As Berlin braces itself for 35-degree days this week, the summer break cannot come soon enough for the capital’s schoolchildren and teachers who are stuck in their classrooms for another month.
Nowhere more than the Carl Bolle primary school. Temperatures have been rising steadily here after five months of revelations that, by comparison, make television’s gritty Grange Hill look like Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers.
Last February Oziel Inácio-Stech, a 43-year-old Brazilian-born former teacher, announced he was suing the school and the local educational authority. He alleged they failed to support him when he subjected to a sustained campaign of homophobic bullying led by a group of pupils from mostly Muslim families.
When Inácio-Stech’s sexuality became known in the school, fifth-class pupils allegedly mocked him variously as a “disgusting” person who was going to hell. Others, he said, called him a “moral disgrace” to a school where, as one student reportedly said, “Islam is the boss”.
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Inácio-Stech left the school last September, citing concerns over his mental and physical health. Rather than go quietly, however, he has taken a lawyer to challenge what he sees as lax school controls, a powerless school board and, most critically, a disinterested state education minister.
Supercharging the slow-burning story in recent days, however, are claims by Inácio-Stech that he was the subject of a complaint by a former colleague that he was “too close” to some of the primary school students.
The unnamed woman teacher reported him after seeing him sitting on cushions alongside two students, watching a smartphone video.
After failed mediation attempts, Inácio-Stech left the school and launched legal action claiming at least two breaches of Berlin’s anti-discrimination code. First: for allegedly failing to act on his complaints of homophobic discrimination. Second: its quick action in responding to the woman teacher’s concerns about a homosexual teacher’s physical proximity to students.
The latter complaint appears to have evaporated: the two students in question later revoked their testimony of feeling “uncomfortable” around Inácio-Stech. In documents seen by public broadcaster RBB, they said they were “persuaded” by the unnamed teacher to make their remarks.
Though a criminal complaint against Inácio-Stech has been dropped, the relevant Berlin school authority has yet to fully rehabilitate him. Unable to teach elsewhere as a result, Inácio-Stech went public with his case last February – infuriating Berlin’s school authorities even further.
After five months of revelations but no progress, tensions have ramped up further over claims that the woman who filed the complaint against Inácio-Stech was a regular drug user during work hours.
Investigations by two Berlin newspapers, a national newspaper and even a public broadcaster indicate the concerns about this woman teacher were shared by at least six other colleagues at the school.
They claim she had cocaine and ecstasy delivered to the school, consumed during school hours and, at times, had “wide-open eyes”.
Several teachers say they reported their concerns about the teacher to the school director, with no action taken. The Tagesspiegel newspaper reported at the weekend that the teacher in question was still working at the school and she declined to confirm or deny the drug allegations it put to her.
The scandal has reached the highest political level in Berlin state politics: the capital’s education senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch.
Three weeks ago she accused opposition politicians of “populism” over the case and insisted there were “discrepancies” between the teacher’s public claims of bullying by students and information in his personnel file.
On Monday several opposition politicians were granted access to the file, bringing the scandal back to its roots.
The personnel file appears to confirm the main details of the teacher’s original complaint and contains a protocol of a meeting between him and the school personnel officer.
The latter appears to acknowledge tacitly the problem of homophobia, noting the “above-average number of children from traditional parental homes” – a nod to the large number of families with Turkish and Arab roots – which could “possibly complicate the acceptance of diversity”.
Blaming the victim for school homophobia is not uncommon in Germany, according to the Federal Association of Queer Education. It said that “queer-hostile attitudes are now more vehement in the context of school than a few years ago”.
A survey by a Berlin state body for queer education issues found that 82 per cent of non-heterosexual adolescents experienced discrimination at school while 52 per cent hid their identity.
Though the group said “queer hostility has reached a new high” in Berlin schools, the capital’s city-state government has cut the group’s budget by a third.
