Kuwait: Student’s father gets 2 years in jail for assaulting teacher

Cairo: A Kuwaiti court has sentenced a man to two years in prison on charges of assaulting a teacher at his son’s school, according to a medical report.

The assault followed an unspecified dispute between them, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Qabas reported.

Investigations revealed that the defendant had assaulted several teachers at a high school for boys. All the victims, except one teacher, had abandoned their complaints against him. The report did not say when the incident happened or how many teachers were assaulted.

In recent months, Kuwaiti courts have heard several cases of school violence.

Last year, Kuwaiti teachers accused brothers of a student of having attacked them. The incident happened inside a school allegedly after the student had been requested to notify his parents to come to school due to his misbehaviour and absenteeism, one victim said.

The teacher added in media remarks that the student instead notified his brothers, who came to the school and purportedly verbally and physically assaulted several employees there.

In a separate case, a Kuwaiti court last February ordered a teacher to pay KD5,001 ($16,219) in preliminary damages to the parents of a schoolboy after convicting him of hitting the child.

The damages were ordered as compensation for the child due to the moral and physical harm he had suffered after the teacher working for an elementary school, had slapped him in the face and insulted him, a media report has said.

The court ruling proved the defendant’s assault on and threats against the child, causing him “grave harm and extreme grief,” the boy’s lawyer told Kuwaiti newspaper Al Anba.

He added that the teacher’s responsibility for the unlawful act was also proven.

Corporal punishment in schools is forbidden in Kuwait.