BANGALORE: Sexual assaults take place only in affluent schools, B S Jayaramarao, secretary of Adarsha High School, said on Wednesday.
He was speaking at a conference organised for over 60 school managements to draw up safety measures to prevent sexual assaults on children in the Malleswaram assembly constituency.
“Rapes and sexual assaults take place only in high-end schools, not in schools like ours. Just because something happened in a school, all schools should not be punished,” said Jayaramarao, whose school is located in Yeshwantpur.
The discussion was moderated by Malleswaram MLA C N Ashwathnarayan.
Over a hundred people — headmasters and representatives of government, aided and unaided schools — took part in the meeting.
Jayaramarao went further to say sex crimes take place only against “hi-fi” women and girls. “Hi-fi” is a slang word used commonly in Bangalore, approximating to ‘fashionable’ and ‘high society’.
“Nobody looks at children living in slums. The problem is that girls don’t dress appropriately. We need to bring a dress code for girls,” he said.
Later, when reporters asked how a dress code was relevant for a six-year-old girl, Jayaramarao did not have a coherent answer.
Ashwathnarayan, who did not respond to Jayaramarao’s comments during the discussion, later told reporters he did not endorse such a view. “I did not respond then as I wanted members of the audience to share their opinions,” he said.
Management representatives at the conference described various problems they faced from police, education and transport officials.