A Court of La Seu d’Urgell has accepted for processing the complaint filed by a teacher against the director of a school in Bellver de Cerdanya, whom she accuses of slander and prevarication for having publicly stated that “she washed her mouth with soap” two students after obscene comments by those two schoolchildren against one of their classmates. The teacher assures in this complaint that the issue did not go beyond the verbalization of that phrase, to draw the attention of those students and that the threat never materialized.
The teacher – who has put the case in the hands of the Sammos Legal firm – maintains that “the distorted disclosure of these facts has caused very detrimental effects on her health, reputation and self-esteem.”
The complaint is extended to the partner of another teacher at that school, whom the teacher accuses of having contributed to spreading that news, according to her, “false”, which was echoed by many media outlets. She accuses that man of inciting the crime of prevarication and slander. The complaint also points to the Generalitat of Catalonia as the civil party responsible for the alleged crime of prevarication.
Luis López, partner at Sammos Legal, remembers that the events occurred “when the complainant was teaching English classes at school and one of the students complained about an obscene comment from a classmate.” He adds that that girl told the teacher: “l’A. m’ha dit que el K. emfica la p…. movie cul”. (A. has told me that K. will shove the p… up my ass)”.
Upon learning of this fact, the teacher, her lawyer claims, exclaimed to that student: “I can’t believe it, you should wash your mouth with soap,” after which she demanded that he publicly apologize to the girl. That schoolgirl later accused another classmate of having humored the first. The teacher said to that second student: “Well, you should also wash your mouth with soap.”
In a first school meeting, the teacher maintains, the parents of those two children “understood the seriousness of their children’s comment and accepted the teacher’s verbal reprimand as normal.”
The thing could have stopped there, but everything was precipitated, it is related in that complaint, when the school director and the partner of one of the teachers “launched the hoax that the teacher had really forced the children to wash their mouths.” with soap, when that teacher simply used a clichéd phrase to try to teach the students that the use of foul language was not tolerable and to make it clear to them that what had happened was a verbal sexual assault on a classmate,” says the lawyer. .
Luis López emphasizes that “the teacher’s situation, after this episode, is very painful due to the damage suffered by the disclosure of the hoax.” And here the setting is especially important: a municipality with less than 3,000 inhabitants, “which has caused the effects of that information to be harder for the teacher, due to the concept that her neighbors now have of her.”
And everything is aggravated, that lawyer concludes, “because my client is dedicated to teaching, something that imposes higher standards of correct behavior on her.” The case is now in the hands of the judge, who has accepted the complaint for processing and will call those involved in this story to testify.
