Student commits suicide, headmaster suspended and action taken against two teachers
The decision of the Ministry of Education after the investigation into the death of Paolo Mendico, the boy from the 'Pacinotti' school in Fondi who was bullied
In the wake of the suicide of Paolo Mendico, the 14-year-old student whose diaries revealed that he felt humiliated by his own teachers, measures have been taken against the principal and two teachers, the vice-principal and the head of the Santi Cosma e Damiano branch of the Pacinotti High School in Fondi, where the boy who took his own life a few hours before the start of the school year, attended.
The statement of objections was sent to the headmistress before the start of the inspection visit, a few hours after the fact, while the two teachers received it in October, after the inspection.
The headmistress has been given three days' suspension while Paolo's writings, as reported by Il Messaggero, are being analysed word by word by a graphologist psychologist commissioned by the family to reconstruct the boy's state of mind and the bullying episodes he suffered before his extreme gesture. The suspension of Gina Antonetti, headmistress of the Iti 'Pacinotti' school in Fondi, was ordered at the end of a disciplinary procedure followed by inspectors sent by the Ministry of Education.
According to the Flc CGIL, the decision confirms 'how well-founded were the fears that the entire affair had been mishandled by the ministry'. Paolo's brother, Ivan Roberto, speaks of a case against the school manager that is certainly not enough, and amounts to 'a content. It seems to me to be a rather unbalanced decision: three days is as if she had been £recalled to the blackboard'. We go ahead, but it seems a bit too little,' he says. "On the one hand there is a person who is no longer there, on the other a suspension: is human life no longer worth anything?"
Meanwhile, the boy's diaries are the focus of in-depth analysis. The forensic graphologist Marisa Aloia, already a consultant in famous cases such as the Novi Ligure murder, is examining each page, drawing a real psychological profile of Paolo. 'In one of the pages analysed,' Aloia explained, 'Paolo writes in a fragmentary manner, a disturbed state of mind is evident. He recounts an episode related to the fact that he had been sent back in mathematics and appears very angry with the teacher because one of his classmates, one of the alleged bullies, had instead been promoted despite the fact that his performance was not good'.
