The situation
Your school is dealing with a serious complaint against a member of staff, already referred to the competent authorities. This morning the story broke on a local digital outlet, with half-told details and the name of the school. By mid-morning you have three requests on your desk: a journalist calling “to confirm the account and offer a right of reply”; a father from the class involved demanding to know “who has been reported and who the student is, because we have a right”; and the families’ WhatsApp group, where two names are already circulating — one of them, you know, is wrong. The teaching team is uneasy and someone suggests “clearing it all up at once so the rumours stop”. You have to decide what is said, who says it and what is protected.
◆ The comment on each course of action is generated by AI from this section’s legal framework, whose official texts are in Spanish. It orients you; always verify the article in the legal framework.
For whoever facilitates
Facilitator’s notes
Here the law assigns the roles clearly, and the school leadership gains composure by knowing them. The Código de Ética (the MINERD code of ethics) forbids teachers and school leaders from speaking to the press about cases of harassment, abuse, rape or incest: public communication belongs to the communications offices of the Regional or to Orientación y Psicología (the guidance and psychology service) (Art. 14, Orden Departamental 22/2023); complaints are confidential (Art. 40, Orden Departamental 22/2023) and, where there is a criminal dimension, the inquiry stays in the hands of the authorities while the school follows up (Art. 48, Orden Departamental 22/2023). The student is also covered by the criminal layer: disclosing the image or the data of a child or adolescent in a way that affects or stigmatises them is a criminal offence (Art. 186, Ley 74-25), and their identity is expressly protected (Art. 12, Ley 136-03 — the Code for the Protection of Children and Adolescents). Option a is the complete route. Option d can complement it if the Regional approves the text: reporting that a process exists without identifying anyone is legitimate transparency. Option b, however well intentioned, has the leadership do exactly what the rule forbids; option c turns confidentiality into a secret shared with thirty families — and the two names already circulating show what happens next. Protecting identities also protects the person wrongly named. Question for the group: what can we always say — process activated, authorities in charge, people protected — and what will we never say?
The team’s commentary
Two readings of this scenario
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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