Youth violence raises safety concerns

Two crimes. Three children. No justice.

- ORIELLE BERRY

THIS is a story that should never have had to be told - because no one wishes to read or hear about a school going-teenager — then 16 years-old, who murdered a fellow pupil and friend - Deveney Nel, also aged 16.

What makes this story all the more shocking is that the same culprit then aged 13, had been apprehended just four years earlier for the brutal rape of a girl, then aged 11, at a camp site close to Albertinia.

Even worse in Deveney’s case was the fact that she was stabbed and murdered at school while a sporting event was taking place.

Schools above all, are considered places of safety yet the young girl's life was brutally taken and her body only discovered hours later in the storeroom of Overberg High School, where the dastardly deed had been committed.

Julian Jansen’s book challenges the reader to assess the current situation in South Africa for school children (and other juveniles) whereby the bigger issues of safety, warmth in the home, which goes hand in hand with a sense of belonging, have given way to the menace of bullying, peer pressure, one-upmanship in the shady area of teen sexual activity and of course, drug and alcohol abuse at a young age.

It was interesting that as I started reading this book, I had just watched an Israeli series called ‘Black Space’ where similar peer pressure and violence are focused on at a school in the country and it all has to do with that sense of “being cool” and looking good in your fellow pupils’ eyes.

At the start to this tragic story, Jansen paints the all-too familiar picture of children growing up in somewhat economically challenged households in Grabouw.