Child abuse accusations in school plunge after teachers' protests

This file photo shows an altar paying tribute to the 23-year-old teacher at Seoi Elementary School in Seoul who died in an apparent suicide after being bombarded by complaints from students' parents. (Yonhap)

In the months after the mistreatment of teachers and the protection of their rights became a major social issue in the wake of the suicides of several teachers here, the number of child abuse accusations filed against school staff drastically dropped from before, government data showed Thursday.

According to the Ministry of Education on Thursday, there have been 150 cases in which teachers were accused of child abuse in the three months following Sept. 25. That was when the ministry mandated regional educational offices to be involved in investigations of child abuse cases involving teachers, in order to ensure that parent complaints not be used to harass teachers.

The number of yearly child abuse cases involving teachers on average is around 1,700, which would theoretically translate to about 425 in a three-month period, according to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

"The Welfare Ministry's data were actual child abuse cases," an Education Ministry official said, explaining that the actual number of accusations in an average year would have been much higher than the aforementioned 1,700.

The government measure to involve educational offices was implemented after a string of reports of teachers being bombarded with complaints from parents over treatment of their children, such as cases of filing child abuse complaints with little or no evidence.

The incident that ignited the mistreatment and rights of teachers as a social issue occurred in Seoul Seoi Elementary School in Seocho-gu, Seoul in July last year, when a teacher committed a suicide due to the stress of a barrage of parent complaints, which were suspected to be malicious in nature. Police wrapped up the investigation in November, saying it found no evidence to press criminal charges on those involved, but the incident touched off weeks of protests nationwide from teachers about their mistreatment.

In August, a teacher at a Daejeon-based elementary school was found dead in an apparent suicide. He had been suffering from stress due to parent complaints, including a 2019 accusation of child abuse, which he was found to be innocent of after a yearlong investigation.

Other measures to protect teachers' rights include opening a hotline for teachers to report violations, law revisions to define "malicious complaints" as well as stating that they are an act deterring educational activities, and imposing fines and other punitive actions on parents accused of such violations. The measures are to be implemented in March.

By Yoon Min-sik(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)