Turku admits 2nd case of hush-hushing school sexual harassment

"Skeletons in the closet" concerning earlier lenience toward sexual harassers in schools continued to haunt the city of Turku, southwestern Finland, as a second case of leaving a teacher unpunished in the 1990s was admitted by Turku education authority on Friday.

Timo Jalonen, education director of Turku, said he had lately received written statements from over thirty persons who used to be pupils of Luostarinmäki school in the early 1990s.

Media reports said the teacher who had subjected the pupils to sexual conduct was forced to resign, but the case was not reported to the police at that time.

Similarly, in a case reported last week, a music teacher touched boys indecently in another school in Turku in 1980s, and the case never went to the police either. It was reported that the officials of the Turku education unit had wanted to handle the matter internally "to protect the reputation of the school".

Jalonen said the two teachers had handed in resignations only after heavy pressure at that time.

Minna Arve, Mayor of Turku, again apologized. She said she cannot accept the way the cases had been dealt with in the school system in the 1990s.

"These days no suspects of acts like that are concealed", she said on Friday.

Jalonen said those affected should now contact the police, even though time has elapsed.

However, reporting to police decades later may not lead to positive results as the time limit for prosecuting a crime may have been exceeded.