A former vice-principal of Hoërskool Waterkloof became extremely emotional on Thursday as he told the Pretoria High Court how three pupils manipulated a picture of two naked gay men - sitting snug together on a couch while masturbating - by substituting their faces with those of the school's principal and vice-principal.
A colour print-out of the doctored picture bearing the faces of Dr Louis Dey and Dr Christoff Becker was put up on the school's notice board for everybody to see. The private parts of the men on the original picture were obscured with the school's emblem.
On Thursday Dey said it was humiliating but, to make matters worse, he later heard that the picture was also sent via cellphone to hundreds of pupils at the school and had "spread through the school like wildfire".
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A tearful Dey told Judge Ben du Plessis that he was so humiliated and belittled by this that he could not bear facing the pupils.
| 'I wanted to crawl into a hole' |
"I honestly felt like just sitting in my office and not coming out. I wanted to crawl into a hole."
He said every time he passed pupils on the school's playground or in the corridors and heard them giggle he would imagine it was because of the image they had in their heads of him and the headmaster masturbating.
Things eventually became too much for Dey and, after devoting himself to the school for more than 12 years, he eventually left at the end of 2007. He is now headmaster of a new school near Silverlakes.
Dey is claiming R600 000 in damages from the three pupils for defamation. One of the pupils is under 18, still in school and cannot be identified. The other two, who were 17 in 2006 when the incident occurred, are Christian Gildenhuys and Reinhard Janse van Rensburg.
All three boys acknowledged that they were behind the offending picture but said they thought the manipulated picture was "a huge joke".
They claimed they never intended to injure the reputations of the heads of their school and added that they thought those who viewed the picture would also see it as a joke.
Dey's nightmare started on the morning of March 10, 2006 when a teacher came into his office and handed him the offending picture.
Dey said he saw two naked people sitting on a couch. One had his leg over the other and they appeared to have their hands on their private parts. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the faces of the men were substituted with those of him and Becker.
"I could not believe what I saw," he said.
It later emerged that the boy, who was 15 at the time, had been playing around on the new Internet system his parents had bought.
He claimed he went into a body builder site where he obtained the picture but counsel for Dey said it was clear the picture was found on a porn site.
The boy then obtained the heads of Dey and Becker on the school's website and attached them to the picture while covering up the private parts with the school emblem. Thinking it was a joke, he sent it to Gildenhuys, who sent it to other children.
Gildenhuys made a colour print, which was put on the notice board by Janse van Rensburg.
The three boys faced a disciplinary hearing at school, where they admitted everything. Various punitive measures were taken including detention and being barred from holding any leadership position for that year.
They were also charged with crimen injuria, convicted by the Pretoria magistrate's court and sentenced to 56 hours community service cleaning cages at the Pretoria Zoo.
In their defence the three said they felt they had been sufficiently punished for what they did. But Dey said none of these punishments had made him feel any better.
He said he often had to take charge of the school in 2006 while Becker was involved in his son's court case (Becker's son is one of the notorious Waterkloof Four serving a jail sentence for murdering a homeless man). But after the incident he could no longer face the children.
"I was humiliated and I knew that most of the children and my colleagues had seen the images," said Dey adding that therapy may help him come to terms with what happened.
Proceeding
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Pretoria News on October 10, 2008
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