Two Cases That Should Change How We Raise Our Children

In the span of a few weeks, Peru has watched two cases unfold that expose a painful truth: our teenagers are growing up without the guidance, structure, and supervision they urgently need.

On September 15, 2026, a 16-year-old student at the Liceo Naval Almirante Guise in San Borja, Lima, was the victim of a group sexual assault by classmates aboard a school bus, returning from an interschool futsal (indoor soccer, five-a-side football) tournament. According to his own testimony, he repeatedly asked his attackers to stop — they responded with laughter. Adults were present on the bus. Six to ten students are now under investigation, and the case has triggered a formal review of the school’s leadership by the Peruvian Ministry of Education.

Weeks earlier, on August 21, 2026, in Huancayo, a 13-year-old boy named Milán was fatally stabbed by a group of adolescents after leaving the public school -santa Isabel- where he had reportedly suffered bullying and extortion for months. His mother had already reported the threats. No one intervened in time.

These are not isolated tragedies. Peru’s official school violence registry (SíseVe) recorded over 11,800 reports of school violence between January and August 2026 alone — an increase of more than 18% over the same period the previous year, with sexual violence the fastest-growing category.

This Is Not Just About “Bad Kids”

It is tempting — and easier — to simply point at the perpetrators. We already have a system for that: courts, sentences, juvenile detention centers. That path exists, and it must be followed.

But if we stop there, we miss the real question: how did we get here?

Bullying is never a problem between only two people. Behind every perpetrator is an audience — classmates who watch, laugh, film, and share. The aggressor feeds on that applause. When there is no adult structure of care and attention around teenagers, when supervision is symbolic rather than real, small acts of cruelty are allowed to escalate — sometimes to felonies, sometimes to tragedy.

And here is something Peruvian families need to hear clearly: having money does not guarantee having values — and the lack of it doesn’t prevent violence either. These situations cut across every socioeconomic background. Whether a family has significant financial resources or very limited ones, the outcome can be the same: a teenager without real guidance, without adult presence, and without a clear sense of consequence is a teenager at risk — regardless of the neighborhood, the school, or the household income. Wealth does not automatically produce empathy or responsibility, and financial hardship does not automatically produce it either. What actually protects a child is attention, structure, and consistent adult guidance — something every family, rich or poor, must be intentional about providing.

What Our System Is Getting Wrong

Peru’s school system was not designed with the reality of adolescence in mind. Teenagers need:

• More rest — their biological need for sleep is different from that of younger children, and school schedules rarely account for it.
• More structured activity — sports, mentorship, and coached time that channels energy productively.
• More real time with adults — not supervision in name only, but consistent, present guidance from parents, teachers, and mentors who talk with them about their choices and why those choices matter.
• A culture that stops rewarding cruelty with laughter — teenagers need to be explicitly taught that “it stops being a joke the moment the other person isn’t laughing.”

This is not solely a matter of sexual education, although that matters too. It is a matter of teaching adolescents what it means to consider another human being — to understand that actions have consequences that can lead to a courtroom, a criminal record, or worse.

The Cost No One Talks About

Before anything else, this needs to be said plainly: no child should ever have to go through what these two boys went through, and no family should ever have to bury a son or watch him suffer for having simply gone to school. What happened to Milán, and what happened on that bus in San Borja, should never have happened — not to them, not to anyone. Our deepest condolences go to the families carrying this loss and this pain, and our full solidarity goes to every young person who has survived violence at the hands of people who were supposed to be their peers, and sometimes protected by adults who were supposed to be watching.

Beyond the grief, a crime committed by a teenager damages everyone involved. The victim carries lasting trauma and often years of therapy. The perpetrator loses years of their life, their record, and their future opportunities — a cost that, sadly, cannot be undone once the harm is done. Prevention is always the harder path, because it requires adults to admit where we have failed. But it is also the only path that actually protects our children — all of them.

Legal Guidance for Parents Navigating Their Children’s Education in Peru

As a Peruvian lawyer specialized in education law, I work directly with parents who are trying to make the right decisions for their children’s schooling — whether that means addressing a safety or bullying situation within a traditional school, understanding their legal rights and options when a school fails to protect a student, or exploring homeschooling and alternative education paths as a safer or better-suited option for their children.

Many Peruvian families are only now discovering that homeschooling and other alternatives to in-person education are legally recognized options in Peru, and that navigating them correctly — enrollment, accreditation, compliance with Peru’s education regulations, and protecting a minor’s rights along the way — requires proper legal guidance. I provide legal consultancy for parents facing exactly these questions: how to respond to bullying or violence in a school setting, what legal options exist when a minor’s safety or wellbeing is at risk, and how to structure a homeschooling plan or alternative education path that fits a child’s specific needs, whether academic, emotional, or safety-related.

If you are a parent in Peru asking yourself whether your child is safe where they are, whether homeschooling is a realistic option for your family, or what your legal rights are as a parent of a minor in basic education, you do not have to figure this out alone.

Reach out for a personalized legal consultation on education law, school safety, and homeschooling alternatives for minors in Peru, here: https://mimejorclase.com/producto/asesoria-homeschooling-para-familias/