secrecy pledge

大津市教委と中学校がひた隠しにしていたものが出てきました。アンケートの結果を口外しないという「秘匿の誓約書」です。日本語では「一筆とる」と言いますが，被害者遺族から一筆をとっていたとは...。（GP）

School forced family of suicide victim to sign secrecy pledge over bullying survey

OTSU -- The junior high school here attended by a 13-year-old boy who committed suicide last autumn forced his parents to sign a document promising not to reveal results of a bullying survey conducted by the school after the boy's death, it has been learned.

The boy committed suicide by jumping from an apartment complex on Oct. 11, 2011, and soon after the school performed the survey twice at the request of his family. The school, however, refused to reveal the survey results unless the boy's parents signed the secrecy pledge, dated Oct. 24 and addressed to the school principal, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The pledge form stated, "We recognize that confidential private information is included (in the results), and we commit ourselves to treating it as confidential."

The survey results given to the parents contained more than 300 pieces of information related to the vicious and systematic bullying of their son.

"I reluctantly signed the document after I was asked to do so by the school," the boy's 47-year-old father said. "If we had not been bound by this, the truth would have been uncovered much earlier."

The results of the first survey were presented to them on Oct. 28. The city board of education acknowledged that "there was bullying" against the boy in the form of physical violence, forcing him to eat dead bees, and other acts, but it did not admit that there was a causal relationship between the bullying and his death. The board then said, "The surveys were conducted on condition that they not be released to the public."

The board publicly released statements from only one student covered in the second survey, which said the boy had been subjected to a "funeral game" and had been "choked in the name of suicide practice."

July 12, 2012

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20120712p2a00m0na008000c.html