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Cell captures class punch-up
26/03/2007 17:00 - (SA)
Dousie de Wet
Oudtshoorn - A school principal and teacher have egg on their faces after apparently having lied about how a schoolboy was injured on the head at school.
A cellphone video shows, blow by blow, how a Grade 9 pupil at Langenhoven Gymnasium was beaten up while a teacher watched.
The assault on the boy was such that the wound needed 14 stitches.
School principal Hillie Schultz apparently punished both the victim and his alleged attacker.
The video is now doing the rounds.
Schultz accused the Cape Son reporter of distorting the incident, trying to represent it out of context and turn it into a racial issue.
Schultz told the boy's father that his son had been head-butted.
Punched in the face
But, the video tells another story, showing how the boy actually got his injuries.
The fist fight took place right in front of the teacher.
In the video, the teacher is seen, calmly watching the boy being punched in the face - left, right and centre.
The victim said the fight was caused by an argument between himself and another boy.
The victim had to go to the headmaster's office after the argument to hand in his cellphone.
Ten minutes later, when the boy returned to the maths class, he was apparently assaulted.
The victim's father was flabbergasted by the distorted version of the events he got from Langenhoven Gymnasium.
In shock and disbelief, he saw on the video how his son was assaulted.
The father said he had been led to believe that the two boys were involved in a heated argument as they walked into the class and that a head butt was the cause of the injury.
The father said, also, he had been told that the teacher had defused the situation in no time.
The victim, who also watched the video, confirmed that this was the incident in which his face was cut open.
The father said he had accepted the school's word and negotiated with the attacker's father on the doctor's bill.
'Separate incidents'
Nothing would have come of the matter if the video had not landed up in the possession of Cape Son, he said.
Schultz and the teacher then tried to dish up to Cape Son the same story they'd "sold" to the victim's father earlier.
Schultz denied that the fight captured on video had been the one that caused the boy's injuries.
He and the teacher insisted that the video and the head-butt were two separate incidents.
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