Africa-Press – South-Africa. Three girls from a special needs school in Qonce in the Eastern Cape were allegedly raped during a school outing to Gqeberha last week.
The alleged incident took place in a hotel. The girls were allegedly sexually assaulted by boys from the same school on Saturday night.
Eastern Cape Education MEC Fundile Gade said the children were part of a school choir that participated in a singing competition. The girls’ choir won the regional competition.
Police spokesperson Brigadier Thembinkosi Kinana said cases of rape and sexual assault have been opened “after school children, aged between 14 and 20, from King William’s Town (now Qonce) were reportedly raped by young boys from the same school”.
Kinana said:
The spokesperson would not say if anyone had been arrested.
At a media briefing on Tuesday, Gade revealed that the same school choir had advanced to the national stages of the singing competition and would travel to Johannesburg after winning the competition in Gqeberha.
He said the provincial education department had decided that a delegation from its head office would see to the safety of the school children.
Gade apologised to the parents of the victims and to the public for the incident.
The MEC said special needs schools were a sensitive sector that required maximum attention from those responsible for duty to care.
He added that the incident was immoral, should be condemned, and the perpetrators punished whether the culprits were pupils, school staff or outsiders.
Gade added:
Gade said the district director and the school had handed an incident report to the department.
He said he had directed the school, district office and officials at the department’s provincial head office to conduct further investigations into the incident.
“We have sent a psycho-social services team to provide support to all those affected so that the school can be able to restore normality,” he added.
Gade said he did not understand how the incident could have happened because the school had assembled 10 staffers to oversee the pupils during the trip.
He said the team was made up of the school’s deputy principal, two head of departments, two teachers, three bus drivers, and non-teaching staff.
Gade said:
“I am just disappointed precisely because you don’t expect that we can go down to this level of immorality specifically taking into consideration all these campaigns we have been running,” he added.
The three pupils are being assisted by the Thuthuzela Care Centre, which offers support to rape survivors.
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