No, Angelina Jolie didn’t expose Oprah Winfrey’s ‘creepy girls school in Africa’ – clip about Chibok kidnappings

“Angelina Jolie exposes Oprah’s creepy girls school in Africa. She’s selling their souls!”

That’s the claim in a video circulating on TikTok since late June 2023. It has also found its way to Facebook here, here and here, and YouTube here and here.

The video begins with a voiceover saying Hollywood actor Angelina Jolie has a long-running feud with US media personality and businessperson Oprah Winfrey.

“Angelina reportedly had serious concerns over Oprah’s girls school as well as Oprah’s connection to Hollywood predators,” they add.

The basis of the claim is a 12-second clip of Jolie talking to an interviewer.

“But to believe that you can take them as property and sexually assault them and sell them and …” she trails off. “It’s something from the dark ages. It is just so horrific, but it’s not isolated to Nigeria.”

The video later refers to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

But does the clip really show Jolie expressing her horror at girls from Winfrey’s school being taken “as property”, sexually assaulted and sold?

Oprah’s leadership academy established after promise to Mandela

The first sign that Jolie is not talking about Winfrey is that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls is in South Africa, not the West African country of Nigeria.

It was set up in 2007 after former South African president Nelson Mandela made Winfrey promise, in 2002, to contribute to education in the country.

The boarding school, in Gauteng province, offers a high school education for girls from grades 8 to 12. There is no evidence that any of these girls have been stolen, sexually assaulted or sold.

So what was Jolie talking about?

Boko Haram abducts 276 girls from school in Chibok

Africa Check took screenshots of frames from the clip and ran them through a Google reverse image search. This led us to a nearly six-minute BBC interview with Jolie uploaded on YouTube on 20 May 2014.

The 12-second clip used in the TikTok video starts at the 3:53 minute mark. Jolie is not talking about Winfrey.

Instead, she responds to a question about the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping in Nigeria a month before the interview.

In April 2014, Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 girls from a high school in Chibok, a town in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno. Over the years 178 have reportedly managed to return home, but 98 are still being held captive.

In the interview, Jolie is asked:

At the moment, it’s a very important subject, given what’s happened in Nigeria, this extraordinary story of these children missing. I know you’ve talked about it, but how does one prevent that happening, do you think? 

This is her full response:

I think part of the reason that this happens is these men believe that they can get away with it, because in the past they have. I think that they see women as disposable to them. That they can just – that they don’t believe they have a right to education, is a horror. But to believe that you can take them as property and sexually assault them and sell them and … It’s something from the dark ages. It is just so horrific but it’s not isolated to Nigeria.

The actor is not exposing “Oprah’s creepy girls school” somewhere in Africa.