A teacher who was secretly filmed hitting a three-year-old girl has been taken into police custody after a second parent brought forward a complaint.
The unidentified female teacher drew outrage after she was seen in harrowing footage standing over a screaming infant before hitting her in the back and causing her to fall to the ground on the first day of term in a Paris nursery.
It was alleged that she had sprayed a liquid into the child’s face, leaving her ‘extremely traumatised’, said lawyer Vanessa Edberg who is acting on behalf of the parents.
French police said today the teacher was summoned and placed in custody after another parent spoke out, claiming she had also slapped her infant son ‘hard’ in 2012 in a complaint filed on Friday.
The alleged assault happened last Tuesday, on the first day of the academic year at the Frères-Voisins school in Paris
It is also alleged that the teacher grabbed a small bottle and ‘sprayed an unidentified product on her face’
Djankinba Bangoura told BFMTV her son, now 16, was slapped by the same teacher in 2012
The teacher was shown in video filmed last Tuesday attacking a young schoolgirl as she cried in the classroom.
The footage sparked national outcry, and the teacher was promptly suspended for four months and ‘replaced’.
Djankinba Bangoura, a mother of three boys who attend the same school, brought a second complaint against the teacher after the video went viral.
She appeared on French news channel BFMTV and recalled how her son, now 16, received a ‘big slap’ from the teacher when he started nursery school in 2012.
He would have been around the age of four at the time.
‘When he started nursery school, he was happy because he was very alert,’ she said.
‘But after six months, after the school holidays, I asked him if he was happy to go back to school.
‘He told me “yes to meet up with friends, but not the teacher”.’
She said her son showed her how he had been ‘slapped hard’ by his teacher.
Ms Bangoura said she went to confront the teacher and spoke to the headmistress, but said the school stood behind the teacher at the time, she said on BFMTV.
She said the child ‘may have seen it in a book’ and was ‘making it up’.
Ms Bangoura claimed she had reported the incident to the rectorate, and that an investigation was set up.
The teacher was claimed to be ‘very surprised’ and ‘denied’ the allegations at the time.
Her lawyer now notes there was ‘no criminal complaint’ and the report ‘did not lead to anything’.
‘There was no internal administrative investigation’ either, he acknowledged.
Ms Bangoura said it ‘resonated’ with her when the same teacher was filmed attacking a three-year-old girl in her class at the start of September.
‘It was my eldest son, the one who was hit, who showed me the video that evening,’ she said, adding that he still thinks about the time he was allegedly attacked.
The teacher was seen assaulting a three-year-old girl on the first day of the academic year at the Frères-Voisins school in Paris’ 15th arrondissement.
Ms Edberg, who posted the film on X, said on Tuesday: ‘It wasn’t a spanking. She hit her on the back. What happened is extremely serious.’
She said the incident was secretely recorded by another child’s mother, who was in the classroom for the whole of the day.
The girl’s father told Le Parisien: ‘My daughter had been hit before, that’s why she was having a crisis and the mother who was there decided to film discreetly.’
After receiving the blow, the little girl was sent to the corner and continued to scream ‘Mummy!’.
After the alleged spraying of liquid, the teacher can be heard saying: ‘There, does that feel good there?’
An unidentified female teacher can be seen standing over the screaming and crying infant before hitting her on the back, and causing her to fall to the floor
The school (pictured) is in Paris’s 15th arrondissement
The teacher also tells the girl: ‘You’ll see, your dad will come back when I tell him.’
The parents did not know about the video to begin with, but the woman who shot it handed it over after two days.
We went straight to file a complaint,’ said the father, who said his son had also been ‘pushed by this teacher’ when he was at the school two years ago.
The accused teacher says she ‘deeply regrets’ her actions, according to BFMTV.
She is expected to soon be interviewed about her conduct.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
