They (parents) are heart-broken but it has to be reiterated that it’s neither their fault nor ours that this happened.
The children did not escape from the college premises and so they were not in our jurisdiction.
They actually left their homes purporting to be attending school, which in our case begins at 7:30am.
Unbeknown to us all, they had other plans and we were to later learn the whole episode had been orchestrated by a 19-year old Pathway College scholar, in cahoots with two other compatriots, who attend the same school.
Naturally, this trio becomes the accused because they paid the lodge fees.
The taxi driver who drove the students to the lodge happens to have been a former head boy at one of the schools. Says the statement:
After he had dropped them at the lodge, he rushed to notify us of the development because as a former student of ours, he is privy to our time tables and disciplinary ethos.
Because we understood we had no right to budge into the lodge to extract our children, and in respect of the law and for fear of dragging our brand into disrepute, we decided to notify the police first.
In other words we avoided taking a position we would have later regretted and we put the protection, safety and future of our girls first, while our brand only came second.
We are happy the police’s response was prompt and a raid was conducted leading to the arrest of an employee of the lodge.
I want to dismiss reports doing rounds on social media that this was a sex party… even the ZRP on its X handle never mentioned the names of our schools for purposes of protecting the children.
To our surprise, it’s now in the public domain who we are and who they may be. This is against both the constitution of our country and the Education Act which both speak to the protection of children.
It’s unfortunate the media has gone into a frenzy and the matter has been so popularised it’s a discussion you’d find during meal time and everywhere.
It is also alleged that one of the girls may have engaged in sexual activity with her partner by the time police officers arrived at the lodge.
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