Authors: Linda van der Vaart, Anne Haverkort
As part of the investigation, the students were interviewed and the teacher's business cell phone and laptop were confiscated. This revealed that the teacher was not only involved in controversial financial schemes such as pyramid schemes and virtual cryptocurrency, but that she also persuaded students to participate in these schemes during class time. The teacher used her business email address for this purpose.
The main defense that the teacher presented to the magistrate was that her privacy had been violated by the seizure of her phone and laptop because they also contained private data. The magistrate dismissed this defense and ruled that the investigation results could nevertheless be used as evidence. A contributing factor was that, based on its code of conduct, the educational institution had the right to inspect employees' work phones and laptops. The subdistrict court also considered it important that the teacher had repeatedly agreed to hand in the devices and had received them back less than two weeks later.
The magistrate ruled that the educational institution had acted carefully by taking the allegations seriously. According to the magistrate, the teacher's behavior was inappropriate for the relationship between teacher and student and also affected the reputation of the educational institution. In the opinion of the subdistrict court, the teacher's actions were seriously reprehensible. It was considered important that an educational institution should be a safe environment. The employment contract with the teacher was therefore terminated without observing the notice period and without awarding the transition allowance.
This case law can also be found in the Youth & Education file.
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Source: Van Benthem & Cologne
