“The Grade 8 camp came up in January 2017, a few months after Collan’s arrest. I overheard how the teachers were planning what to take along for their evening braais and how they were looking forward to the big party they were going to have. After hearing a lot of initiation stories, I begged Chris to speak to the two boarding masters who knew our policies against initiation and they promised to look after the boys. I personally phoned the woman who was head of first aid and asked her whether I could give her the boys’ Schedule 6 medicine and if she could make sure that they were given it every day. But when the buses left, she told the boys to keep their medicine with them, because they were not staying at the same place as the teachers, who stayed two kilometres away from the boys. The boys would only see them once a day at the dining hall. So on camp, one of the boys gave two of his friends Concerta and, because it makes you stay up the entire night, these boys walked off in the middle of the night to go swim in a dam without any supervision. When the boys returned we had to deal with a number of furious parents. I tried to get answers from two of the teachers who said they had stayed too far from the boys, so they could not distribute the medicine. This was given to us in writing. We reported this to Mr Bradley, who said that the next year they would have to plan better. The boys came back with blisters on their hands from the push-ups they were forced to do; they were hit blue and purple, kicked in their stomachs, and I was told that nearly every boy cried on the camp. There were more than 10 written statements of initiation and abuse. Mr Bradley wanted to take the matrics’ prefectships away, but my husband Chris asked him not to do this. Chris reasoned that we must make sure this never happened again and that the teachers should be doing their work and watching the kids, not leaving it all up to the matrics. Why send eight teachers on camp who don’t even watch the boys? Mr Bradley called the entire group into his office and said they would have to do better the following year.
“Of course, after all of this I was enemy number one, especially among some of the Old Boys. We were sworn at, made fun of and, on one occasion, I was bumped down stairs in front of a group of people at a function at the boarding house. I reported this incident to the police and took photos of my injuries after rolling down the stairs. Some of the Old Boys thought this was extremely funny, seeing a 50-year-old woman falling down stairs after being pushed by them. Then my dogs were mysteriously poisoned.
“After the Collan Rex tragedy, although the traditions of initiation and abuse carried on, the boys got stronger and began to speak more openly, although it was very hard for them to tell their parents, and up to this day, many have not told their parents everything that happened to them. I became their support. For one year, I sat with boys, cried with them and held their hands, and gave them their meds to help them cope at school.
“When the Collan Rex cased started, Advocate [Arveena] Persad called me in and she said all parents of Rex’s rugby teams and waterpolo teams since 2015 needed to be contacted as she wanted to make sure all boys had come forward before the case started. Most of the day parents were unaware of this case, as this meeting happened seven months after the incident, just before Mr Bradley left. It was kept from the day parents for seven months although most of the abuse happened on tours and daily in the swimming pool, where boarders and day boys mixed.
“Luke Lamprecht helped to arrange for Rees Mann to address the school on sexual assault. As the executive director of South African Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse, he was going to talk to the boys to help them understand. One of the prefects suspected that one of the victim boys was talking about him, so he made the boy stand up in front of the whole school. He landed up standing for more than 15 minutes. It was very traumatic for him; he said he felt like the entire school was looking at him. After this incident he began having nightmares relating to the incident. He was subsequently put onto antidepressants. When he had to do his impact statement, he had a total breakdown when this incident came up and we had to stop the interview. Something like this could have a negative impact on this boy for the rest of his life.
“The initiation never stopped and as much as the school tried to blame it on boarding, there was just as much going on at the day school. These traditions were happening in the classrooms, on the school fields and in the prefects’ room. When we caught the head of boarding doing the same to the boys, which Carte Blanche exposed in 2009, he was expelled from boarding. Despite the school claiming that the brutal rites of passage had stopped, Chris caught a group of matrics red-handed. They had taken Grade 11 boys down to the bottom field. They had to all strip naked and then they got Deep Heat rubbed onto their private parts. The matrics would then stand in a row and the Grade 11s had to bend over and get hit with bats, tennis rackets, sticks, belts and then were forced to jump into the pool. They had to do this for a few rounds. It was believed this made you a man at Parktown Boys’. Once it was over, the Grade 11s could go to the matrics’ dorm to have coffee with them – this was called ‘the right of way’. But this was going on all the way through when we got here – the exact practice Carte Blanche reported on in 2009.
“The parents of the victim boys who are planning a civil case against the school have been accused by various parties attached to the school of ‘trying to run the school down’. I believe the school has failed the parents and the boys. There has been no protection for those who have stood up for the truth. Despite me reporting 68 incidents of violence and wrongdoing, no meaningful action was taken on any one of my reports.
“Despite all its problems, I still love the school and l love the boys. But boys have been hurt so badly and something needs to be done. The Collan Rex case was just the beginning. There are at least another five serious criminal cases on the go against certain members at this school. One of them entails an incident at the Grade 8 camp a few years ago, when the boy, who is now in Grade 11, was hurt so badly that he still has scars on his body. There are four other boys who have the same scars on their backs or chests. We’ve had four suicide attempts. One boy had to write his matric finals from a psychiatric ward. We have eight boys on psychiatric medicines. There are 23 boys from the Rex case, scarred for life. There are also files and files of statements from Old Boys recording abuse at this school.
“This has become such an emotional and personal journey for me. But I will not stop until justice is given to these children. I want the adults involved to acknowledge what they have done to these boys. I especially feel strongly about the secondary victimisation, where the victims have been doubted and told that they are liars, breaking these boys even further. I want these boys to be acknowledged for their bravery and for all the perpetrators to apologise to the victims. Four years down the line, no boy has received an apology.”
After Grade 8 learner Enock Mpianzi died tragically in a drowning incident that caught national attention in January 2020, Mariolette called me.
“You can use it. You can use it all,” she was crying. “Those poor boys. Those poor little boys.”
I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the victim boys then or the Grade 8s now. Either way, the pain was the same.
Chapter 7
The Former Director of Sport
Remo Murabito
The names of three educators cropped up over and over again in my conversations with boys and parents alike. I messaged all three. Only one agreed to sit down and talk on the record. Remo Murabito has been out of education for a couple of years, after being an educator at Parktown Boys’ for 24 years. He was in charge of the sports department at Parktown during the time of the Rex case.
“I’d like to have a chat first, and just see what you’re looking for,” he said cautiously. “I put this stuff behind me a long time ago and I don’t want to bring it up again unless there’s a good reason. My family suffered a lot at the hands