This is not a review, but it is an intentional look at how systems in place to deal with bullying at schools have failed. The recent reports from Milnerton High School, where a Grade 10 student was allegedly bullied, assaulted, and emotionally abused by a group of 18 year old boys that included members of the school’s Rugby First Team are both horrifying and familiar. The circulating video was brutal to watch, and yet, for me, it only confirmed what I’ve said for years: parents of victims need to start suing both the school and the parents of the bullies.
Because truthfully, we’ve seen this movie play out before . We’ve seen the SGB statements, the disciplinary hearings, the “boys will be boys” excuses, and the carefully managed silences that follow. We’ve seen schools protect reputation over accountability. But no school culture changes when consequences stay contained to detention slips and internal meetings.
It’s time to skip the bully and go straight to the source, the home and the institution.
If a child can harm another repeatedly, physically and emotionally, then two things have failed: the family’s guidance and the school’s duty of care. Those are the two places that are supposed to build empathy, boundaries, and accountability. When both fail, it is not only fair, but it is necessary for the parents of victims to take decisive legal action.
Since this story broke, many former Milnerton High students have come forward on social media, describing years of similar incidents quietly swept under the carpet. Several mention how the previous principal has long shown a soft spot for the Rugby boys, the same team some of the accused belong to. And that’s how cultures like this take root: when prestige and privilege are protected over safety and integrity.
What makes bullying so dangerous and so enduring is how it hides behind collective silence. Everyone sees, few speak, and even fewer act. That’s why I’ve always believed that to sue is to disrupt that silence.
When parents take schools and other parents to court, they send a message that says: our children’s safety is not negotiable.
We know this from years of studies on human behaviours, no parent wants their time, bank account or their surname tied to their child’s cruelty. No school wants its brand associated with negligence and trauma. But perhaps that discomfort is exactly what is needed to create change because emotional appeals have never been enough.
Bullying is not a childhood phase. This includes harmful and dehumanizing hazing rituals. These are acts of violence. And when it goes unpunished, it teaches future adults that abuse can be negotiated. That’s why legal action must be the responding action, it’s about resistance, precedent, and protection.
And let’s be clear: SGBs cannot solve this. Assemblies and anti-bullying posters cannot solve this. What might solve this, is a courtroom that says, “We see you. We believe your child. And this will not go unpunished.”
Because until we make the cost of silence too high, the culture will continue, shielded by blazers, sports prestige, and the myth that cruelty is just part of growing up.
With Gert van Tonder as the new principal at the helm, new rules need to be considered around bullying, and the Rugby teams’ behavior needs to be reworked and rewired. But the future of handling bullies at schools does need to move into legal action and lawsuits because child rearing that ultimately results in having a bully for a child needs to change one way or another.
