Five families affected by records of girls at Boadilla school denounce center’s failure to suspend teacher under investigation | Madrid
Five of the eight families whose daughters, aged between 11 and 12, appear in the records made at the Virgen de Europa private school, in Boadilla del Monte, assure that the center did not suspend the teacher investigated by the Civil Guard when was arrested in June, according to sources close to the relatives. These fathers and mothers of the affected students also issued a statement, distributed by the Efe agency, assuring that the court of instructions number 5 of Móstoles, which is dealing with the case, took the measure to remove investigations of the school base and not the school what they blame for not respecting their demands. In addition, sources from the Civil Guard told the SER chain that they found 30 hard drives in the house of this teacher, some of them hidden in the walls of the house and the rest pierced to prevent access to their contents.
The teacher, with initials A.M. and brother of the center’s director, has been charged with possession of child pornography and was arrested last June for possessing hidden-camera photos of at least a dozen sixth-grade girls at the school while they were changing clothes. The minors used the audio-visual room where this teacher usually worked because there were problems with the heating of the girls’ locker rooms, according to research sources, who also explained that the images found corresponded to students from 10 years ago, those who identified themselves with the center uniform.
After appearing before the judge, the teacher was released temporarily with remand measures: confiscation of passport, obligation to appear in court and remand from the center. Virgen de Europa management notified parents of the incident by email and, according to their version, the teacher has been “suspended and removed from the center indefinitely” for 24 hours, according to what a school spokesman defended on Monday.
But the five affected families say the teacher “continues to have administrative responsibilities at the school” and that the center “has not responded to any of their requests” in recent months. That teacher happens to be the principal’s brother, and the two run, along with two other brothers, the management of the center that his mother founded, sources in the investigation said.
In June, when the Civil Guard informed the center about the recordings found, the parents asked the management for an action protocol to prevent the events from happening again. They also demanded the resignation of director Enrique Maestu as also responsible for the “apparent existing conflict of interest” as his brother is the main one under investigation. Maestu has not left the school’s leadership, although this Monday he resigned as president of Cicae (Associations of Private and Independent Schools), one of Spain’s private education employers.
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Two other requests from the families were that a “succession project that compromises the continuity of the learning project for five to ten years without its current leaders” be presented and that the remaining families be notified of what happened in a “succession” internal and brief ” so that all parents know the seriousness of what happened in this educational center. The five families reiterate that none of these demands have been met and regret that the Parents’ Association (PAA) has decided to support the center and the principal, “in total confrontation” with their demands. For this reason, according to sources related to these families, some of them have taken their children out of the center. “They are trying to discourage the affected families and leave it as an anecdote to the director’s brother,” these sources said. “That’s why some of them have filed lawsuits and removed their children.
The Madrid command, which has not officially confirmed the discovery of the new files, acknowledged on Monday that in late June agents took the teacher’s computer from the school, which contained several storage devices. There are so many seized files – “an arsenal”, according to judicial sources – that the Civil Guard judicial police have not yet been able to analyze them all. They set a deadline of December to consider them. For now, agents are trying to find out if the videos were distributed on pedophile networks and find clues that will allow them to find out who recorded the images. Although there are currently only eight families who have filed a complaint, the court reserves the possibility that future victims who do not yet know they are on the record may join as the investigation progresses.
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