In March 2021, PE teacher Velibor Vujić was convicted of sexually harassing a minor student of the Mihajlo Pupin Secondary Technical School in Bijeljina. The teacher had been sending the student vulgar and sexual messages and inappropriate content via Facebook, asking her to send him photos of herself in underwear and to answer questions of a sexual nature, and instructing her to then delete the messages.
Despite the final judicial conviction, Vujić continued working as a teacher. He continued his education career at the Veljko Čubrilović Elementary in Priboj, and then at the Vuk Karadžić Secondary School in Lopare, where he worked until recently.
Management of these schools did not even know that Vujić was convicted of sexually harassing a minor. When CIN reporters warned them about the verdict in December 2022, they said that Vujić “had the certificate confirming the absence of any criminal record”. The sanctions came only after the CIN’s writing.
“The disciplinary procedure has ended. The employee was dismissed, and he no longer works at our school. We sent the decision terminating his employment to the Ministry of Education and Culture of Republika Srpska and the RS Ombudsman for Children”, said Boro Stanić, principal of the Vuk Karadžić High School.
Stanić adds that after CIN’s writing, the school received an instruction from the line ministry to dismiss Vujić, but the disciplinary proceedings against him had already started before that. For this reason, the school had to carry out the procedure to the end, even though it could have legally dismissed Vujić without initiating disciplinary proceedings.
According to laws on primary and secondary education and development of Republika Srpska, persons who were legally convicted of crimes committed against sexual integrity, child abuse, and sexual and other violence against a child or a minor cannot work in a school.
According to principal Stanić, Vujić refused to cooperate and receive the summons and decisions of the disciplinary commission, which is why the process lasted for months.
“It was very arduous, very arduous (…) Then he hired a lawyer and dragged [the process] until the last day of the deadline. We saw it through to the end, and we definitely dismissed him”, said Stanić.
Although all educational institutions in the RS have a legal obligation to check if their teaching staff is entered in the Pedophile Registry, which has existed in this entity since 2018, the schools from Priboj and Lopar failed to do so in the case of Vujić.
Even though this Register should include the names of all persons legally convicted of sexual abuse and exploitation of children under the RS Criminal Code, Vujić’s name was not in it.
According to the Vuk Karadžić High School Center, after the Vujić case, they received an instruction from the Ministry of Education and Culture of the RS that every new employee must be checked in the Registry in the future.
In the meantime, the register has been updated and it now includes Vujić’s name. In the future, persons convicted of sexual abuse in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina or another states, who reside in the Republika Srpska, will also be entered in this Register.
This addition to the Register is the result of legal amendments sought by the Ombudsman for Children of the RS and the Ministry of Education and Culture of the RS after CIN’s story about teachers who, despite final verdicts for sexual harassment, continued to work in education.
Let’s recall that CIN revealed that at least thirteen educators in BiH were convicted of sexually abusing students in schools in the period from 2012 to 2022, while more than half of them continued to work with children even after the verdict.
