St. Leonard’s Secondary teacher admits to being in shocking flogging video, but claims that it was only a prank ■

The Daily Nation (Barbados) reports:

A video clip circulating on the Internet called "Barbados Flogging, Brutality, Coach Of St Leonard’s Boys’ Cricket Team Goes Wild On Bad Students" with a teacher brutalising two boys with a belt in a room is a hoax.

According to the teacher, Michael Franklin, who was named in the video, as well as two parents, one of whom is the mother of one of the boys in the video, it was all a prank.

The video uploaded onto YouTube.com showed two boys receiving blows all over their hands, heads and shoulders with other voices in the background filming, talking and some chuckling.

The individual who uploaded the clip, under the name bajanreporter, wrote: "St Leonard’s Boys’ School cricket coach flogging pupils on a school trip, it appears some fellows went to a strip club and got back late – the teacher went berserk. Yes, they were wrong but to be treated like plantation slavery days?"

The same clip was uploaded by another online author bajandream who linked it to a website antillean.org, a pan-Caribbean non-profit media outlet, covering news, features and opinions on social issues in the Caribbean region and the wider Americas.

However, when the Daily Nation spoke to Franklin yesterday, he said he was never contacted to find out what really happened in the video.

"First of all, no one went to a strip club, no one was in trouble. That video came out last April. Second, parents were there. And third, the boys were video-taping and felt that they would have some fun.

"What you are seeing on the clip is not a consequence of anybody doing anything wrong. It was a dramatisation. It looked so real, but it was a prank and parents were there. We were doing some filming and everyone was in one room," he stressed.

Franklin admitted that the video looked more real than amusing, "but the boy and his brother put it on facebook.com [in April] and people were a little annoyed. Now it has come back up again with someone writing something on [the video]".

Kay Brome, the mother of one of the boys in the video, also said that the video was "only a prank".

"There were parents there and I was one of the parents there. I was in the room. It was just a prank and a demonstration. There was nothing to be alarmed about. The boys had a camera and they wanted to videotape. It was just a fun thing.

"I didn’t know it was going to get to this level. People wrote things there and made people look like something happened. The boys were not getting beat. It wasn’t anything serious and there is nothing more to explain to it," she said.

Related articles:

1. Barbados school boys allegedly beaten by teacher, caught on tape

Antillean · Bridgetown, Barbados

The Antillean is a pan-Caribbean nonprofit media outlet, covering news, features and opinions on social issues in the Caribbean region and the wider Americas. Our mission is to encourage conversation on, and enhance the visibility of, social currencies within the hemisphere – issues which are often underreported in the mainstream media.

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