A high school drama teacher in Pretoria, South Africa has been fired for taking three students to get their penises pierced.
Willowridge High School teacher Pieter Oberholzer learned of his professional fate at a disciplinary hearing last week, reports The Star, a South African newspaper.
In his own defense, Oberholzer explained that the students had indicated their desire to have their penises pierced after they noticed Oberholzer’s pierced junk one day at school after swimming practice.
“Two of the boys wanted to check on me and walked in while I was drying my hair, and I immediately covered up,” the teacher said, according to The Star.
Oberholzer, 57, said the students then “hounded” him for a few months about the procedure and only relented because he was worried that the students might try to pierce their own penises.
“I agree 100 percent that I should not have got involved,” he said. “I was trying to make sure they were safe. The guys threatened to pierce themselves.”
The students obtained their penis piercings last November.
Two of the students were at least 18 years of age. The third was 15.
The Star notes that Oberholzer underwent a new penis piercing in front of the students at the penis-piercing studio he had selected, in an effort to calm their trepidation about the procedure.
At some point, Oberholzer also gave the teens gifts of penis-shaped pasta.
However, the teacher is adamant that there was nothing deviant about his behavior.
“There’s nothing sexual about a Prince Albert,” Oberholzer said. “It was a bonding incident between the boys.”
The term “Prince Albert” refers to the type of penis piercing the students received.
According to Wikipedia — which The Daily Caller is going to go ahead and trust just this once — the Prince Albert-style penis piercing is “a ring-style piercing” and “one of the more common male genital piercings.”
Oberholzer said he had second thoughts about what he had done not long after the incident, so he confessed to his principal. The principal then informed the students’ parents, and apologized to them.
The parents, in turn, agreed not to press charges.
Later, however, Oberholzer took a male student to get a tattoo. That incident was the last straw, apparently, and caused the teacher’s disciplinary hearing and eventual sacking.
The teacher said he is “terribly sorry for the stress” the incident “has caused my family and friends,” according to The Star.
He added that isn’t sure what the future holds.
“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” the 57-year-old said. “I am jobless at the moment.”
Oberholzer does have a side career as a member of Die Grafsteensangers, a 12-member “comical entertainment group” which plays Afrikaans folk music.
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