Commented case 01 of 6 · illustrative
The harassment that was stopped in time
An illustrative, composite case: no fact, person or school in this account is real. A second-year secondary student is subjected to sustained mockery and isolation over three weeks. The case follows, step by step, what the teacher, the Equipo de Gestión (the school management team) and Orientación y Psicología (the guidance and psychology service) did to stop it without humiliating anyone, and it shows how the MINERD coexistence route and the criminal protection against harassment reinforce each other when the school acts early and in writing.
Step by step
What happened
Week one: the small signal
The social studies teacher at an urban public secondary school notices that a second-year student has been sitting alone for days. When she forms teams, nobody picks him. In the corridor she hears the nickname: two words, said in passing, with laughter around it. That same afternoon she writes six lines in her follow-up notebook: what she observed, where, at what time, who was there. She accuses no one. She records.
Week two: the pattern
The nickname turns up in the classroom. A classmate moves the student’s seat while he is in the toilets. The teacher applies what corresponds to a repeated minor breach: dialogue, private reprimand, communication with the families Art. 17Ordenanza 05-2023 Art. 18Ordenanza 05-2023. And she does something more: she hands the written record to the Equipo de Gestión. The coordinator notices that this same student has four absences this month.
The Equipo de Gestión reframes the situation. These are no longer isolated incidents: there is repetition, an imbalance of power and an intention to harm. This is school bullying, defined as such by the Normas de Convivencia (the school-coexistence rules) Art. 5Ordenanza 05-2023 and classified as a very serious breach Art. 23Ordenanza 05-2023. Referral to Orientación y Psicología is mandatory.
Week three: the intervention
The guidance counsellor first sees the student who was targeted, alone and without hurry. She does not ask him to forgive or to “take no notice”. She asks him what he needs in order to feel safe tomorrow. He answers: “That they don’t leave me alone at break.”
That was the first agreement, and it was kept the following day. Then the school’s mediation team Art. 10Ordenanza 05-2023 works separately with the three students who were sustaining the behaviour and with their families. There is no confrontation between them, no public showdown, no forced apology in front of the class. There is written reflection, agreements with the family and weekly follow-up.
The school leadership adopts the proportionate disciplinary measure provided for very serious breaches, communicates it in writing to the students and their families within the deadline, having heard them first Art. 38Ordenanza 05-2023 Art. 39Ordenanza 05-2023, and enters it in the school’s Libro de Registro de Denuncias (the official complaints register) Art. 46Ordenanza 05-2023. Nobody is expelled: expulsion as a sanction is prohibited during the school year, except in situations that endanger the integrity and safety of the school community — which is not the case here — and always with a joint assessment by internal and external bodies Art. 27Ordenanza 05-2023.
Week eight
The student’s attendance is back to normal. The teacher still keeps her notebook. When a family asked months later what the school had done, the leadership was able to show dates, decisions and signatures. That is protection too.
The legal reading
What the law protects here
What the law protects here
The Criminal Code describes harassment in the words of the schoolyard: intimidating, insulting, engaging in mockery or verbal aggression, encouraging exclusion or isolation in the educational sphere in order to shame, humiliate, isolate or hinder a person’s normal development Art. 121Ley 74-25. Ley 44-26 removed the word “bullying” from the legal text, but the conduct described and the penalty are the same. When the victim is a child or adolescent, or when the harassment leads to suicide, the protection is raised severely Art. 122Ley 74-25. Repeated harassment has an aggravating circumstance of its own when the conduct “is carried out within a working, educational or training relationship of the victim” Art. 144Ley 74-25.
To be precise: those penalties are for adults. A student under thirteen is never criminally responsible Art. 223Ley 136-03; from the completed age of thirteen up to the day they turn 18, that day included, they answer before the criminal justice system for adolescents, whose declared purpose is to educate, not to punish Art. 225Ley 136-03 Art. 326Ley 136-03. The disciplinary plane was not leniency: the law itself declares criminal law a last resort and requires prevention and restorative justice to be given priority Art. 2Ley 74-25.
Which decisions were protective, and why
- Recording from day one. Six dated lines turned three isolated incidents into a recognisable pattern. Without a record there is no pattern, and without a pattern school bullying looks like “kids being kids”.
- Escalating along the internal route. Teacher, Equipo de Gestión, Orientación y Psicología: the order laid down Art. 23Ordenanza 05-2023 kept a single person from carrying the decision.
- Asking the student what he needed. His right to give his opinion and be heard expressly includes the school setting Art. 16Ley 136-03. The first effective measure came out of his own mouth.
- Mediating separately and sanctioning in writing. A prior hearing and a written record Art. 38Ordenanza 05-2023 Art. 39Ordenanza 05-2023 are due process and, at the same time, the school’s backing.
The tempting shortcuts and what they risked
A public showdown looks like swift justice; in practice it exposes the student who was targeted and deepens his isolation. An exemplary sanction in front of the class is prohibited Art. 26Ordenanza 05-2023 Art. 48Ley 136-03. And “waiting to see whether it happens again” would have let the absences run on, and those have a mandatory route of their own towards the family and CONANI (the National Council for Children and Adolescents) Art. 47Ley 136-03.
A transferable practice
Adopt the six-line notebook: what I saw, where, when, who, what I did, whom I told. One minute per incident: it turns an intuition into a defensible intervention.
Every article in this case
The team’s commentary
What this case teaches
Español — The Spanish version is the reference text — the legal verification described in the audit report was carried out on it.
Audit report — the independent legal review of this material, with the errors we found and corrected (page in Spanish).
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