The Predators In Our Schools: How Safe is Your School?

Former students protest outside the Alliance Girls High School gate Photo| Wangui Gathua

The recent blow up of the inappropriate teacher relationship with students and former students at the Alliance Girls High School is a jarring reality of the vulnerability children and youth are exposed to. In their article, The Teacher and the System, African Uncensored and Christine Mungai provide a detailed exposé of how a teacher at the Alliance Girls High School (AGHS) engaged in long-term and repeated inappropriate relationship with some of the students and former students without any kind of accountability. The complexity of the relationships he allegedly had with the girls range from favoritism, psychological abuse or gaslighting to sexual relations.

What is so insidious about this is that majority of the cases cited and the testimonies involved girls who were recent school graduates and just turned 18 or 19 and therefore achieved the majority age blurring the lines a consensual relationship and inappropriate behavior with a minor. Therefore, on the surface,  the teacher -student relationship is hard to establish. The incidences with those who were students involved seemingly minor infractions, small and ambiguous infractions just teetering on the edge. According to the report, “What protected him was the fact that most instances of apparent misconduct were small, or seemingly ambiguous”.

Questions abound as to how this went on at AGHS and for this long.

One thing was clear though, the Teacher, Mr. Peter Ayiro, was the adult in a place of power and authority both institutional and spiritual level.  He took advantage of his position to groom vulnerable teenage girls into trusting him, later emotionally and psychologically entangle himself to them and leading to sexual abuse.

Without rehashing the whole story, a few things jumped at me. As the title clearly states, there is a system involved. The system failed the students and the newly graduated alumnae that were under the influence of this teacher. That the teacher was able to carry on with his predatory behaviour for nearly 25 years with no action taken against him is incomprehensible.

As I conversed with a group of my friends, one thing kept coming up, even if he was reported, he could easily get away with this because the allegations that have been leveled against him may not stand a chance in a court of law. We argued back and forth how so, but got nowhere because none of us in that group is a lawyer.

As I am not a lawyer I will not attempt to bring legal arguments but share my observations.

To begin with, I am an old girl at Alliance Girls High School, the school is my alma mater and this story was heart wrenching to read, as I’ve always held my alma mater in high esteem. It is a school with great reputation for high performance, yet perhaps that reputation is now tarnished, not because of dismal performance, but this exposé that is threatening to be huge scandal.

Legal arguments aside for now, it is clear, safeguarding principles had been breached over and over and it is a systemic failure that enabled him to carry on while the adults who knew and could have taken action to stop him did nothing.

To be clear, no institution is immune from safeguarding risks, what you do to prevent a breach or the action you take when an incident occurs is what matters.

Safeguarding is a pillar in protection of vulnerable persons of all ages. Children at school are under the care of their teachers. Cases of inappropriate teacher-student sexual relations are not new. Nobody is immune. Even the prestigious schools are exposed. The news has been rife with teachers impregnating young girls in primary and secondary schools. The AGHS saga has gained a massive attention mainly because of the status of the school. Many times we hear cases of teenage girls impregnated by their teachers. People tend to treat them as just another case of teacher misbehavior. Perhaps the AGHS case has exposed the gravity of laxity, weak or lack of proper safeguarding protocols in our schools.

Weak safeguarding protocols

In the exposé it was clear that one of the reasons this teacher was able to carry on with his misdemeanor with the girls was that nobody held him accountable

Safeguarding is an accountability mechanism that protects the vulnerable from being harmed by those they interact with. Often these are trusted individuals like teachers, religious leaders, social workers, service providers such as security guards, nannies and even close relatives at home. Everyone in the system, particularly those with any kind of authority, and that includes all the teachers should be made aware that they have the duty of care for the students.

Most of the teachers interviewed according to the article, said they were unable to report the matter because either because of fear and merely warned the girls to stay away from him or they didn’t have enough evidence to incriminate him. This a massive failure in the safeguarding system.

Strong safeguarding systems require safe reporting mechanisms for any reporter be it a fellow co-worker, a student or even an affiliate. This requires a robust whistleblowing mechanism with guaranteed anonymity to facilitate reporting.  It seems such a mechanism did not exist at the school or even at the employer, Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC )level. More on TSC level later.

Shielded by Power

In the AGHS exposé, the said teacher seemed untouchable. According to the African Uncensored article there were whispers around the school, some teachers warned the girls to be careful around him while others were afraid to confront or even report the matter because the teacher in question was very close with the higher ups which included none other than a number of successive school principals. It is mind-boggling that someone can wield so much power to the extent that colleagues can do nothing about it

The teachers interviewed in the article  who attempted to hold him accountable were afraid to report him. How did he become so powerful that his colleagues were afraid of possible negative repercussions? Apparently he was very close with a number of successive principals, meaning he was too close to power and that power shielded him. Because of a lack of safe reporting mechanism, Mr. Ayiro was able to carry on with his behavior as the teachers who could have reported him may have been exposed to negative consequences implicit in their fear. In that way they too became complicit in the endangerment of the girls.

What should a good safeguarding system do?

If there had been a proper accountability mechanism, first of all, the principals, beginning with the first one he ever worked under, should have set aside whatever closeness she had with Mr. Ayiro and set the wheels of investigation in place. 

A good reporting mechanism starts with awareness by the subjects. Many of the students interviewed said they were confused, sometimes not knowing what was happening to them, in other cases knowing something very bad had happened with a certain kiss, hug or touch. It clearly shows missing life and social skills to enable them identify when something bad has happened to them, and even if they could name it, they still didn’t have the agency to take action beyond resisting the predator. If they had the awareness and the agency to report, then perhaps an appropriate action might have been taken had the system been functioning.

Even if the students were aware and probably had agency to report, the system failed them because there was no proper and safe reporting mechanism or even a complaints mechanism. The affected students at AGHS felt they had nowhere to turn to. According to one of them, “There wasn’t anyone we could talk to – no female teacher who felt safe enough. And with him being the principal’s favourite, and with other teachers either hating him or fearing him, it felt like there was nowhere to go…”

If this had been in place a report was received, an initial first step required suspension of the teacher so he was not in touch with the girls as he would have been deemed unsafe for them pending investigation. This should happen whether or not there is evidence. The threshold for a smoking gun evidence is too high in cases of sexual abuse, and adult sexual exploitation. This is where you act first, and investigate later. This clearly failed.

Under normal circumstances, an internal investigation should have been instituted by a competent team. If the principal felt too close to engage, to eliminate bias, she should have appointed another teacher with authority to head the investigation process, or even enlisted a member of the Board of Management and even a member of the Parents Association. This clearly did not happen.

Also a complaint of sexual nature such as the ones the girls described should have triggered an official report with the authorities, whether TSC or the police for that matter, according to Section 39 of the The Teachers Service Commission’s Code of Conduct and Ethics for Teachers (2015) which states that:

Authority For the purposes of section 36(1) of the Leadership and Integrity Act (Cap. 185C) and paragraph 37(1) of this Code a teacher may report any matter to the Secretary, head of institution or any other appropriate authority as the case may be.

As the principal, you are like the Managing Director and the buck stops with you.

Systemic Failure

Another clear failure was the failure by the school authorities to report. According to the former students interviewed, certain incidences occurred where there was no doubt that the teacher-student lines had been crossed.  In one of those incidences, he repeatedly hugged a student and his hand “apparently slipped” and touched her breast twice and the then he told her that she had “really nice boobs”! This was not a mistake, this was intentional! He was almost 40, and she was 17. Totally inappropriate! Which teacher tells a student that she has nice boobs?

Touching a girl’s or a woman’s breast in that way and then complimenting her is very sexual.

In another incident, he kissed a student on the lips, not peck on the cheek, a kiss on the lips.

What is really disturbing about this whole saga is that Mr. Ayiro was not alone. One of the interviewees called Ruth (not her real name) implied that there were other male teachers doing things as well with suggestive texts. “Part of my reason for meeting him in person was to confirm that it was indeed him sending me the texts because, you know, during school days, some other male teachers were quite forward about their intentions. For a moment, I even thought that maybe I had mistakenly saved some other teacher on my phone under his name…”

The threshold for removal of contact with students is low enough, based on safety rather than an airtight foolproof  evidence in the first instance. That this went on for a long period of time as the teacher remained at the school for over two decades is unacceptable

Where is TSC in all this?

How was this teacher able to go to court to issue an injunction against the publication of these findings by African Uncensored and Christine Mungai? How many times have we heard of teachers involved in sexual relations with their students, impregnating them and the only consequence they get is deregistration? Maybe this is not consequential enough to deter them.

It seems the system is built to protect the perpetrators and not the victims. When the #MeToo movement broke out worldwide in 2017, one thing became clear, when a victim reports claims of sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation, believe them. Most victims fail to report or fear to report because sometimes these cases are very difficult to prove. Some are traumatized and do not want to be retraumatized by having to face ruthless police officers and defense lawyers in interrogation. Others are just simply afraid of the perpetrators.

Why was the TSC’S code of conduct and a circular on the protection of students ignored? According to the dossier, it seems ever teacher interviewed knew that something was amiss but didn’t “hard evidence”. However, the writer of the dossier says that “what emerges from this investigation is they did know enough to suspect serious boundary violations.”

The Teachers Service Commission’s Code of Conduct and Ethics for Teachers (2015) is unambiguous: Section 22 prohibits teachers even from flirting with learners, and from facilitating the non-disclosure or cover-up of cases of sexual abuse.

She adds that, “ the TSC’s Circular 14/2018 on the Protection of Pupils/Students clearly outlines a teacher’s duty of care. Section 4 affirms that teachers are expected to act in loco parentis – to take responsibility for learners as a parent would – and always act in the best interest of all students, regardless of their official role or station.”

So clearly, there was either massive ignorance of these protocols or total disregard which led to inaction. The author concludes the “The existence of a whisper network that they’ve all admitted to – private warnings, quiet observations, sideways glances – is, in itself, a tacit admission that there was a serious problem that warranted investigation.”

How could one teacher wreak such havoc by causing harm to the students under his care while still in school and immediately thereafter, and suffer no consequences?

TSC could adopt better and higher safeguarding protocols like those practiced in civil society and NGO sectors especially those that concern child protection with zero tolerance for inappropriate behavior. That way, our children might be safer in schools.