory.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 29.02.2025
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Aug 5, 2024 | Child Abuse, Child Protection Legislation & Child Rights, Children’s Online World
The labelling, identification with a maligned gender and the influence of and schooling in violence, misogyny and sex, both on and offline, could be fuelling what we fear most – the rise of another generation of violent men.
A recent headline in the New York Times read, “Boys get everything except the thing that’s most worth having.” Author Ruth Whippman, referring to boys, writes that “modern childhood presents a perfect storm for loneliness…”.
Whippman describes the dilemma boys face. They continue to have their feelings, vulnerabilities and even victimhood negated because of patriarchy where “all the old deficiencies and blind spots of male socialisation are still in circulation – the same failure to teach boys relational skills and emotional intelligence, the same rigid masculinity norms and social prohibitions that push them away from intimacy and emotionality.”
And they’ve grown up under the shadow of “toxic masculinity” where those on the opposite end of the spectrum think that boys have had too much attention in the past.
“For every right-wing tough guy urging his crying son to ‘man up’,” Whippman writes, “there is a voice from the left telling him that to express his concerns is to take airtime away from a woman or someone more marginalised… In many cases, the same people who are urging men and boys to become more emotionally expressive are also taking a moral stand against hearing how they actually feel. For many boys, it can seem as though their emotions get dismissed by both sides.”
According to Whippman, #metoo “should have been an opportunity to challenge patriarchy and the old power structures along with the old pressures and norms of manhood and helped boys to be more emotionally open and engaged. But instead, it has had the opposite effect, shutting them down even further.”
This challenge is even more acute in South Africa where major studies have revealed that boys are revered for their future role as protector and provider, yet unsupervised, unprotected and vilified for their current or perceived future wrongdoing.
They are frequently unfathered, schooled about sexuality by peers and pornography, four times as likely to commit suicide as girls, and given to urges deemed beyond their control.
Sexual violence
For many, childhood is characterised by violence, and although they were as likely to be subject to sexual assault as girls, its impact is trivialised and weaponised against them.
One of these reports, from a 2023 study on boyhood by global advocacy group Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice, focuses on navigating boyhood in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically for 8-13 year olds. It was released on 16 April 2024, Blue Umbrella Day, an initiative driven by Family for Every Child, which is dedicated to caring for boys affected by sexual violence.
The Equimundo report formed the basis of discussions by experts at its launch along with two other reports, a 2018 global report on caring for boys affected by sexual violence compiled by Family for Every Child, and another 2021 report on the same topic researched by the Child in Distress Network (CINDI) and Childline which focuses specifically on South African boys.
Together, the picture they painted of the state of boyhood and the plight of boys affected by sexual violence was a particularly bleak one.
During the conference, experts began by answering the question, “why focus on boys”, explaining that the emphasis on boy children should never be to the exclusion of girls and the difficulties girl children continue to face. However, they stressed, boy children have a specific set of challenges that often go unacknowledged by families, communities, schools and policymakers, and therefore go unmanaged.
Most significantly, the studies show that patriarchy disadvantages boy children as much as girl children and women, but in a different way.
Equimundo’s Gary Barker, speaking about reframing masculinity, explained that surveys conducted by the organisations found that 40-50% of men believed that real men outperform others at all costs, shouldn’t ask for help or show that they are vulnerable, see sex as conquest rather than intimacy or connection, have to show that they are tough, and see violence as an acceptable way to get what you want.
He explained that those subscribing to these norms were multiple times more likely to binge drink, to have considered suicide, to bully, to be depressed, to have traffic accidents and to sexually harass a woman.
By contrast, the studies showed a chasm between how boys were viewed and therefore raised, and how they viewed themselves. When asked to describe themselves, boys used words like kind, helpful, nice, courteous, hardworking, and courageous.
This differed vastly from how they were described by their communities who used words like wrongdoers, troublemakers, drunkards, and drug abusers.
Suzanne Clulow, who was involved with all three research studies, explained how one of the girls she interviewed even described boys as being “like dogs”: “They say that boys are dogs, they are not loved, you will see them getting blamed in most cases for rape, transmitting diseases and they say all this is done by men.”
The studies, which included content from practitioners, families and, in the case of the South African study, children themselves, show how the social scripts which dictate what is acceptable behaviour for boys conflate financial provision with masculinity. This pressure to provide, especially in an economic climate where jobs are scarce, has led even young boys to feel hopeless.
Further, the belief that boys must be independent means that they are sent outside of home earlier, and are less supervised and less cared for than girls. Interviews with caregivers revealed a belief that boys could defend themselves and didn’t want to express their emotions or be nurtured and protected.
Rejection, lack of love
While parents and girl children perceive this lack of supervision as freedom, independence and responsibility, boys view it as rejection and a lack of love.
Boys repeatedly referred to being unwanted and “pushed out of home” earlier. To quote one of the boys, “parents only want girls”. Another reported envying girls for their emotional connection with parents. Many boys expressed how lonely this lack of relationship left them feeling.
Troublingly, stereotypes are even stronger and more policed in boys’ peer groups. Many boys reported fearing being excluded from the group (especially those boys who were perceived as less manly, softer, thinner, smaller or more effeminate).
But despite this, boys did not perceive their peer groups to be a safe space, instead characterising them as a place of competition, banter that can easily morph into bullying, and aggression. This was confirmed by boys studied by Whippman who described even long-term friendship groups as “unsupportive” and reported that they did not feel comfortable being emotionally open or vulnerable in front of them.
Whippman found that almost without exception boys, “craved closer, more emotionally open relationships, but had neither the skills nor the social permission to change the story.”
Barker confirms that little boys come into the world ready to be loved and to learn how to love others, but their need for nurturing and attachment can easily be crushed. Along with their lack of skill to form connections, this leads to many boys feeling lonely and that “no one really knows me”, which in turn results in boys closing off their emotions and the human connections they want most, and instead professing that they don’t care.
In the book Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson describe how boys are taught that they mustn’t be feminine. The result is that they attack the “feminine” side of themselves: compassion, nurturing, caring and emotional connection.
Mothers, especially those whose male partners are absent, are often more openly critical of men. Boys grow up with the dichotomy of seeking to be loved by women who are overtly negative about masculinity. While women often de-individualise boys and men when they malign them and label them “trash”, their own sons are unable to separate themselves from the evils of the group.
Unresolved trauma, unsupportive schools
The early lack of supervision and connection has another unintended consequence, creating the propensity towards violence. Experts at the Blue Umbrella event noted that unresolved trauma can promote and lead to violence, and that the biggest risk factor for violence perpetration is experiencing or witnessing violence. Early independence in boys means that they are far more likely to witness violence at a young age.
Many boys also experience school as an unsafe and unsupportive place. Global studies highlight boys’ educational underachievement. In a World Bank study of 100 countries, boys consistently fell behind girls on literacy, numeracy and standardised tests. Boys particularly struggled with primary school because of the gendered nature of teaching.
Although corporal punishment is banned in South African schools, the South African study revealed that boys were routinely subjected to harsh punishments, bullying, and physical and sexual violence from peers and teachers. Schools are not welcoming for boys, so they disengage from school. Boys also externalise trauma which can result in negative behaviours, including greater truancy or drop-out rates.
The upshot was that schools, like many homes, weren’t able to provide a place of meaningful connection for boys.
Life online, pornography
With home, peers and school often proving fraught, boys are increasingly finding their safe space online. Half of the boys polled in a study done in the US said that their online world was more interesting than their offline world.
And while there are positives about being online, and for many boys it is an important source of connection, what they are increasingly finding there are sexist, misogynist, angry and racist influencers – who they nonetheless trust – violent gaming, bullying and trash talk.
Boys are also reporting that online is where they are learning about sex and sexuality through exposure to pornography. The CINDI study confirmed that in South Africa many boys were learning about sex through pornography viewing, which typically normalises violence, harmful and risky sexual behaviours and minimises the need for consent. Boys who participated in the research reported that for many, it was their first exposure to sex, and they were aware of how it was changing their perceptions and feelings.
According to reports completed by Sonke Gender Justice in 2018 and 2021 on the “State of South Africa’s fathers”, 64% of households do not have a biological father present. The CINDI study further found that many mothers did not believe that they were equipped to teach their sons about sex and sexuality because of gender norms, and because, in many cases, they were unschooled about sexuality themselves.
Another violent generation
Tragically, the lack of supervision, communication, direction, affection and connection, the labelling, identification with a maligned gender and the influence and schooling in violence, misogyny and sex both on and offline could therefore be fuelling what we fear most – the rise of another generation of violent men.
Equally though, the perception that boys are violent and the instigators of violence also stops them from being acknowledged as victims. Although the Optimus study found that boys are slightly more likely to be sexually abused than girls (36.8% for boys and 33.9% for girls), the reports note that the sexual abuse of boys is “massively denied, misunderstood and even trivialised”.
Boys are under-represented as victims of sexual violence and disincentivised from reporting abuse. Many don’t disclose because of the shame of being seen as “less male”, fear of being labelled weak or homosexual (especially in countries where homosexuality is still illegal) or told that they should have fought back or run away. Some express confusion about how to get help, others guilt, especially if they were groomed by their perpetrator.
Boys who report sexual abuse also risk being blamed, and even seen as the aggressor (especially if the perpetrator is female). Families, communities and even abuse support services, child protection services and the courts, which are tailored towards girls, do not believe that boys can be victims. Some boys report being turned away from support services if they do disclose.
Exclusion and bias
The experience of young male victims reflects misperceptions about boys that extend as far as treaty bodies tasked with keeping children safe. Veteran child protection activist Dr Joan van Niekerk reported at the Blue Umbrella Day launch that even the World Health Organization policy on reducing domestic violence excludes boys.
When activists criticised the draft policy endorsed globally by health ministers and entitled “prevention of violence against women and girls” because it ignored boy children, the WHO’s response was to change the name to “prevention of violence against women and girls and children.”
This bias is carried through into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which focus on “achieving gender equality for all and empowering women and girls”. While the goal is essential, Van Niekerk stresses that empowering boys is equally important to prevent boys from feeling the need to establish power through violence.
This bias against boys is also evident in South African policy. There are few boy-focused initiatives that address the challenges that boys face. Instead, programmes focused on boys tend to be about toxic masculinity. Boys are poorly understood and supported in the child protection system and courts, and although restorative justice and diversion programmes for child offenders are an underpinning principle of the Child Justice Act, girls are far more likely to be supported through these programmes than boys.
Equally, the bias has led to a lack of donor funding for programmes assisting boys, including boy victims of violence. This is despite boys being statistically more likely to experience both physical and sexual violence than girls.
Meaningful interventions
While the picture of boyhood painted by the experts is not positive, they stressed that interventions are possible at every level of society which could make a meaningful impact on boys.
Speakers emphasised that while many boys grew up without a father in their household, that did not mean that they lacked access to male role models – 80% of boys have a male in their household such as a step-father, uncle, grandfather or even an older sibling who can provide them with fathering.
Others, with the support of female gatekeepers, can have access to their biological fathers (often withheld because of estrangement between parents, or because the father did not pay inhlawulo, the damages owing to the family following a pregnancy out of wedlock).
In the absence of a biological father, social fathering can provide boys with a positive masculine role model.
In addition, since the poor quality of a child’s relationship with his female caregiver as well as a poorer knowledge by the caregiver of the child’s whereabouts, friends and activities are all risk factors for violence, mothers have an important role to play in providing boys with opportunities for meaningful connection and communication.
Mothers and social fathers can also help boys to learn about sex and sexuality in healthy, age-appropriate ways, and counteract the negative messaging about sex and intimacy that boys are learning from pornography.
Experts underlined the importance of interrogating rigid gender roles, specifically the burden of financial provision, and stereotypes about boys being emotionally distant, unwilling to show emotion and not in need of nurturing or guidance.
Delaying independence, promoting accountability and assisting boys to navigate their relationships and online world are all essential to counteract feelings of isolation, loneliness and hopelessness and prevent early and sustained exposure to violence.
Delegates stressed that being male has an associated trauma where boys are not allowed to express who they are, to love or to show love, seek the help they need, or remain connected in a way they need. Given that childhood experience and trauma shape violent behaviour later in life, and many parents believe that their son “does not know how to show love”, it is critical to go upstream to prevent trauma both from specific experiences, but also the normative trauma of boyhood.
Breaking the cycle of violence
In the Family for Every Child report, researchers identified the need for primary, secondary and tertiary interventions to address gendered social norms, raise awareness about sexual violence against boys, and develop protective mechanisms by strengthening families, dealing with dysfunction, as well as teaching families to provide relationship and sex education.
They also underlined the need to deal with trauma and other adverse childhood experiences to protect children from harmful sexual behaviours and vulnerability to abuse; for the training of practitioners; and critically, for policy amendments.
Coupled with these legislative and policy changes, there’s a need for increased funding for programmes associated with boyhood, including through utilising social fathering and those providing positive rites of passage, along with interventions focused specifically on boys who are victims of physical and sexual violence.
Addressing the crisis in boyhood is going to take connection, communication, a safe space for boys to express emotion, a reworking of the social script and rigid stereotypes around manhood and a process of unlearning.
Crucially, dismantling patriarchy will no longer suffice to make these changes, the pendulum needs to swing away from the “men are trash” extreme too.
Combating despair and breaking the cycle of violence is at stake – we can’t afford to fail.
First published in the Daily Maverick 5th August 2024
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.
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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
