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Oct 10, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The issue of schoolchildren having sex is one that should concern all of us. It is worrying, but not as worrying as the continuing tendency in this country to blame the educational system for sexual acts committed by schoolchildren outside of the precincts of the school.
The recent reports in the media suggest that sexual acts involving students of a certain secondary school were carried out in a house and not in the school. However, the school that the children attend was identified by the uniforms they wore while the sexual acts were being performed.
Based on reports, the sexual acts seemed consensual, but based on a guess of the ages of the children, it is presumed that we are dealing with statutory rape since, according to our laws, persons below the age of 16 are not considered competent to give consent, regardless of how competent that person is in the actual sexual act.
Under our laws, fellatio (an act of oral sex) is considered as penetration. Therefore, if there is non-consensual penetration, we are dealing not just with the possibility of a sexual offence, but one that may be considered as statutory rape. I do not know how many students within our school system understand the seriousness of the acts which the students on the footage were engaged in. There is possible jail time involved here.
I also do not understand how persons in our society can be blaming the educational system for what took place. Are we now making the school system responsible for the sexual morals of children and what they do outside of the classroom?
If the school system is to be held responsible for the actions of the children, where does that responsibility begin and where does it end? And what about the parents of the children, should they not be held responsible too?
Yet it seems as if the major blame is being placed on the school system, when this thing is alleged to have taken place in a private home and the only links to the educational system is that the children are students and they were performing their sexual acts in their school uniforms.
There is a certain level of hypocrisy also involved in the alarmist reaction to the footage which was said to have been rolled out on social media networks. First of all, people have been condemning the present generation of schoolchildren and bemoaning the falling standards of sexual morality in our country. But they are only fooling themselves.
Hanky-panky between schoolchildren has been going on from time immemorial. Do not let the older generation pretend that there were not sexually suggestive touching and playing going on in the good old days. A lot of that was taking place. The difference was that the age of consent was lower in those days and there was a greater hiding of the facts. But wickedness took place long ago too. So we are not dealing with a new phenomenon.
What I think many people are concerned about, is whether these illegal activities are taking place behind closed doors in the schools. That is what is worrying many a parent in this country. We do not know how extensive and widespread sex is in our school system. And we have to be concerned both by what takes place after the school bell rings for dismissal in the afternoons and what takes place when schoolchildren leave the precincts of the school.
But please, we cannot blame the educational system for this sort of thing while exculpating parents from any responsibility. In fact, instead of spending so much time trying to apportion blame, we should be spending more time ensuring that when our children go out, either to school or elsewhere, we know exactly what they are doing and not just what they are supposed to be doing.
When our children say they are going to a friend, do we check to see they are at their friend, and do we know whether the friend’s parents are at home and that the children are meeting under adult supervision? Do we allow our children to walk freely down the road unmolested or do we advise them to walk in groups and teach them how to ward off sexual predators?
The safety of our children should be a priority. Too often I see children meeting their deaths because they are roaming with friends and end up doing some dangerous stunt for which they are ill-prepared. After school, students should go home and from home they should go and engage in constructive playtime activities, done under the supervision of adults.
Children should not be allowed, no matter how old they are, to roam around aimlessly in the streets. Unfortunately this is happening a lot and when this happens, these children can be easily lured into doing wicked things.
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