Belgium: Mother Sues School Over Girl’s Assault
A civil lawsuit opened Monday before the Nivelles Court of First Instance in a sensitive Belgian case: a girl, aged three at the time, was allegedly sexually assaulted by another child in the toilets of her communal school in Walhain, in Walloon Brabant, in 2023. The girl’s mother is suing the school’s organising authority for an alleged failure of supervision, according to RTBF.
Pleadings were expected on Monday 5 October, and the municipality of Walhain — the pouvoir organisateur (organising authority) of the school — declined to comment publicly before the hearing.
The allegations
The events date to December 2023. The mother, identified only as Amandine to protect her daughter’s identity, says her paediatrician observed genital lesions on the three-year-old. She advised me to go to the emergency department to have this established by a forensic doctor, Amandine told RTBF.
The girl received gynaecological care for two weeks. And now, almost three years after the events, we still have psychological follow-up, her mother said.
The alleged perpetrator was a child aged four and a half at the time. My little girl was sexually assaulted in her school, in the toilets, Amandine said.
Guided by police services, she filed a complaint. The criminal procedure ended in a traitement sans poursuites — a no-prosecution treatment. According to Florence Mouffe, a lawyer specialising in youth law, this outcome does not mean the facts are not recognised. It is not equivalent to an acquittal.
A different procedure for a very young alleged offender
Mouffe explained that when the alleged author is very young, the prosecutor cannot refer the case to the youth court judge, because that track lacks adequate measures for children so young. Instead, the case can be referred to the Youth Assistance Service (SAJ) for protective measures.
Those measures are handled with the greatest discretion, and victims are not informed of them. As a result, Amandine cannot know whether any protective measure was applied to the child accused in her daughter’s case. The legal resource site droitdelajeunesse.be documents how Belgian youth protection law distinguishes between a minor in danger and a minor in conflict with the law.
Dispute over the school’s response
Amandine says the dialogue with the school and the municipal alderman for education quickly turned into an exchange of written correspondence between the commune’s lawyer and her own.
She alleges the school refused to issue an accident declaration, which would have allowed her to be reimbursed for medical costs. They even refused to give us an accident declaration. They don’t even believe her [my daughter] that there was an incident, she said. They question her word and my word, even though this was recognised by a forensic doctor and similar facts occurred several months earlier.
That reference concerns a second mother, identified as Caroline, who told RTBF anonymously that several months earlier she had alerted the school about similar alleged acts committed on her daughter, also in the toilets. Three boys held her down and assaulted her, she said. She claims teachers minimised the child’s account, did not believe her, and the school did not react. That’s why we support Amandine’s complaint, she said.
The school in Walhain is the communal school that, as La DH/Les Sports+ reported in 2022, was named after the wartime resistance figure Andrée Geulen-Herscovici.
Failure of supervision alleged
Amandine has taken the case to the civil court, blaming the school for a failure of supervision. I don’t find it normal that innocent children are dropped off at a school where they are supposed to be safe and end up being assaulted, she said. For me it is really a failure of supervision, in the school. If only one child at a time can be in the toilets, it is precisely to avoid excesses and problems.
Why it matters
In Belgium’s French-speaking Community, a school’s organising authority can be held civilly liable when pupils suffer harm because of inadequate supervision by staff. The case touches on questions that reach well beyond one school: how far supervision duties extend for very young children, how complaints from children are handled, and how Belgium’s youth protection system deals with alleged offenders too young for prosecution.
The commune’s representatives, met by RTBF, were cautious, saying they did not want a media debate ahead of the judicial procedure, arguing such a debate could be prejudicial to the children concerned.
What’s next
Pleadings were expected on Monday. As the civil case proceeds, the girl — now nearly six — continues her psychological follow-up. Her mother says her aim is to make her daughter’s story known so that it doesn’t happen again, while preserving the child’s anonymity so she can rebuild her life. The outcome of the civil hearing, and what it signals about accountability for school supervision, remains to be seen.