Estefana C.F. has been released from prison on parole after serving five months of her 3-year prison sentence for striking a female school teacher. The 24-year-old mother from Fuente Vaquero in central Granada was the first woman in Spain to be sent to prison for physically assaulting a school teacher.

Her lawyer, Alejandro Martín Moline, expressed satisfaction that the penitentiary administrative body “had known how to correct the  disproportionate degree of the prison sentence,” judging that the said authorities had valued the apology and repent that his client “has always shown.”

The mother will only have to sleep in an open prison on weekday nights, which is the condition required in a 3rd-degree penitentiary sentence, which the said lawyer considers very positive for the relationship between mother and children.

Until the original court decision in 2011 – the assault took place in November 2010 – assaulting a schoolteacher or any other public functionary such as a doctor, for example, was considered a misdameanour, punishable with a fine only.

The reason for the severity of the woman’s punishment was both to set an example and also because she had already received a 1-year, suspended sentence for striking a sergeant of the Guardia Civil in 2005, which is not recommended under any circumstances.

Finally, to recap on what actually landed her in prison, the mother had turned up at a classroom containing 20 five-year-old children and two teachers and demanded who, of the two, had not let her son eat his  pack-lunch, when the teacher had said that it was her, and before she could offer any explanation – right in front of all the kids – she grabbed her by the hair, shook her violently, before throwing here against the blackboard. The presence of the children was another factor taken into consideration when the punishment was handed down.

(News: Fuente Vaquero, Granada, Andalucia)