Our youths' safety crisis

THE MURDER OF DEVENEY NEL

- ORIELLE BERRY Julian Jansen

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.