The ruling, dated October 8 and reviewed today, granted the appeal filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP), overturning the previous judgment and sentencing the defendant to a single sentence of one year in prison, suspended, and a fine of 2,400 euros.
The 65-year-old teacher had been sentenced in March by the Santa Maria da Feira court to a single penalty of 350 days of a fine at a daily rate of eight euros, for seven crimes of minor physical assault and four crimes of insult.
The defendant was also acquitted of five charges of false accusation, related to another case involving a complaint lodged with the PSP against the parents of several students who accused her of assaulting their children.
Dissatisfied with the decision, the MP appealed to the Court of Appeal, which reclassified the crimes of physical assault from minor to aggravated, sentencing the defendant to five months in prison for each crime.
The teacher was also convicted of five crimes of false accusation, sentenced to 130 days of a fine at a daily rate of eight euros for each crime.
The TRP decided to maintain the penalties imposed in the first instance for the four crimes of insult, setting the new legal cumulation at a single suspended sentence of one year in prison over two years, with the requirement for the defendant to attend appropriate programs to prevent violent behavior, and 300 days of a fine at a daily rate of eight euros, totaling 2,400 euros.
The defendant will also have to pay 3,500 euros as compensation to the parents of five children for non-pecuniary damages resulting from the crime of false accusation, and five thousand euros to six of the minors who were assaulted, for non-pecuniary damages suffered.
During the trial, the defendant denied the assaults, stating that she never hit any child in her 40 years of service and said she treated her students as if they were her own children. “I often sat them on my lap. I gave them all the necessary support and never hit anyone,” she asserted.
Later, she admitted to “touches” with papers and a book on the children’s heads to get their attention when they were “a bit distracted”: “There’s a touch. There’s no hitting. I call attention like that. There’s no blood.”
The incidents occurred during the 2019/2020 school year when the defendant taught first-year students at primary school no. 3 in Anta, in the Espinho municipality, Aveiro district.
Among the minors were seven foreign students whom, according to the accusation, the defendant addressed multiple times, blaming foreigners for Portugal’s crisis and saying they should return to their own country.
The MP’s accusation also stated that the defendant assaulted these minors with slaps and blows to the head and called them “disabled and dumb” when they answered incorrectly.
In January 2020, the teacher was removed from teaching these minors following disciplinary proceedings initiated by the School Group, concluding that the defendant “violated functional norms, namely the duties of zeal and correction.”
As a result, the General Directorate of School Establishments applied a disciplinary suspension of 30 days, suspended for a year, with the teacher continuing to work in primary education until the MP’s accusation in August 2023.
