Barcelona University suspends a teacher 18 months for maintaining relationships with a student
The University of Barcelona (UB) has suspended a literature teacher for 18 months for 18 months for having had relations with at least one of their students, among other facts. In a resolution signed by the rector, the center attributes a “very serious offense” for having taken advantage of his status as a teacher to “obtain an improper benefit,” sources known to the case have informed this newspaper.
The teacher has been suspended in a precautionary way since September 2023, after the student filed a complaint for sexual harassment before the UB equality unit. At the same time, the student went to the Mossos and justice, which dismissed up to twice the case by considering that it was a consented relationship.
The last file was issued last March, when the Provincial Court of Barcelona pointed out in a car, to which Eldiario.es had access, which in none of the meetings there was “lack of consent” or the use of “violence, intimidation or abuse of a situation of superiority or vulnerability” regarding the complainant.
The audience car, however, maintained the door open to an administrative sanction to remember that the “criteria on the existence of sexual harassment situations” that can collect protocols in companies, educational centers or administrations “do not have to be coincident with those that report the criminal jurisdiction.”
After the judicial setback, the student denounced her case with a statement published on social networks. “I want to report approaches, comments out of tone, insinuations, harassment and touching in her office,” the student wrote. “Insistence of sexual demands and various intimidation to the point of forcing me, (closing the windows and the door and making sure that there was no one nearby) to have sex on three different occasions,” he said.
The teacher responded with another statement in which he claimed to be a victim of a “persecution” and a “discredit campaign, calumnias, insults and threats” that made him feel “helplessness and helplessness” since he was accused of crimes that according to justice had not committed.
After the presentation of the internal complaint to the UB, there were seven more students who also joined the procedure and said they had suffered similar events. Two of these alleged victims could not be part of the process because the facts had already prescribed, the same sources say.
After 10 months of instruction in which messages, mails and the story of more than 15 testimonies (10 of them contributed by the sanctioned professor) have been analyzed, the university has considered that the professor committed the aforementioned very serious offense and has considered it in the resolution signed by the rector, Joan Guàrdia, delivered last week and that it is still appealable by the teacher.
The sources consulted indicate that the change in the ethical code implemented by the University last March, when it went on to consider “malpractice” sexual relations between teachers and students, has facilitated the adoption of a measure of this draft.
The change in the Ethical Code came a few months after Eldiario.es revealed in an investigation the messages that the then Vice Chancellor of the Center, Jordi Matas, sent to a student who was going to tutoring the final work of grade, years before accessing the position of Vicerrector. Matas resigned from his position after a few days of the publication of the report to “be able to undertake without institutional limitations” legal actions against eldiario.es.
