“We went to the Open Day, when you could go into the house and look around. It was very nice. We met the Head of House, who seemed nice at the time, but he turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. From what James has told me, that man should be in jail. We went into the section at the top, which was the Foundation House – it’s a heritage home. I wondered why they’d put children in there because I thought, a heritage house? They’re going to wreck it. And I think they did, there were holes in the walls and the ceiling.
“James asked if he could come home after the first weekend in the hostel. The boys aren’t allowed to go home that weekend, but I went to visit to get his washing. I thought he missed TV and PlayStation and I said, ‘No, you have to stay here.’
“But he kept asking. Every Sunday when it came time to take him back he would have a tantrum and say, ‘I don’t want to go back, I don’t like it there,’ and I’d say, ‘You don’t like it there because there’s no PlayStation and DStv. Get in the car!’ Sometimes I would have to drag him, kicking and screaming to the car, and when I dropped him off he would be bawling his eyes out. And this went on for a year. His marks dropped drastically – and obviously my screaming and shouting didn’t help. He failed first term, and in the second term he failed again and I said, ‘Obviously, you’re not studying because I know you have two hours of prep every day – what are you doing?’ Meanwhile, they weren’t studying because they were doing push-ups and going through torture. He scraped through Grade 8.
“In Grade 9 I took him to a psychologist and she said she thought he was depressed and needed a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist saw him for two minutes and diagnosed him with classic ADHD and prescribed Concerta. I said he doesn’t have that – James can watch a National Geographic programme on polar bears and six months later repeat the whole programme verbatim. He can definitely focus. He doesn’t have ADHD. She was sure it was ADHD. When the court case came, Mariolette Bossert called the psychiatrist to tell her, and then she called me and asked me why I didn’t tell her he was depressed. Surely that was her job to see? So he shouldn’t have been on Concerta and I think it stunted his growth.
“I did notice that when he was in primary school, James would spend every opportunity in the pool and then in Grade 8, all of a sudden he stopped wanting to be in the pool here at home. He said the Parktown pool was heated and he didn’t want to swim in a cold pool. And then halfway through the year, one day he came out the shower and I saw these marks across his back … Scars. And to this day, he won’t swim in public or take his shirt off in public. He says he doesn’t know where he got them, but since then I’ve heard that some of the boys in Grade 8 were held down and beaten with metal poles. But he doesn’t remember anything.
“He also told a friend of mine that he doesn’t swim because he had a bad experience in a swimming pool and then I found out Collan Rex grabbed him in the pool. And even though Rex is now in jail, James still doesn’t go in the pool. So, no more swimming.
“When all this came out, Mrs Bossert took him and some of the other boys to the Teddy Bear Clinic and the psychiatrist there put him on suicide watch. He’s been on suicide watch and antidepressants ever since. He can’t come off them, even now. He sees a psychologist every week and a psychiatrist every three months. It costs a fortune, which for now the school is paying, but I don’t know for how much longer.
“Collan Rex was arrested on 3 November, just before exams, which I think destroyed all [the boys’] marks for that year. I found out when Mariolette called, and told me Rex had been arrested and that other issues had come up. Before then, I didn’t know anything. I’d ask James on the drive home at the end of the week, ‘How was your week?’ He’d say, ‘Fine.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘Stuff.’ ‘What did you do in Maths this week?’ ‘Can’t remember.’ That would be our journey home and then the headphones would go in.
“It’s been rough. I don’t sleep. Not knowing, I think, is the worst thing. You can only imagine. When the Teddy Bear Clinic sent him for an HIV test, then you start thinking, okay, what did go on? Because there’s only one reason they would send him for an HIV test. One day I’ll find out. Maybe in a book.
“You have to take it one day at a time. And if I hear something, I process it. A friend of mine was driving James back to school on a Sunday and James pointed to the Foundation House and said that when he was in Grade 8, he had climbed onto that roof, that he was going to jump off and commit suicide. He had obviously never told me, but he opened up to her. I think it was his way of opening up, knowing I was close enough to hear from someone else, not directly – his way of telling me things slowly through someone else.
“When I went to Mariolette I asked, ‘Why? If this was happening in Grade 8, and he already wanted to commit suicide because of all the stuff happening at the school, why didn’t the school contact me?’ So I’m thinking, like, right then and there, we could have sorted out the problems but instead it was ‘Man up!’ and he was punished. That was Grade 8 and then it got worse and worse and worse.
“James is very naïve. He believes everyone is good; I’m the opposite – I believe you have to prove you’re good. So when the bullying started, he got the worst of it, not only from his old pot, but also from other Grade 8s. He got the brunt of everything; he became a target because it took the attention off the other boys in his grade if they were all bullying him together.
“There were a lot of bruises. When I asked about them, he would say, ‘Oh, I can’t remember,’ or ‘Oh, I bumped myself,’ or ‘Oh, I fell off the bed.’ It was never, ‘Oh, the matric boys beat me.’ He did, however, tell me about his old pot hitting him with a cricket bat.
“James has told me nothing else about what happened to him. I hear bits and pieces here and there, mostly from Mariolette, because she was there when he filled out the police report and also the form, where I know he hasn’t told everything.
“Court started in August of his Grade 11 year, and we would drive out often to the court, which was on the other side of the world. It was out past Alberton, the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court in Katlehong. When we were at the court, he was on camera; he was underage, so he didn’t have to face Rex – not like Ben – but while I was standing outside, I could hear him screaming because the defence would ask him a question and then the judge asked him a question in a different way and he would say, ‘Stop wasting my time – I already answered that!’ It was terrible.
“I wasn’t allowed in the court – it was a closed court – so I sat there the whole day waiting for him to be called in, round the back, hidden away from the press. Which was a bit weird, because when it came time for lunch break, you all went to the same canteen and Rex was sitting two tables away. I was like, really? What’s the point? It doesn’t make sense.
“When I saw Collan at lunch, it went through my mind that I knew his excuse for doing what he did was that it happened to him, and I was thinking if everyone did things to others that happened to them, if I did things to others that happened to me, I’d also be in jail.
“I just don’t know when it’s going to stop. You can’t use that excuse. You should know it’s wrong. I did feel sorry for him. He was 22 and now he’s thrown away his whole life. He had everything going for him; he was waterpolo coach, hostel master, rugby coach. So I thought, what a waste of a life.
“I asked James if he wanted to leave Parktown at the beginning of Grade 11. I said, ‘Do you want to leave? Because if you do, tell me now and I will go home and start looking for a new school for you.’ But he said no, that he wanted to stay. I think that was because of Mariolette Bossert; she became his pseudo-mother because he hasn’t had a mother for years. He felt safe there, especially after Rex left.
“I