Mistreatment at school, damage also to children who attend

Even children who were not directly mistreated and who witnessed the teachers' violence against their classmates have the right to compensation. The Court of Cassation thus rejected the appeal by two 'manesque' teachers, who wanted the children to be slapped, at most, as abuse of means of correction and not as mistreatment, while it upheld that of a father, civil plaintiff as his daughter's guardian, to whom the Court of Appeal had denied compensation as a mere spectator. An incomprehensible no given that the territorial court had recognised it for other classmates of the minor, not directly involved in the violence.

For the court of merit, however, there was no proof that the child had even witnessed the physical and psychological ill-treatment. The Court of Cassation upheld the appeal on this point, on the assumption that the child was placed in the same classes as the children who had been awarded damages and therefore shared the same teachers. The judges apply the rule of the Red Code, relating to witnessing violence, specifying that Law 69 of 2019 did no more than transpose a path already marked out by the jurisprudence of legitimacy, which prior to the novel had affirmed the right to reimbursement for minors who witness violence to the detriment of third parties.

The Court's verdict is the latest step in a case that started with awhatsapp group of mothers issuing an alert about a slap given by the two defendants to a child. An accusation that was later confirmed by videos taken inside the classroom. The Court of Cassation strongly rejected the argument of abuse of means of correction, branding the very term "correction" as archaic when referring to education. In any case, the less serious offence of abuse of the means of correction can be committed when the 'means' are lawful. Whereas violence, even if exercised in a mild form, lawful is never.