Fifty Shades of why the Viotti-Bishops case is not black and white

Her comments, also her reluctance to be quoted by name on the Fiona Viotti Bishops Diocesan College sexual misconduct case, speaks volumes. For her, the pupil was above the age of consent – “unlike an actual victim like the seven-year-old in the Nicholas Ninow case” so it is a matter that’s not in need of society’s outrage.

It’s a reaction that makes it clear this case is not black and white. In fact, there are at least 50 shades of grey to understanding our own responses.

It raises questions about the burden and burn-out child protection activists face, also about how moral outrage weighs up again legal consent and why some cases make the news and others don’t. It’s about stereotypes that women are nurturers and caregivers and men just want sex all of the time and how this clouds our idea of what sexual perpetration looks like. It’s about how teenage sexual fantasy turns toxic with memes and jokes; why sick humour may stand in for the things that we don’t have a language to express; and even why Twitter and FaceBook keep missing the point.

We call the Viotti-Bishops case complex because we don’t have the vocabulary or maybe the courage to confront privilege, power or race in the discussion. We value the fight for gender equality so we don’t want to believe that we treat woman sexual predators differently especially when they’re attractive. And even saying “male victimhood” can sound like an oxymoron.

Rewind to two weekends ago when news broke that a 30-year-old teacher and water polo coach had left the elite boys school in Rondebosch, Cape Town and that an investigation was under way over alleged sexual misconduct involving a married female teacher and an 18-year-old pupil. Guy Pearson, the principal, made a statement calling the teacher’s actions “inappropriate behaviour” and said it was a matter that had to be “managed with utmost sensitivity”.

It was easy to call BS on his statement. It wasn’t “inappropriate” – these were allegations of sexual misconduct, abuse of power and abuse of the teacher-pupil relationship. The press named the teacher because no charges had been laid and the pupil is no longer a minor. Bishops has since closed ranks, Viotti has lawyered up and her father, Dave Mallet, also a teacher at the school and the brother to one-time Springbok coach Nick Mallet, made a statement thanking people for their support. It’s been slammed as bizarre, insensitive and stinking of privilege.

The school has not been forthcoming in responding to DM’s questions regarding their policy on sexual harassment, code of conduct and mechanisms to protect and support pupils who report on cases like these. Bishops College emailed back a three-sentence statement.

Luke Lamprecht, advocacy manager for Women and Men Against Child Abuse, says it’s the kind of response that lays bare the privilege, power and also blind spots in elite institutions like Bishops. Lamprecht points out that Viotti is the third generation in her family to teach at the school. Her family has a high profile at the school which should raise concerns over nepotism and privilege.

He says closing ranks, bringing in lawyers and protecting “one of their own” distorts the bigger agenda of better child protection in this country. It shifts responsibility away from Viotti and downplays the impact on the pupil and possibly other boys too. It entrenches the idea that an old-boys network is threaded through politics, business and ultimately power, he says.

Lamprecht says his organisation is currently making queries about Viotti’s and the school’s legal and ethical obligations to bring Viotti before governing structures like the South African Council of Educators and other coaching associations Viotti may have been registered with. He adds that the video of Viotti that was posted then removed from a porn website deserves deeper investigation too. He points out that producing, possessing and distributing pornography of anyone under the age of 18 is child pornography. It’s a legal age that’s two years older than that of legal sexual consent in South Africa.

“The test for what was damaging in this relationship was that it was happening in secret – the power of abuse lies in the secret. This boy felt sufficient discomfort to eventually tell his parents,” he says.

He adds: “There are other reasons why it’s difficult to have these conversations; we don’t have the language for male victimhood and female offending. Pornography has also replaced sex education for young people and the memes and jokes on social media are often about men’s own discomfort with dealing with their sexual vulnerability.”

And female sexual predators are treated differently. Cases like Viotti’s are considered “scandal” in headlines. They’re headlines that make the potential salaciousness the story, not the potential harm to, in this case, young men. Twitter and Facebook ensured that Viotti was sexually objectified and cast as the desirable forbidden conquest, bestowing on her a kind of celebrity status.

Rebecca Helman is a PhD candidate at the University of South Africa (Unisa). She is also a researcher at Unisa’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences and the South African Medical Research Council – Unisa’s Violence, Injury and Peace Research Unit.

Helman says: “Some of the social media responses reflect on the fact that we don’t know how to talk about sexual violence, sexual exploitation and sexual discomfort that men feel. We have a culture still where men are confronted with an over-emphasis on sex and are expected to desire sex and to naturally be able to fight off unwanted sexual advances.”

She says responses to the Viotti-Bishops case are tangled up in the current global moment and movement of women to call out societal structures set up and entrenched to disadvantage women and to enable the scourge of violence against women. Helman says as a result there’s a risk of this case being co-opted by the anti-feminist fringe. It was clearly shown in the Twitter noise of people calling for a #allwomenaretrash hashtag.

Helman says this is distraction and deliberate distortion. Instead, she says there should be unequivocal acknowledgement of structural patriarchy that is damaging to women, and also to men. She says standing up for male victims shouldn’t take away from the reality of the high rates of sexual violence against women.

“We need the space to talk about these issues because we know trauma produces trauma and violence produces violence. We need to listen to survivors when they speak out – both women and men,” she says. DM