The SA Jockey Academy has hired a senior advocate to investigate allegations of students being assaulted and forced to watch pornography.
|||Durban - The SA Jockey Academy at Summerveld has hired a senior advocate to independently investigate allegations of students being assaulted and forced to watch pornography.
An 18-year-old Mauritian student had claimed that he and two other trainees were assaulted by a teacher and that they were regularly called to his office and forced to watch pornography on his computer.
The allegations surfaced during the student’s disciplinary hearing last month when he was accused of contravening the academy’s code of conduct and for being disrespectful to a staff member.
The Daily News recently reported that Durban attorney, Siven Samuel, had attended the hearing on the student’s behalf, but said that he represented him in a “parental role”.
Samuel said he only stepped in as a lawyer when the student was re-charged. The student had pleaded not guilty at the May 21 hearing, which Samuel said ended abruptly when the prosecutor had stormed out.
He said the chairman of the hearing had been asked to recuse himself as the student claimed that he and two other trainee jockeys had been assaulted by the chairman, but he apparently refused.
The lawyer had written to the academy, the Department of Education, the Human Rights Commission, the SAPS Child Protection Unit and the academy’s board chairman when the student was re-charged two weeks ago, calling for the charges to be withdrawn.
The academy’s headmaster, Graham Bailey, said the academy had appointed a senior advocate from the Durban Bar to carry out an independent investigation.
noelene.barbeau@inl.co.za
Daily News