Collan Rex indulged in the sordid act of inserting his fingers inside learners’ buttocks in a painful and traumatic act for teenagers at Joburg’s Parktown Boys’ High School.
This was among the damning allegations made by learners yesterday at the high court sitting in the Palmridge Magistrate’s Court, as the State revealed its rape case against Rex, an admitted paedophile who is accused of putting his fingers inside boys’ anuses on a few occasions.
A 16-year-old former learner at the eminent school told the court of an occasion in 2016 on a bus to Parktown from Pretoria, where the boy testified that he and Rex got into a wrestling scuffle, which culminated in the alleged rape.
Rex is a former assistant water polo coach and hostel master at the school.
The boy said Rex had tried “a few times” to anally penetrate the learner, who was on the water polo team. However, the former mentor was allegedly successful on the bus, which, according to the teenager, “was very sore”.
“We were fighting and, at some stage, he (Rex) pushed me down. He pushed me down between the seats and tried to push his fingers through my bum,” the schoolboy testified.
“He (Rex) stuck them (fingers) up my bumYes, it was very painful. I was stuck (between the seats). I tried to get out, but I was stuck,” the boy said, adding that a fellow learner had pulled Rex away.
The learner, who cannot be named to protect his identity, left Parktown when he was in Grade 9 at the end of 2016 when the alleged rape took place.
However, defence advocate William Robertse tore into the witness, asking why the learner had not reported the alleged
rape to another teacher who, according to the teenager, was also on the bus.
The witness said he didn’t tell the other teacher because the supervisor was asleep on the bus.
But Robertse would not let up, asking why the boy didn’t report the matter after the bus had arrived at the school, to which the witness said he didn’t see
the other teacher after the bus had stopped.
“I find it very strange; when the incident occurred, you had ample time to tell (the other teacher) after someone pulled you away (from Rex),” Robertse asserted.
Robertse also took issue with the claims that Rex had anally penetrated the boy as, according to the learner’s statement to the police which the lawyer read out in court, the teenager had written that his coach had shoved his fingers “into my bum”, but didn’t write the word “anus”.
But the boy retorted that, at the time, he thought the words “bum” and “anus” meant the same thing.
Earlier, a 17-year-old boy had also testified that Rex tried to anally penetrate him with fingers inside the school’s study-session rooms, but the boy had fought him off before the insertion happened.
Rex has already admitted to 144 counts of sexual assault, but has pleaded not guilty to 183 other charges; namely rape, attempted murder, sexual grooming and exposing minors to pornography.
The sexual assault admissions involved boys aged between
13 and 16 and occurred in 2015 and 2016.
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