Teacher attacked amid abuse allegations and viral social media posts

Beaten over rumors of alleged abuse, which were then spread in a viral Facebook post. The teacher of Catello Salvati at Ic 2 Panzini in Castellammare di Stabia, who was attacked and almost lynched last Thursday, November 14, by about thirty parents of students from her school, is called Veronica Sposito and is 37 years old: two mothers accuse her of not specified abuse against their children. She is calm: “No compromises will emerge from the analysis of my phone,” she says through her lawyer. Teacher beaten by parents, phones checked for compromising videos. School secured. But how and where did the matter originate? On a WhatsApp group called ‘La Saletta’, to which the teacher and six students belonged. According to the allegations, audio messages with explicit sexual innuendos were placed in that chat: five parents of students have filed a complaint and speak of intimidation. It is not clear whether these messages with sexual innuendos actually exist, whether they are false accusations, or whether the teacher’s profile has been hacked: there is an audio with a female voice, but there is no evidence that it is hers. The incident where the boy was caught smoking and subsequently suspended could be the motive for a case filed to ‘punish’ the teacher. Meanwhile, the newspaper Il Mattino writes today that the punitive expedition against the teacher was allegedly led by the wife of a boss of the D’Alessandro clan: the carabinieri of Castellammare are investigating the case. Veronica Sposito was reportedly the victim of a double attack: first taken and dragged outside by some women, and beaten the first time. This was followed by a lynching as the parents arrived and the carabinieri were about to enter. The 37-year-old suffered head trauma and had a prognosis of 30 days. Her father is in the hospital with a broken arm. According to Il Mattino, the ‘complaint’ against the teacher may have started with the boy who was suspended after being caught smoking: many in the neighborhood described the case as a reprisal against the teacher. Meanwhile, solidarity comes from the mothers of other students, not from the teacher but from the other parents: “Yes to the teachers, no to the administration” and “protection for our children, solidarity with the mothers,” read two banners. And about twenty mothers justify themselves: ‘No one believed us, the school did not defend us when we reported the facts. The chat, the audio in which a female voice says and asks certain things to the children, the videos. We saw and heard it and that is why we responded.” The climate yesterday, Monday November 18, upon returning to school, was one of great tension. Carabinieri and police patrolled the outside of the building, as requested by the director, to ensure the safety of the classes. School secured and many absences from classrooms, testifying to the impact of the incident. Testimonies about alleged compromising chats for the teacher overlap and contradict each other: they would be evidence (which is not shown) of harassment of children between 11 and 12 years old, at the origin of what the head of the school, Teresa Esposito, called ‘collective hysteria’. There are mothers who distance themselves from the complaints because they have never seen videos or chats that testify to the harassment that is being talked about. Two factions face each other: for and against the existence of ‘evidence’, which the Carabinieri of Castellammare di Stabia are investigating, from which no concrete elements have emerged so far. Do those chats really exist? The director, Donatella Ambrosio, did not want to meet with journalists. Her deputy, Teresa Esposito, reiterated that she was not aware of any compromising conversations with the teacher, who has not been spoken to since the attack. “Let’s leave her alone,” Esposito said, “she’s in shock. Now the studies must provide clarity.’ The whole day was then devoted to the internal investigation of the Campania Regional School Office, with inspectors listening to teachers and managers. “I also doubted that teacher when the mothers told me about ambiguous sentences in the chats,” said school board president Roberta Cammarota, “but when I asked them to listen to those chats, they replied ‘in due time.’ ‘…so I don’t know what to say. In this neighborhood the majority are normal and decent people. It didn’t deserve to end up in the media like this.’