Oprah Winfrey ordered to stand trial in case linked to sex-abuse scandal at her all-girls school

https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/oprah-winfrey-ordered-stand-trial-case-linked-sex-abuse-scandal-all-girls-school-article-1.167054

Oprah Winfrey is expected to spend two weeks defending herself at trial in a defamation case linked to the sex-abuse scandal at her girls school in South Africa.

A federal judge this week refused to dismiss the suit filed by Winfrey's ex-headmistress, paving the way for a March 29 trial in Philadelphia.

Oprah must be in court and also appears likely to be called as a witness.

After the abuse complaints surfaced in 2007, Winfrey said she had "lost confidence" in headmistress Nomvuyo Mzamane and was "cleaning house from top to bottom."

A dorm matron who worked under Mzamane was later charged in South Africa with abusing six students.

The judge found that Winfrey made both Mzamane and the dorm parents appear "culpable" by telling parents, "I'm going to find a new head of the academy for the school. ... Dorm parents are gone, (Mzamane) is gone."

The statement suggests Mzamane had a role in the mistreatment of the students, "which clearly would tend to 'blacken' plaintiff's reputation or injure her in her profession," U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno wrote.

She opened the $40 million school for impoverished girls and recruited Mzamane, a Lesotho native, from a private school in Philadelphia.

In a brief filed Winfrey's lawyers wrote that any damage Mzamane suffered was by her own conduct, "including presiding over a school where serious allegations of child abuse were made against the dorm parents."

Babcock successfully defended Winfrey in a 1998 libel trial in Texas.

Winfrey's lawyers tried to move the pending defamation trial to Chicago, but Robreno said it could be tried in Pennsylvania, where Mzamane lived when she filed suit in 2008 and where her reputation is perhaps most relevant. Mzamane is seeking more than $250k

Winfrey indicted Ms. Mzamane for creating an atmosphere where the students' voices were silenced," Mzamane's lawyers said in their brief. "Simply put, the only reasonable inference to be drawn from the press conference was that Ms. Mzamane was let go because, at best, she disregarded claims of sexual abuse at (the school)."

Mzamane previously worked at the Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia and returned to the area when Winfrey declined to renew her $150k a-year contract in 2007. She said she could not find work afterward, but apparently took a job at another school in South Africa in September 2008, according to court documents.

Her lawyer, Timothy McGowan, said he was ready for trial but otherwise declined comment.

Winfrey's school now has about 330 students.

https://www.themillennialbridge.com/oprah-winfrey-ties-to-child-sextrafficking-through-convicted-molester-john-of-god/