Cleaner who falsified elementary school certificate gets ten years in prison

Justice has shown no mercy in her case, as is usually the case for citizens of weaker social groups.

At first instance, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison with a suspended sentence, until the hearing at the Court of Appeal. At the Appeal hearing, she was sentenced to ten years imprisonment without suspension and was sentenced to prison.

In response to this development, her colleagues from Volos issued the following announcement:

"We utterly denounce the unjust decision of "justice" against our colleague, a cleaner from Volos, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison because, according to the indictment, she was working in a Volos City kindergarten with a false "degree", from the 6th grade of primary school, while she was a "graduate" of the fisth grade of elementary school.

Bourgeois justice, having exhausted all its severity on a poor worker, condemned a woman struggling to make a liveihood for her family to 10 years in prison! She was appointed through an ASEP competition in 1996, declaring she was a sixth grade graduate in order to find a job to feed her children and help her 67% disabled spouse.

For 20 years she conscientously offered services to a Volunteer Day Care Center, offered work and was paid for it. She did not steal! Nor did she abuse public money! She worked for it! To be able to cope with family needs. At the moment, following the decision of the Five-Member Court of Appeal of Larissa, she is serving the unfair sentence imposed on her in Thiva Prison.

We ask for our colleague to be released immediately because it is not a crime for someone to work to survive, espcially when she faces particular difficulties."

The history of the case

The cleaner had falsified a primary school certificate to appear to have completed the 6th grade while in fact she had only attended until the 5th to be hired as a maid in a municipal kindergarten in Volos.

This woman, who worked for 18 years at the kindergarten, submitted her papers in 1996 and, being in great economic need, falsified the document she had received from her school so as to appear to have completed primary education.