A SYSTEMATIC bullying campaign against a Santander schoolboy has resulted in a court awarding him €4,000 in compensation.
Four children and their parents have been found liable as well as the school for not doing enough to stop the boy being physically assaulted and suffering mental trauma.
The financial penalty will also be shared between them.
The bullies will have to undertake ‘socio-educational’ tasks for 10 months after being convicted of a crime against moral integrity.
These will be aimed at improving their social skills and learning to show better empathy towards other people.
The court ruled that the bullies all acted together ‘continuously and practically daily’ to undermined the victim through a series of acts that practically covered the school year between September 2021 and April 2022.
Every time they were with the boy, the court said ‘they called him a dwarf, short, faggot and gay,’ with the purpose of ‘annoying’ him and without ‘knowing his sexual orientation’.
In addition, ‘they constantly beat him, shoved him and pushed him every them they saw him’, both in the classrooms and in the school’s sports areas.
In April 2022, the boy’s mother reported what was going on to the school which changed his class, but despite that, the bullying continued.
Later that month, the bullies ‘hit him hard in the face and grabbed him by the arms and legs when he was in the sports stands of the school-lifting him and then letting him fall heavily on the ground, taking away a shoe which they then kicked around like a football’.
The boy was taken by his mother to the Valdecilla Hospital, where no physical injuries were found, but due to his emotional suffering, he was referred to a psychiatrist.
All this added up to a crime against moral integrity with lawyers acting for the bullies agreeing to their guilt and accepting the punishment demanded by the prosecutor.
No information has been given as to whether the perpetrators have actually been expelled from the school.
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