Johannesburg - The South African teacher who was kicked out of the UK after it was revealed that he had hypnotised a pupil to perform a sex act on him 27 years ago, may have had many more victims at Grey High School in Port Elizabeth in the 1980s.
Two weeks ago, a panel of the National College for Teacher and Leadership banned Stephen Grobbelaar from teaching in the UK for life.
His victim from PE, who was 16 at the time, tracked him down in Britain and alerted the school where he was teaching, Windlesham House, to his history of abuse.
But now it has emerged that Grobbelaar may have sexually assaulted other pupils at Grey High School while he was a teacher there.
A letter to MyPE community news website claimed that the teacher had abused the writer’s boyfriend and his brother in the ’80s.
“(I am in) total shock that this paedophile has only one case of abuse in SA. I’ve lived for years with the fall out from the abuse my boyfriend (an ex PE Grey High) pupil and his brother (and how many more!) suffered at the hands of this monster. How he gained their trust only to force them to have sex with him in his office.
“Back in the ’80s kids were not believed when they reported such abuse and so they rather kept quiet for fear of being ostracised. Such was the mental torture my boyfriend went through at the age of 13! And at age 42 he relives this abuse every day of his life despite therapy.
“He doesn’t want to discuss it but I feel relieved that this disgusting monster has been exposed, just obviously not fully.”
The letter writer did not disclose her name.
The Saturday Star made several requests for comment from Grey High School over the last two weeks, but the e-mails have gone unanswered.
The UK’s National College for Teacher and Leadership investigated the matter after Windlesham House High School asked for assistance.
They discovered that Grobbelaar fled to Britain three years after the incident when the pupil recalled what had happened to him. He initially got a job at Dorset House School in Pulborough. The pupil said that in 1987 he had had difficulties with Mathematics and so approached Grobbelaar for help. The teacher suggested he try hypnotherapy. But when the shamed teacher had the boy in a trance, he undressed the boy and himself and performed oral sex on the pupil.
He then stood behind and rubbed his bare penis against the pupil’s buttocks.
In an attempt to cover his tracks in 1987, a week after molesting the child, Grobbelaar convinced the boy to go under his spell again – but this time he implanted the suggestion he would not recall the incident.
Grobbelaar admitted the allegations at a teacher misconduct panel of the National College for Teacher and Leadership in November. He resigned from Windlesham House shortly afterward.
Earlier this month the panel said Grobbelaar had committed “serious sexual misconduct” and his actions had “seriously damaged a pupil aged 16 at the time and for many years after”.
Saturday Star