Derek Achong

The State is set to pay com­pen­sa­tion to a stu­dent of a sec­ondary school in east Trinidad, who was slapped by a teacher af­ter he spread a ru­mour that the teacher had been caught kiss­ing a fe­male stu­dent. 

The as­sault and bat­tery law­suit brought by the stu­dent’s moth­er on his be­half was set to go on tri­al be­fore High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day morn­ing. How­ev­er, at the start of the hear­ing, at­tor­neys for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­di­cat­ed that it would ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty on be­half of the State and teacher, who, like the stu­dent, can­not be named due to the na­ture of the al­le­ga­tions. 

At­tor­ney Ibo Jones, who rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice, in­di­cat­ed that as he on­ly got ap­proval to set­tle the case on the eve of the tri­al, he would have to con­tin­ue ne­go­ti­a­tions with the child’s lawyer, Elvin Cud­joe, to de­ter­mine rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion for what tran­spired. 

Re­spond­ing to the de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad praised Jones for his han­dling of the case, as he re­peat­ed­ly point­ed out that his de­ci­sion was like­ly to be the same at the end of the tri­al.

“I was very pleased with the po­si­tion that the state adopt­ed be­cause it was the po­si­tion that the court would be in­clined to adopt based on the un­con­test­ed ev­i­dence that is be­fore it,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings in the case, the in­ci­dent was al­leged to have oc­curred at the school’s com­pound in June 2019, while the stu­dent was in Form Two. 

The stu­dent claimed that he was in the process of com­plet­ing an end of term ex­am­i­na­tion when a teacher, who was in­vig­i­lat­ing, asked him and his class­mates to write down if they had is­sues with the ex­am or the sub­ject teacher on a sheet of pa­per. 

The stu­dent ad­mit­ted that he wrote down the ru­mour of the al­leged in­ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween the teacher and a stu­dent, as he felt that some­one in au­thor­i­ty need­ed to know. 

A class­mate in­formed the teacher of what the stu­dent wrote and af­ter a brief con­ver­sa­tion, he (the stu­dent) was sent to the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice. 

While at the of­fice, the stu­dent was con­front­ed by the teacher, who was ap­par­ent­ly in­formed of what tran­spired by his col­league. 

The teacher de­mand­ed that the stu­dent dis­close any ev­i­dence to but­tress his al­le­ga­tion and then pro­ceed­ed to slap him twice. 

“This act of vi­o­lence was car­ried out in full view of oth­er stu­dents who were in that area at the time, which made me feel very ashamed and hurt,” the stu­dent said. 

Al­though the prin­ci­pal and teacher both apol­o­gised for what tran­spired to the child and his moth­er, they still re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the po­lice and filed the law­suit. 

The AG’s Of­fice did not file any wit­ness state­ments to chal­lenge the stu­dent’s claims as, in its de­fence, it ad­mit­ted that the teacher “lost con­trol of him­self” af­ter the stu­dent was ag­gres­sive and dis­re­spect­ful to him dur­ing their brief in­ter­ac­tion. 

It al­so not­ed that hav­ing recog­nised that he was wrong, the teacher at­tempt­ed to rec­ti­fy his trans­gres­sion by call­ing the stu­dent’s moth­er and telling her what tran­spired. 

Al­though Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was no longer re­quired to de­ter­mine the fac­tu­al and le­gal is­sues in the case, he still went on to de­liv­er com­ments on it, as he not­ed it raised im­por­tant is­sues on cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that while the Chil­dren’s Act al­lowed par­ents, guardians and teach­ers to ad­min­is­ter rea­son­able dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures on chil­dren, it pre­cludes cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment at schools. 

“The court, notwith­stand­ing the cur­rent alarm­ing lev­els of dys­func­tion in the so­ci­ety gen­er­al­ly, would not be dis­suad­ed and must al­ways ap­ply the law as it is out­lined and in this Re­pub­lic, cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment with­in our school sys­tem is not per­mis­si­ble un­der the law,” he said. 

“How­ev­er pro­voked the sec­ond de­fen­dant as a teacher may have felt, he as the pro­fes­sion­al adult ought not to have al­lowed him­self to lose his self-con­trol and re­act in the man­ner in which he did. Ul­ti­mate­ly, chil­dren, re­gard­less of their age, en­joy the same fun­da­men­tal rights as adults,” he added. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that while cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment was per­mit­ted in the past, its neg­a­tive im­pact is now ac­cept­ed. 

“Licks and vi­o­lence, in the tra­di­tion­al forms that we as a so­ci­ety ac­knowl­edged as a means of cor­rec­tive dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures, re­al­ly has to be cur­tailed. The in­escapable re­al­i­ty is that the use of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment can af­fect young peo­ple in an emo­tive and psy­cho­log­i­cal lev­el and could lead ul­ti­mate­ly to un­healthy lifestyle choic­es and be­hav­iour,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad called on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing a “school vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion and re­sponse plan” which could be used by teach­ers and school ad­min­is­tra­tors to legal­ly and safe­ly dis­ci­pline delin­quent stu­dents. 

He al­so called for the min­istry to es­tab­lish sup­port sys­tems for teach­ers to cope with the “unique” chal­lenges of the jobs and with their own con­flict res­o­lu­tion is­sues. 

The com­pen­sa­tion for the stu­dent is to be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter if the par­ties fail to come to an agree­ment.

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