Former pupil sues school over supervision after corridor attack

A FORMER pupil has sued a school for not providing adequate supervision after he was beaten up on the way to class.

John Sweeney of Glenville, Co Cork, brought the case against Glenville National School following an incident on October 25, 1995, when he was 11 years old.

Mr Sweeney, now 18, told Cork Circuit Court yesterday: “The bell rang for everyone to go back to class after the 11 o’clock break. We all went into our corridor and I was walking down towards my classroom. I remember being grabbed from behind and hit a few times. I blacked out. My hands started freezing. I remember someone went looking for a teacher.”

A life-long asthma sufferer, John Sweeney was taken home where he struggled to catch his breath. He was taken to Cork University Hospital and did not return to school for three weeks.

Judge Patricia Ryan asked Mr Sweeney what he felt the teachers should have done to stop the attack. “I think the supervision should have been better. Everyone had to go back to classes themselves and anything could happen. The teachers might not come back for 30 seconds or five minutes,” he said.

His mother said her son was traumatised by the attack. “I thought he was going to die. He was very traumatised for a long time.”

Principal of the school at the time, Bartholomew Dunlea, who retired in 1996, said he was supervising the yard that day. He said there were 98 pupils and four teachers in the school and supervision duties were rotated between the teachers.

He recalled getting a phone call as he came in from the yard. He took the call on the phone in the corridor further down from where the incident happened. He said this area was also supervised on a daily basis.

After a short recess, the case was struck out after the two sides reached a confidential agreement.

A spokesman for the Irish National Teachers Organisation said the case was unlikely to have implications for other schools. But he said it raised issues about the workload of teaching principals. “The case clearly shows the system is at fault when a principal is expected to be in two places at one time.”