Kenya: Six lecturers arrested for forcing college students to simulate intercourse

A gaggle of six lecturers have been arrested and suspended in Kenya on Thursday after a video of main faculty pupils being pressured to simulate intercourse as punishment prompted an outcry.

In a 29-second video that has gone viral, 4 boys in class uniforms simulate intercourse acts beneath a tree within the schoolyard as lecturers watch. Within the background, the six lecturers could be heard chatting and laughing as a shirtless youngster wipes tears from his face.

Police stated the video “exposing pupils to indecent acts” was recorded in Nyamache, a rural city some 300km west of the capital Nairobi.

Six lecturers, 5 ladies and one man have been arrested and are “aiding within the investigation”, police stated in a report seen by AFP. They are going to be prosecuted on applicable costs, it added.

The Lecturers’ Service Fee (TSC) suspended the six, saying the video had prompted the six college students “disgrace, trauma, psychological and psychological torture”.

“You ordered and/or coerced college students (…) to have interaction in indecent/inappropriate acts representing homosexuality throughout the faculty,” stated TSC official Evaleen Mitei in a letter to the lecturers.

The lecturers have three weeks to submit their written defence towards their suspension, Ms Mitei stated.

On the identical time, they’re anticipated to stay in detention for one more seven days whereas the investigation is accomplished.

The incident prompted an uproar on social networks within the largely conservative nation.

Schooling Minister Ezekiel Machogu stated disciplinary proceedings can be initiated towards the lecturers and that they might be dismissed if discovered responsible.

Below Kenya’s Sexual Offences Act, an individual convicted of forcing one other to have interaction in an indecent act is liable to imprisonment for not less than 5 years.

Past this incident, the dwelling situations of schoolchildren in Kenya are often the topic of heated debate, whether or not on the appropriateness of corporal punishment, formally banned by regulation in 2001, or extra lately on the size of the varsity day.