Recently, a 12-year-old girl told her parents that she had been the victim of rape at school. One of her 14-year-old classmates allegedly attacked her in the toilet and forced her to perform oral sex on him, while verbally humiliating her. According to the teenager, the attacker told her he wanted “real sex” next time. “We know it’s word against word, but we know our daughter, we believe her,” confides the victim’s mother. She filed a complaint on Monday. The alleged rapist denies everything outright.
But what worries the parents most is the lack of reaction from the school. The management apparently did nothing to support the victim. The teachers were apparently not informed of the situation. “No one ever asked how our daughter was doing. The school doesn’t care about her.” The father and mother had no choice but to remove their child from the school: “The aggressor continues to go there as if nothing had happened. We also feel sorry for him, because he probably has big problems.”
“It goes without saying that the responsible rector immediately informed us of the incident,” assures Katrin Birchler, deputy director of the central services of the compulsory education department in Lucerne. The public prosecutor’s office confirms that it has received a complaint and specifies that “various investigations are underway.”
For her part, the victim is “doing better,” the mother assures. It is clear that such an act leaves after-effects: “We wanted to allow her to undergo therapy, but all the children’s psychiatric hospitals are saturated.” But the mother wants to remain optimistic: “She has found good friends at her new school.”
