OPRAH’S best friend, Gayle King, is helping the talk-show queen sort out the abuse scandal at Oprah’s South African girl’s school.
“We’re definitely working on it,” King told People magazine this week.
King says she accompanied Oprah on both the trips she made to the school, south of Johannesburg, earlier this month.
“It’s just heart-wrenching that the situation even happened. It really is,” King told the magazine.
Then she added: “Heart-wrenching doesn’t do it justice.”
Oprah has not yet spoken publicly about allegations that one of the school’s matrons fondled a girl and physically abused other students.
It is the first time anyone close to the billionaire TV star has spoken about the scandal and how deeply Winfrey is involved in the effort to get to the bottom of it.
“There is still an investigation,” King told the magazine. “We’re trying to figure out what is real and what isn’t.”
On her last trip to the school, Oprah reportedly broke down in tears and, at a closed meeting, asked the parents of the students to forgive her.
Two matrons who oversee the dorms where the students live and the school’s principal have reportedly been suspended. Only the principal is still getting paid.
King partnered with Oprah in the $46 million education project for underprivileged girls to create the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls earlier this year.
The school’s CEO, John Samuel, said that Winfrey has hired a team of professional investigators from South Africa and the U.S. “to conduct a fair and impartial inquiry into the claims,” according to reports.
The team, which includes a retired Chicago policeman, handed over a dossier of statements from schoolgirls to the head of the local province’s child protection unit and is working in conjunction with police.
A rep for King yesterday told The Post that she was not formally involved in the “ongoing investigation.”