Pretoria - Wierdabrug police will only arrest a 55-year-old teacher accused of sexual assault when adequate evidence is collected.
The teacher is accused of sexually assaulting numerous pupils at Valhalla Primary School since June last year.
“The charge on the docket opened against the accused is of sexual assault. As the police, we will only arrest the accused once we have enough evidence to take him to court. If we just arrest him without evidence the case will be struck off the roll," said police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Lungelo Dlamini when asked if the teacher would be arrested and charged.
He said, according to standard procedure, the investigating officer would decide if the police had enough evidence to arrest the educator.
Department of Education spokesperson Steve Mabona said: “We normally say we are precautionary removing an official from school to the district office. It’s a silent suspension, if we were to call it that.
“The feeling was that we can’t be paying people who are sitting at home doing nothing. We rather have that official at the district office so that they participate in the process of doing some work, and anything that would be helpful to the department.”
Although the department said there were already 23 complainants from grades 5, 6 and 7, the police did not want to give a specific number until investigations were completed.
“At this stage of investigations, we can only say that there are several,” said Dlamini.