Not quite a French "Cold Case" - but almost

One of the most watched programmes on French television at the moment is the US import "Cold Case" in which each week Detective Lilly Rush (played by Kathryn Morris) reopens an investigation into a previously unsolved murder.

Perhaps events over the past couple of days here in France could do with a little of that "fictional" help if the truth behind what actually happened in the following tale is ever to surface.

For sure there was no homicide involved, but it resulted in a death nonetheless. And there are questions and issues that remain unanswered and unresolved.

The events concern what did or perhaps did not happen between a teacher and a pupil at the César-Savart secondary school in Saint-Michel near the northern French town of Laon, last week.

The science teacher was taken in for questioning by police after the parents of a 15-year-old boy made an official complaint.

The boy reportedly had told his father that the teacher had asked him to remain in the classroom at the end of the lesson, and reprimanded him for having turned up late. And at some point during the discussion the boy alleged that the 38-year-old man turned around and hit him.

When detained the teacher denied the charges and according to the public prosecutor of Laon, Olivier Hussenet, as far as the police were concerned there didn't appear to have been enough evidence to press charges.

"The alleged incident was in a classroom," he said. "There were no witnesses and it was one person's word against another's."

That might have been the end of the media interest in the case, had the 38-year-old not hanged himself a day later.

He left a letter but one which contained no mention of why he had decided to take his life.

And Hussenet insists there didn't appear to be a direct connection between the alleged charges, the police investigation and the man's suicide.

Instead he offers the possible explanation that it was a combination of personal factors involved.

"His house had been put up for sale and he was going through a divorce," Hussenet told a local newspaper. "The detention and questioning by the police could have been the trigger that led him to take his life."

But for the regional branch of the national teachers' union, Snes-FSU, accusations - whose veracity was unproven - had been made that would inevitably have had an impact on the teacher's reputation.

In an official statement it questioned whether the investigations by the police had been disproportionate to the allegations made.

"It illustrates a deterioration of the situation in which all teachers find themselves on a daily basis," the statement said. "Their numbers are not sufficient and they are sometimes not qualified to deal with the problems they face."

This latest case is not an isolated one of course and highlights problems that have received a fair amount of media coverage in France this year - namely discipline in schools and how or whether teachers should react when provoked. And just as importantly how the police handle claims of force used by teachers against pupils.

In August José Laboureur, a 49-year-old technology teacher from Berlaimont in the north of France, was fined €500 for having slapped an 11-year-old boy.

The incident happened back in January when Laboureur lost his temper after the boy insulted him during a lesson.

There was no disciplinary action taken against the teacher at the time, but the boy's father - a policeman - pressed charges.

The boy was suspended for three days but Laboureur had to wait months for the case to come to court, with parents of children at the school and teachers gathering more than 60,000 signatures in support of the teacher, who many thought had been provoked by a boy looking for confrontation.

The case raised questions as to whether the incident had been taken more seriously by police because the charges had been brought by one of their colleagues.

It also caused the education minister, Xavier Darcos, to step in remarking that the boy had not been suitably punished.

"Without defending the teacher's actions," he said "in a great majority of cases it's often the teachers who are the victims."

"They should not be insulted in public."

Whether the 15-year-old boy in last week's incident was telling the truth may never be known.

He's sticking by his story and his father is backing his version of events.

Interviewed on national radio on Saturday, the boy's father said although he regretted having made the decision to make a complaint, he still felt he was within his rights to have done so.

"He shouldn't have done what he did," he said. "We don't hit children, and that's that," he added.