Court acquits teacher in "retard" case

A teacher who forced a pupil to write "I am a retard" 100 times was acquitted by an Italian court on Wednesday of abuse charges. The teacher, whose identity was withheld to protect her privacy, forced the punishment on the 12-year-old boy after he blocked a fellow pupil from going to the toilet and called him "gay" and "girly." The parents had sought 25,000 euros ($33,580) in damages and a public prosecutor had called for a two-month prison sentence, but the court cleared the teacher, a court source said. The teacher said her punishment of the boy had been appropriate, particularly after a widely publicized case of an adolescent who committed suicide in Italy, apparently after receiving taunts at school about being homosexual. Gay rights groups had called for the charges to be dropped. "I never intended to humiliate the boy," the teacher told journalists after she was cleared. In Italian, she made the boy write: "Io sono deficiente," which literally means "deficient" but is more commonly used as a disparaging term meaning "moron" or "mentally retarded." "I explained, discussing with him and his classmates, that deficient means 'lacking'. He was 'lacking' sensitivity for one of his classmates," the teacher said.