BACOLOD CITY, Philippines - — A female public school teacher here was sentenced to six years of imprisonment after the court found her guilty of child abuse for maltreating her male student eight years ago.
The mathematics teacher, whose name and school were withheld as the case involves a minor, was also sentenced to a six-month suspension after the parents of the student also filed at the DepEd administrative charges for grave misconduct against her.
Court records said the complainant, then 9 years old, told the court that about 4 p.m. on February 17, 2005, the teacher asked him and his two classmates to stay in their classroom for a remedial class in Mathematics, in preparation for the Regional Achievement Examination.
He said the teacher asked him to solve a math problem and because he was short, he pulled a chair and stood on it to answer the problem on the board. However, when he failed to solve the problem, he said the teacher pulled him by the hair, and banged his head on the blackboard.
He added that the teacher kicked him in the back of his knee, causing him to topple over the chair he was standing on.
The complainant’s parents learned what happened to him when he arrived home crying and with a swelling forehead.
In her defense, the teacher said she only shouted at the student, and that he fell from the chair while he was solving the math problem.
Bacolod Regional Trial Court Branch 41 Judge Ray Alan Drilon, in a decision announced Tuesday, however said the teacher’s claim that she only shouted at the complainant and the injuries suffered by the pupil could have been caused by his unexplained fall from the chair, is too farfetched in the light of the unassailable evidence presented by the prosecution.
The statements made by the complainant were consistent and there was no evidence that the child made up stories to falsely charge his teacher, Drilon added. (FREEMAN)