the monitor

Is our screening adequate?

News that a man entrusted with the care of pupils at Mokgenene Primary School sexually assaulted the children isn't only heartbreaking but also disgusting! Children are innocent souls and tend to trust their guardians/parents to be their protectors who shield them against harm as well as being the best possible role models.

Sadly, we live in a society that seems to be losing its moral fibre by the day.

When parents take their children to a boarding school they do so to give them a brighter future, not to have some dirty paedophilic predator to prey on them. Sex orientation is a touchy subject and for young minds to be sexualised at a young age by a grown man perpetrating harm on them by cutting through their sphincter muscle to penetrate their anal canal. Anyone can just try and imagine the kind of pain that these vulnerable boys allegedly went through at the hands of the filthy man, who not only gets paid to look after the boys to ensure their safety, only for him to allegedly perpetrate on them. Perhaps our screening process is too weak to catch these weirdos before they actually join the school systems to harm children. They seem skilled at worming their way into workplaces where the vulnerable are and end up wreaking havoc not only on the lives of the children but also their colleagues. If a child at primary level experiences such trauma, the likelihood of that child associating school with pain is very high and most likely won' want anything to do with the classroom and its environs.

The accused who appeared before court in Mahalapye last week Friday, allegedly performed atrocious acts on young children, pulling their genitals in a backwards and forwards motion (something that individuals often do to themselves referred to as ‘masturbation’). That is violation on the child who is inevitably hypersexualised too soon. Imagine the amount of humiliation the children felt, lacking understanding of this intrusive experience that violates their being whilst on the same token no one knows just how far the man has gone with those young boys.

What on earth was going through the man’s head? One could wonder how depraved in the man accused of doing this horrible act to children in his care?

It is high time that proper guildelines are put in place to ensure that no paedophiles are hired to take care of children. Batswana have long been promised a sex offender registry and up to now, citizens are still waiting. Countries like the United States of America have had the sex offender registry for a very long time, something that schools definitely check before they hire. The registry is something that is desperately needed in our country, because even parents need to know the characters that live in their neighbourhoods. The law needs to be stricter on these kinds of individuals!

Editor's Comment
A step in the right direction

It has only been a month since the newly elected government, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), took power, and there are already a lot of changes. Across different ministries, ministers are hard at work. Following heavy rainfall and storms that hit Francistown recently, the Minister of State Presidency, Moeti Mohwasa, made a commitment that government will assist those affected by the heavy rains. Mohwasa, when addressing the media in...

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