Spanish teacher sentenced for pulling down student's pants as punishment

The provincial court of Vizcaya has sentenced a special education teacher from a public school in Barakaldo for pulling down the trousers and underwear of a seven-year-old student with special needs in front of his class as a form of punishment.

The events date back to November 2020. The child began exposing his genitals from under the canteen table. According to the court ruling, the teacher grabbed his arm, exposed him in front of everyone and, pulling down his trousers and underwear, snapped at him: "You want to show your ass? Well, you'll see, show it."

The boy's parents learnt what had happened through notes other classmates slipped into his backpack. The teacher's defence argued that the children had "reinterpreted the events through their imagination, that her record was impeccable and that she had used an appropriate pedagogical method of confrontation". They said that, for the children, pulling down their pants "is a game" that carries no malicious intent.

The judges rejected the argument. They concluded that, although for the children it was a game among equals, the intervention of a teacher changed the rules. As a special education professional, who had been in charge of the child since he was two years old, she "knew perfectly well that the child was vulnerable and that the action would provoke laughter and humiliate the little boy, undermining his integrity as a person".

In the initial trial, in August 2025, the Barakaldo court sentenced the teacher to four months in prison and a two-year ban on working for "abuse of her position".

The sentence was modified in April 2026, when the court partially upheld the teacher's appeal, determining that there had not been "abuse of position" in criminal terms. In other words, she "had not used her position to cause gratuitous harm".

What had occurred, the court determined, was an "erroneous and incompetent handling of a complex situation in the classroom". Therefore, she was ultimately convicted of a crime against moral integrity. The court upheld the four-month prison sentence, but lifted the ban on working in schools.

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