Lesotho: I was harassed by my teacher


Date: September 9, 2014
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I am an innocent young boy aged 20 and my name is James. I live at Teyateyaneng in Berea where I attended high school at a very popular school, a school known for getting the best results. I was harassed when I was in Form D after I passed Form C with a first class to prove that the school was one of the best in the country. No one knows about this incident accept for my best friend, the person who will be reading this.
It was in the year 2010 when this woman, my teacher, started making my life miserable. She was a very beautiful woman but she was not married, she approached me in a very secret way. For example, when I got something wrong she would not explain it to me but she would say that I must follow her to the staff room. This happened several times until my fellow students recognised it and complained to me that I got too much attention because she liked me. I did not realise there was anything wrong because I did not think of anything bad, I just thought she cared about me because I was a hard worker, besides she was older than me and I respected her.
My teacher continued to show this kind of attention to me until one day I demanded an explanation in front of the other students, but she ignored me and she never explained. That was when I realised that she had a hidden agenda and I watched her to see what she was up to. One morning I was announced as the head prefect and I heard it was the result of my teacher’s recommendation. She used to call me to the staff room to have tea from her coffee mug and that is when I started to tremble with fear.
The worst mistake that this woman made was to tell me to help her carry the scripts to her house; when we got to her house she locked the door and told me to sit down, I asked why she had locked the door and she claimed that there were thieves. I told her I wanted to go back home as my mother would be worried as to where I was. She was wearing a full dress with a zip at the back. She asked for help and I helped her and demanded to leave because I saw that something would go wrong. She did not respond with words instead she started to touch me in a way that made me uncomfortable, she added to this by kissing my cheeks. I stood up very quickly and ran to the door. She seemed so relaxed and asked me whether I had forgotten that she had locked it so we could have some private time.
My teacher was possessed; she came to me slowly and started kissing me on the lips while I stood with shock wondering what was happening. For a moment I thought it was a dream and then she whispered in my ear saying could I not see that she loved me and she did everything for me. She had told me that not even my closest friend should hear of our relationship. I was embarrassed; I did not think that even female teachers harassed their students. She dragged me to her bedroom where she took off her clothes, I could not look but she came to me and pulled me to her. I thought things like that never happened in reality but it happened to me.
Something amazing happened; there was a knock at the door. One of her friends came to see her, and it gave me permission to get out of that house. I did not even look back, I picked up all my things and waited for her to put on her clothes so she could go and open. By the time she opened and her friend entered I had passed her to go out without even a greeting or looking her in the face. It was a very shameful thing for a woman to undress in front of me let alone the kissing and not to talk about what would have happened if her friend had not come.
The next day at school I could not even look her in the eye and I never told anyone until now, although I felt like everybody had seen what I saw. She called me to the staff room but I did not go. She painted a bad picture of me to the headmaster so that I should be demoted from being the prefect, but the headmaster did not listen. That is when I saw that ‘love’, if it was love, could turn into hatred; surprisingly she did not fail me in her subject. It is still a shock to me that women can fall for small boys. She did nothing after that except to ignore me as though we had never communicated let alone drunk from the same coffee mug. I passed my Form D without any complications, I never saw her the following year and thought she had resigned and that is one of the reasons I never talked about this incident.

This story is part of the “I” Stories series produced by the Gender Links encouraging the view that speaking out can set you free.

 


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