Taxi men accused of abusing pupils

Bonte Seepi | Thursday February 2, 2017 15:15

Speaking at the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) meeting at Kediretswe Primary School, the school head, Tom Malete said they have realised that there are some pupils in their school who are being sexually molested by some older men including taxi operators.

Malete noted that there was a lot of abuse of children in his school, which ends up affecting the pupils’ studies negatively.

He said in some instances, it is the taxi operators who molest the children and nurse them with some money or some niceties so that they cannot report.

“One will find that while school knocks off at 1pm, the hired taxi man will deliver the child at 4pm everyday. Once such changes occur, parents must interrogate their children to establish where they have been with the taxi man and even check their underwear (panties),” he emphasised.

 “Some men threaten these children either to kill them or do something bad to them if they ever reveal the secrets. While some give them money or food and threaten them never to tell anyone about what happened. It is not just about having sex, but some men satisfy themselves by just touching these children’s private parts or making the poor girls touch theirs,” Malete said.

The school head cited an incident in Lobatse where 10 Standard Three pupils were used by one man for more than a year without anyone noticing. He said by the time teachers realised the molestation, it was already late as all the children tested HIV positive.

For their part, parents who were visibly astonished also called for protection of the boy children.  One parent, also a PTA member, Julia Moalosi decried that parents always talk about a girl child sidelining boys saying that is why most of the perpetrators are men.

“We always talk about the girl child but parents do not know how to raise boy children. We treat girls as the most vulnerable all the time while boys are treated as animals. Parents ought to come closer to their boys as well and teach them to be wise. 

Every time when there are cases of drug abuse, Satanism and others, boys are always leading because they are never protected and taught the difference between good and bad,” said Moalosi.

In a different matter, teachers complained about  being ill-treated by some parents, especially the youth, who were said to be undermining teachers. Teachers decried that some parents do not cooperate with them at all.

 “If you talk bad about us in front of our students, how do you expect the children to respect us and listen to us when we teach them? We are also human beings; we make mistakes so if there is something that a parent is not happy about, they should approach the headmaster’s office so that the matter can be peacefully resolved,” said one teacher.