Director at IPLeiria convicted of assaulting her son

The director of Research and Development Support Services at the Leiria Polytechnic Institute was given a suspended sentence of two years and two months in prison for domestic violence against her 12-year-old son, according to Jornal de Notícias . Maria Burgos will also have to pay 2,000 euros in compensation to the minor.

The episodes of domestic violence against the son occurred between April and June 2023, when the boy, who lived with his father, spent two weekends a month at his mother's house. According to the same newspaper, during a conversation about his stepmother, the woman reacted violently to her son's response, slapping him five times in the face .

The situation repeated itself whenever the boy got bad grades, and he was insulted with words like “ stupid ” and accused of being “ worthless .” On another occasion, when he did not get an answer about how the boy had spent the day, his mother attacked him again and threatened to kill him . She even took him to a pine forest, where she threatened to beat him with a stick .

The collaborator of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria has now been sentenced by the Court of Appeal of Coimbra, where she had appealed the decision of the Court of Caldas da Rainha, in December 2024. In the appeal, the woman resolutely denied the episodes of verbal and physical violence against her son, claiming that she always had a “ great relationship ” with the minor.

The judges responsible for the case stressed that “the education of a child can never involve the use of physical punishment”, and that aggression is “illegitimate and criminal” . The testimony of the 12-year-old boy was considered credible by the judges. “This is the only way this mother can be convicted of the crime in question”, they concluded in the ruling, which JN had access to. The woman will now be subject to a social rehabilitation plan and will have to attend a programme for aggressors in the context of domestic violence.

In 2020, the defendant had already been sentenced to pay a fine of 560 euros for the crime of assault against physical integrity, dated 2015.

Since 2017, physical punishment of children has been punished by the Portuguese Penal Code — both for the crime of domestic violence and for mistreatment or harm to physical integrity.