Man Jailed After Threatening to Kill Son’s Teacher in French Village
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A man has been given a six-month jail term in France after he threatened to kill a female primary school teacher who had disciplined his son at a village primary school.
He was sentenced following a fast-track hearing on Thursday, just six days after the incident took place in Le Fauga, a village with a population of around 2,600 located outside Toulouse in the southwest of the country.
The teacher has been granted official protection and has taken sick leave.
French Education Minister Edouard Geffray stated: "No teacher should be afraid to do their job. Attacking one of them is attacking the entire institution."
This case marks a significant application of a new decree implemented in July, which allows for student transfers to another school if there is a "significant risk" to staff safety or health from a family member.
The incident revisits dark memories in France of the 2018 beheading of Samuel Paty, a teacher in a Paris suburb, by a 18-year-old Chechen refugee.
In Le Fauga, teachers refrained from work on Monday following the previous Friday’s events. The threat was made after the father had been called into a meeting with the school, according to Toulouse education chief Karim Benmiloud.
According to the mayor of Le Fauga, Jean-Marie Puig, the man’s son had been disruptive in class and was sent to another class to calm down. The teacher in this class is alleged to have told the child to "stop acting like a little bully". She was then threatened by the father, who reportedly waited for her "outside the school and apparently threatened to cut off her head if she’d been a man."
The parent subsequently apologized but a judicial complaint was filed, leading him to appear before the prosecutor in Toulouse on Thursday afternoon.
It is anticipated that the boy and his younger sister will be transferred to another school outside Le Fauga.
