Topical Teaching

I am not privy to the reasons why no teacher spotted an incident which one would think is fairly easy to pick up, but even if there was a valid reason for not identifying it, one has to wonder about general standards in yard duty. I find it ironic that by law teachers have to wear a fluro vest to stand out among the students at recess. Perhaps the problem isn’t of students finding the teacher but vice versa.

I hope this awful story doesn’t just highlight the bullying problems our schools confront but also the importance of proper supervision during recess:

The Year 9 girl was filmed, allegedly distressed and screaming, while a gang of eight boys humiliated her during a recess break, just metres from the western suburb school’s staffroom.

The incident, in which the boys allegedly rubbed their buttocks and genitalia against the girl, is now the subject of SA Police and Education Department investigations.

The gang, meanwhile, has continued to harass its victim as recently as this week.

Her mother, who declined to be named, said her daughter was a “confident, happy child” when she began her studies at the school in 2010.

In mid-2011, she “became withdrawn”, performed poorly in class and received “particularly nasty” messages on social media.

For three years, the mother sought help from teachers and counsellors with no change in her daughter’s “extreme stress, anxiety and depression”.

In April, the girl told a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service worker and her mother she was being bullied by a girl and a gang of eight boys, culminating in the recorded incident.

“(The girl) taped my daughter to a tree out the front of the school and staffroom where most students gathered at recess and lunch,” the mother said.

“My daughter noticed a gang of boys approaching … she began to ask (the girl) to let her free … as the boys drew closer they grabbed the hose and sprinkler.

“By this stage my daughter was screaming and begging (the girl) to untie her; however, the girl chose to laugh at her and do nothing.”

The woman said the gang of boys wrapped her daughter in the hose and, while filming her with mobile phones, “dropped their pants and rubbed” their buttocks and genitalia on her.

“She said she felt so humiliated and so frightened … everyone around her stood there and did nothing or were laughing in the distance,” she said.

The woman has spoken out about the incident for the first time after she was prompted to come forward by the historic first-ever prosecution of a teen under the state’s new “humiliating and degrading” filming laws.

The laws, introduced last year, carry a maximum one-year jail term for anyone who subjects another person to a degrading act, or one that would violate their privacy.