Victim rights and minimum standards for the management of learner victims of sexual misconduct in South African schools

Abstract

Current education-specific law and policy do not provide clear guidelines for schools when it comes to adopting policy for managing learner victims of sexual misconduct. It is contended that these policies should be formulated in a manner that will guarantee compliance with international and national victims’ rights and minimum standards because that would ensure more effective management of learner sexual misconduct victims. If minimum standards are not upheld, victims’ rights are not observed, victims are not effectively managed and secondary victimisation results. The aim of this article is therefore to identify and explain victims’ rights and the minimum standards that must be complied with so as to ensure that these rights are observed. For that purpose, education specific law and policy regulating the management of learner victims of sexual misconduct were benchmarked against international and national victims’ rights such as fair and dignified treatment, offering and receiving information, protection, assistance, compensation and restitution and the underlying minimum standards for managing victims. This enabled me to formulate guidelines on learner victims’ rights and minimum standards that schools should include in their policies for managing learner victims of sexual misconduct.