The Governing Body should be hanging their heads in shame watching how the events unfolded in South Africa at Oprah Winfrey's school. Her fearless way in meeting the problems head on, not covering up, calling in expert help, investigating, apologizing, getting all adults away from the campass so the girls could talk openly about what happened. Those girls came FIRST. Their well being, and healing came first.
An example for all religions, schools, parents, leaders to follow.
I applaud her for heart and the balls she has to back up her endeavers.
Nov. 8, 2007, 9:34PM Rolls-Royce rights Oprah Winfrey rightly applies rich-country standards to victimized South African girls.
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
From the moment Oprah Winfrey opened her girls' school in South Africa last winter, it was clear the production values would be all-American. She's been questioned for applying her lavish tastes to a facility for the poorest of the poor.
Now that a schoolwide abuse scandal has surfaced, however, Winfrey's gold-standard reaction represents nothing more than what every single African girl needs and deserves.
Winfrey's academy never meant to follow conventional development goals. This was a school for stars, girl leaders who thought big and could create national-level change.
The school itself was a study in American-style spending and exhibitionism. Winfrey spent $47 million on the campus, showing in delirious public detail the whims of a 21st century pasha. She rejected stone tiles over and over because they didn't match the warm South African landscape. She personally ensured that school uniforms were comfortable — and tailored to flatter. The billionaire Winfrey even handpicked every fixture, bath towel and item of 200 thread count bed linen.
It was easy to make fun of all this materialism, even denounce it. Forty-seven million dollars would have gone a long way in simple classrooms and running water for South Africa's other youngsters. The criticisms were trumped by two facts: It was Winfrey's money, and she was doing more for South Africans than most anyone else.
Then last week, Winfrey's response to revelations of physical and sexual abuse at the school revealed a different, perhaps revolutionary, side to her Rolls-Royce expectations.
Winfrey had hired the school's top management, relying on some of Africa's and America's best educators to hire teachers and dorm matrons. But she seems to have underestimated how different African concepts of accountability and authority are, failures that led to girls being sexually and physically abused for months before someone came to their aid.
To her credit, Winfrey acknowledged the final fault was her own — and then she marshaled all the expertise, psychological counsel and legal help American dollars can buy.
She alerted South African police, making sure they would welcome her own team of crack investigators. Trauma specialists, social workers and Winfrey herself descended on the school. A re-evaluation of the school's structure has begun.
Most important of all, Winfrey vows to put the guilty behind bars. This is far from normal in South Africa, where sexual abuse of women in general, and children in particular, rages like the worst equatorial disease.
South Africa endures one of the world's highest rates of rape: Last year, 55,000 sex assaults were reported — a fraction of those that actually occurred. A quarter of the country's teens are assaulted in school.
But star power and financial muscle like Oprah Winfrey's cannot be ignored. A survivor herself of childhood rape and rural poverty, Winfrey should make it her mission to flood rich-world dollars and airtime on South Africa's quiet disaster.