Who should be held liable?

When abuse takes place at a school whether public or private, who are the relevant parties who should be held responsible?

COMMENT

By Fa Abdul

A secondary school student in Kuala Lumpur is sitting on the tarred road of his school with hundreds of others, waiting for the Monday morning assembly to start when he gets bored. He picks up some pebbles and begins entertaining himself with these.

A few school prefects on duty that morning decide that playing with pebbles while waiting for the school assembly is not a behavioural trait of a good student. They order the boy to stop. The boy is instead advised to read a book like the others around him. The boy obeys, dropping the pebbles into his pocket and opening a book to read, just to satisfy the prefects.

During recess time that day, the boy stands outside his classroom on the second floor of his school building, and leans over the balcony observing the other students while eating his peanut butter sandwich. This simple pastime keeps him entertained, especially when he has no real friends to hang out with.

On this particular day however, upon finishing his sandwich, he finds himself with time to kill before recess is over. He senses boredom creeping in again, then suddenly remembers the pebbles in his pocket. He slowly takes them out and starts playing with them in the palm of his hands and gasps when one or two accidentally slip from his hand and fall two stories down to the ground below.

He finds himself chuckling, amused at the way the pebbles hit the ground. He decides to deliberately throw the next pebble to the ground. And another and another, until a prefect on duty catches him in the act.

The prefect advises him to stop throwing the pebbles, fearing it may hit someone walking below. But the boy, sure that no one would pass by the isolated building, continues throwing the pebbles anyway.

After recess, as other students make their way back to their classrooms, a teacher calls out the boy’s name. Apparently, the prefect had noted down the boy’s name and passed it to the teacher.

The teacher then instructs the school prefects to form a circle around the boy. With the boy standing in the centre of the circle and feeling totally confused by now, the teacher instructs the prefects to pick up a handful of pebbles from the ground and throw these directly at the boy.

In the beginning, the prefects refuse to follow the instruction. However, upon the teacher’s insistence, they reluctantly obey and began throwing the pebbles at the boy. But even then, they purposely throw the pebbles in such a way that all miss the boy completely.

The teacher then begins scolding the prefects, calling them wimps for not being able to carry out a simple task. This makes a few prefects resort to throwing the pebbles directly at the boy, and succeeding in hitting him. As the boy kneels and curls in an attempt to protect himself, more pebbles rain down on him.

For those of you who are wondering where this story is leading to, let me first state that this is not a work of fiction. It is fact and took place at a school in Kuala Lumpur early last year when my son was schooling there. In fact, my son was among the school prefects who refused to obey the teacher’s orders.

I am bringing this case to your attention today to show you that cases of student abuse are not isolated, for it occurs everywhere, every day in our country. The only difference is the level of injury suffered by the victim.

A few days ago, Mohamad Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi, a boy aged eleven died after having his legs amputated and slipping into a coma following repeated abuse which took place in a private religious boarding school. The perpetrator is allegedly the assistant warden, an ex-convict who was employed by the school management.

Following a police report by the boy’s mother, the assistant warden was detained, however, investigations by the authorities have found the school free of blame.

Although the boy in my story did not suffer the same consequences as Thaqif, he was also a student, abused within the confines of his own school – and a case of abuse IS a case of abuse.

And so I ask you, who would you hold liable for the abuse?

• Are the prefects liable, for they were the ones throwing pebbles at the boy?

• Is the teacher liable, for he is the culprit who issued the orders?

• Is the school liable, for the abuse took place inside the building, during school hours, involving a representative of the school and students of the school?

• Is the Education Department liable because the school and its administration fall under its jurisdiction?

Think.

There are many Thaqifs in our country. Some go to public schools, some to religious schools. If we do not hold the right parties responsible for cases of abuse including those who abet such acts, there will be more Thaqifs in our country. They could even be yours and mine someday.

Fa Abdul is an FMT columnist.