A Grade R girl, 5, is alleged to have been raped by three Grade 2 boys on the grou
nds of a Mitchells Plain school. It happened on March 4 but the school failed to notify the girl’s parents. Only during a conversation with her teacher on March 13 did the parents learn their child had allegedly been raped. The girl’s father, who is not being identified in order to protect his daughter’s identity, said the Western Cape school had “failed in its duties”. He said the police opened a case and took the family to a social worker and to GF Jooste Hospital the next day. “After that session (with a doctor) she and my wife came out crying. My daughter was crying because of an injection she had received. My wife was crying because the results were positive in terms of penetration.”
The family await the results of HIV and other tests. The girl’s father said she was severely traumatised and afraid to return to class. The alleged incident happened while the girl was waiting for her transport home after school. Her father said she usually waited in an office but he had learnt that on that day, she had been “chased out” by a staff member. He said he had learnt his daughter had been approached by the three boys who ordered her to hold on to a tree. “They ordered her to take off her underwear. She didn’t want to. They forced her to do it and did what they wanted to do.” He said the boys told her they would kill her if she reported them, but she told a teacher the next day. The girl didn’t tell her parents. The father said on March 6 he received a phone call from the school and was told that there were problems with his daughter’s transport. They wanted to know if he could come to the school the next day.
He said the next morning he received another call from the school asking if he was still coming “because the parents were there” so he assumed it was a general parents’ meeting and that it would be finished by the time he arrived. He later found out the “parents” were the alleged perpetrators’ parents. “Nobody told me that my daughter had been raped. I would have left everything I was doing and gone to the school.” The father said that on Thursday he went to the school with his wife because they needed to get a tracksuit for his daughter. When they saw her class teacher outside he asked about his daughter’s progress in class. “The teacher said she was okay. Then she said: ‘I thought you had come here because of the rape’.
We asked her what she meant.” The parents demanded to see the principal immediately. They said he told them he was under the impression they had been informed. “I told him I couldn’t understand why they had contacted the boys’ parents but didn’t tell us. I also found out they had questioned my daughter without permission.” Bronagh Casey, spokeswoman for Western Cape Education MEC, Donald Grant, said schools had to report incidents of this nature to the department and the police. The department learnt of the incident on Friday. Casey said two of the three alleged perpetrators’ parents had been to the school and the police indicated that they would be questioned.
Source www.iol.co.za
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