How These Women Used Instagram To Expose A ‘Sex for Grades’ Scandal

Evidence of sexual harassment by teachers has flooded Instagram after students in Morrocco took to the social media app to share their experiences and demand change. Encouraged by activists in the conservative North African nation, where victims of sexual violence are often silenced, the evidence has led to action being taken.

Sonia Terrab, an activist and the co-founder of the Instagram account that is spearheading the #MetooUniv movement, has spent months collating evidence and data on teachers.

Her account ‘@moroccan.outlaws.940’ has received more than 100 testimonies from all over Morocco for the campaign, which has helped get lecturers suspended.

But the stories of harassment and inappropriate jokes aren’t just being sent by university students - pupils in high school and colleges are sharing their stories too.

The accusations of teachers across the country have been brought to the limelight by the dozens of newly-created Instagram accounts that have collected testimonies and encouraged women to report their cases.

One lecturer was jailed for two years over the sex-for-grades scandal that is rippling through the country. The economics lecturer at Hassan I University, near Casablanca, was found guilty of indecent behaviour, among other charges.

He was sentenced to two years in prison, having been accused of giving students good grades in return for sexual favours, according to AFP.

Four other professors charged will be sentenced this January, Moroccan TV channel 2M reported.

Sarah Benmoussa, who runs the Instagram account @7achak.maroc, one of the pages leading the campaigning, said the situation is hard for students.

If they don't respond to the teacher's messages they could be blocked or worse be at risk of being held back a year.

One woman by the name of Nadia told Alaraby news that she was expelled from university a year ago under the pretext that she had cheated on an exam when all she did was refuse her professors sexual advances.

She was eventually re-admitted.

In the northeastern city of Oujda, a former student said a professor at the National School of Business and Management had threatened to ruin her academic career if she did not give him an “oral-sex session,” Morocco World News reported. Amid a public outcry, the government launched an investigation last month.

While in Tangiers, an instructor at a school of translation was convicted and sentenced to jail in early January over sexual harassment, lawyer Aicha Guellaa told AFP.

According to her, "nearly 70 complaints" were also filed at the Abdelmalek Essaadi University of Tetouan, but have so far failed to provoke a response from the university administration.

The rise in reports being made against teachers has prompted Higher Education Minister Abdelatif Miraoui to pledge "zero tolerance" for sexual harassment.

In a statement to Moroccan media outlet Yabiladi last week, the country’s National Human Rights Council praised the swift action of authorities and commended victims for coming forward “despite the possible consequences of criminalization, defamation and attacks against them.”

On going problem

Sexual harassment on campuses, however, has gone on for decades unchecked, according to activists.

In January 2018, a report released by an independent committee mandated by Uganda's president said that over 50% of female and about 40% of male students interviewed called sexual harassment a major cause of discontent on campus.

The report further said that in some colleges, sexual harassment was "rampant" and "had become the norm".

The issue, according to some women based on the ground, is still rife today.

Yassine Hasnaoui, a member of the Moroccan youth movement Maan, also told regional news outlet Jeune Afrique last week that sexual harassment of pupils at the university in Settat was “a real phenomenon” that was discussed on campus when he was a student in 2016.

Speaking to Jeune Afrique, one woman referred to as Sara said that while she was a master’s student at a Moroccan university, a professor insinuated that he expected sexual favours in exchange for a recommendation for an internship.

But when she said she refused and ended up taking a less prestigious internship.

Nigeria And Ghana

In a BBC documentary, which journalist and victim Kiki Mordi helped create, it untangled the rife sexual harassment at universities in Nigeria and Ghana.

She and three undercover reporters spent three-months using hidden cameras over to film lecturers at the regionally prominent University of Lagos and University of Ghana.

In the footage, lecturers harass, proposition and attempt to blackmail Mordi and her fellow reporters in closed-door meetings.

The undercover reporters targeted lecturers named by unidentified informants as known serial harassers.

One man, Paul Kwame Butakor, a lecturer at the University of Ghana, where sexual relationships between faculty and students are prohibited under university policy — was caught on camera promising a job to an undercover reporter if she agrees to let him be her "side guy."

He told her that his "wife is not in the country."

Butakor, as well as another University of Ghana lecturer implicated in the documentary, denied offering "sex for grades."