Suffer the little children

Tiny Tots School. A few weeks into the year last year they were in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. A child had died under suspicious circumstances and allegations of beatings prompting the whole country, or at least the socially conscious ones to rally behind the campaign #JusticeForBohlokoa. I do not know how that campaign ended. Like many Basotho I have a short attention span when it comes to such things and I cannot help but feel that our laxness in dealing with that first issue has emboldened Tiny Tots. Here we are a few months into the new year and Tiny Tots has done it again. This time a teacher has allegedly been sexually assaulting students at will and once again we are treading into that old territory of shouting about it for a few days and then quickly moving on. The sexual assault in itself is cause for outrage enough but the events that transpired after are even the more maddening. Let us start with the alleged perpetrator. He is alleged to have been referring to female students as his wives, some even say there have long been whispers of his being inappropriate with female students and yet for years this behaviour has gone unchecked. A document also surfaced of the alleged perpetrator having been convicted of sexually assaulting students in Zimbabwe, his home country. That would seem to suggest that he is clearly a habitual offender. This raises even more red flags. If Tiny Tots is an institution where people send their children, the expectation is that the people that work there are qualified to care for children and as such should always be on the lookout for suspicious behaviour. How then did this man’s behaviour go unchecked for years? Was it a case of incompetence on the part of the school or did the school deliberately choose to look the other way? If the allegations against how they are choosing to handle the matter is true, then one can only assume they willingly looked the other way. In a case where a child in their care has suffered sexual abuse which might lead to emotional trauma going on into adulthood it would appear that Tiny Tots School is more concerned with their reputation. They could have chosen to speak out against the matter, but they are concerned about what this matter coming to light means for their reputation and of course their bottom line. The other question is when one is employed to work with children should there be no background checks? How does one walk into a school with a sexual offence conviction to their name and simply get hired in an age of technology where all it takes is an email to verify someone? If they are harbouring a sexual deviants unknowingly what manner of people could they also be engaging? Let us not forget that it has actually never been cleared as to whether they are also engaging people who murder children as teachers. If indeed as a school all this happened without their knowledge it is still worth noting that their naivety is out of this world. One would have thought that after the first incident they learned their lesson about taking just a closer look at their staff to ensure that similar incidents do not happen again. While we are on the subject of peering a little bit deeper into people before we hire them, how did a man with a previous sexual conviction get a work permit to work with children, someone, somewhere is sleeping on the job and our children have suffered for it. How did a convicted repeat offender get free bail? What message are we as a country sending? You can be a convicted offender and Lesotho will welcome you and put you in proximity to its children and not only that even if you harm one of those children, but we will also still put our trust in you enough to grant you free bail. The whole thing would be laughable if it was not so tragic. The parents themselves, those of other learners continue to wake their children up every morning, dress them up to go to a place where two incidents of such magnitude have taken place. A child has died, another has been sexually assaulted and without both these allegations cleared to the last margin of doubt you feel secure in sending your children to that place. As a parent your job is always to ensure your child’s safety and yet you are comfortable enough that your child will not be the next one that we have to seek justice for? Last year we campaigned for justice for Bohlokoa and we moved on within a few weeks, it has been days since the last incident at Tiny Tots and already our noise is quieting down. Our attention span is quite short as a country and that will always be to our detriment. It might not have been my child, your child or a child that you even know but our collective silence is every day reinforcing to those who would harm our children that whatever outrage we may feel soon dies down and it will soon be business usual. I wish I could be naïve enough to say I never hope to type this again but as things stand in this country I will of course come back to this very column and wail about the very same issue or something similar. All I do not know is how long it will be between this article and my next one. Likhomo Basotho! Own Correspondent