Doc: Oprah Girls Doing "Relatively Well"
Oprah Winfrey said Monday she was not responsible for hiring at her school for disadvantaged South African girls but that the screening process was inadequate and "the buck always stops with me."
Dr. Bruce Perry of the Child Trauma Center in Houston told The Early Show that the six girls and 23-year-old woman victimized at the school were "doing relatively well."
"They're all receiving mental health support. They have the support and care of their friends," says Perry.
Few issues resonate as deeply with Oprah Winfrey as child sexual abuse, notes CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds, so it's no wonder that this episode has come as a great shock to her and her millions of fans.
Calling the allegations of abuse at a school she founded in South Africa "one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating experience of my life," Winfrey appeared as part of a press conference detailing the investigation of child abuse which led to the arrest of a school employee.
With all the resources that Winfrey brought to this $40 million exclusive school, many just want to know how it happened.
"They asked the bank robber, Willie Sutton, why he robbed banks, he said because that's where they keep the money," Alison Arngrim, former child actress and spokesperson for the National Association to Protect Children told CBS' The Early Show. "Why do sexual predators go to school? Because that's where they keep the children."
Last month, a 27-year-old dormitory matron at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy south of Johannesburg, South Africa, was suspended in connection with allegations involving indecent assault and soliciting under-age girls to commit indecent acts.
Tiny Virginia Makopo faces 13 charges of indecent assault, assault and criminal injury committed against at least six students aged 13-15 and a 23-year-old at the school.Photo Essay: Oprah Shows Her Class
Winfrey founded the boarding school near Johannesburg last January - but by March, parents said students at the academy were being treated as virtual prisoners, permitted little or no means to communicate beyond its walls, Reynolds reports.
Winfrey acknowledged that a system designed to protect students had become a way to intimidate them.
Because the girls were afraid of repercussions from the remaining dorm matrons, Winfrey said, all remaining dorm matrons were removed; teachers were placed in rotation in the dorms.
"This has been one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating experience of my life," Winfrey said, "but like all such experiences, there is always much to be gained, and I think there is a lot to be learned.
This isn't the first time Winfrey image has take a hit. But while her reputation may be damaged, few believe that it is destroyed.
After discovering that James Frye's bestselling "A Million Little Pieces" was more fiction than memoir, she excoriated the author on her show and then apologized to her viewers, who had purchased the book on her recommendation.
That episode and this current one both involved head-on televised apologies to her audience.