The incident occurred in spring 2013. The headmaster of I Liceum Cezary Czernatowicz wrote on Bolesławiec news portals on 16 May 2013 that some media outlets removed the name of his school from various reports. As an example, he cited an article published on Istotne.pl on 3 May 2013. It was an article about a teacher who went on a training course funded by the US government. Czernatowicz expected us to include the name of I LO in an article about the woman’s private trip, for which she had to take unpaid leave. However, Czernatowicz himself did not mention her trip on the school’s website or Facebook page. While portraying the media as bad, the headmaster simultaneously omitted our report of 13 May 2013, in which we wrote about I LO students, and the school’s name appeared in the article five times.
In another paragraph of his article, Cezary Czernatowicz claimed that he could not and cannot decide to stop supporting the students’ development in favor of “financially supporting a private portal.” However, he did not say a word about the fact that a month earlier his high school had advertised in a private newspaper for money.
Comments appeared under Czernatowicz’s article in which someone anonymously, while defending the first high school, wrote that Krzysztof Gwizdała, the publisher of Istotne.pl, blackmailed schools and extorted money from them. This was completely untrue.
A prosecutor investigated the matter. The prosecutor established that the IP address from which the posts were published was assigned to a computer belonging to the Żak couple. As is known, Katarzyna Żak is, in her daily work, the deputy head of precisely this I Liceum Ogólnokształcące. Both were questioned at the prosecutor’s office. They did not confirm that they had written the defamatory statements. The proceedings ended in September, and the prosecutor discontinued the investigation. Once the people who published such posts have been identified, cases of this type are discontinued because such offenses are prosecuted by private prosecution. The prosecutor provides the data, and a private individual may initiate criminal proceedings.
“I was surprised that the Żaks’ name came up in this matter. They were my friends,” says Krzysztof Gwizdała, head of the Istotne.pl portal.
On 3 December 2013, Krzysztof Gwizdała wrote to Katarzyna Żak proposing that the matter be settled amicably. Later that same day, he accidentally met her husband, former city architect, Piotr Żak in a hypermarket. He continued to deny that he and his wife were the authors of the posts. When Krzysztof Gwizdała explained the consequences facing the deputy head of I LO if guilt were proven and she were convicted—namely, losing her job—Piotr Żak said that perhaps he would “take it upon himself” and asked that an email be sent to him and his wife. A few days after this meeting, without informing Krzysztof Gwizdała, Żak submitted a letter to the prosecutor’s office in which he stated:
(received on 6 December 2013)
I confirm that I posted the entries on the online portal described in the above-mentioned case using a mobile phone. Since the question asked during the interview suggested that the online entries on the portal had been made using a desktop computer, it misled me. I made the post using a mobile device.
However, the letter submitted by Żak had no effect because the proceedings had ended several months earlier. It was attached to the very end of the case files, and the prosecutor did not even inform Krzysztof Gwizdała about Żak’s letter.
The matter of the deputy head’s husband admitting his guilt probably would not have come to light if not for an article published on the Istotne.pl portal in March of that year. A few days after the report was published, Żak wrote an open letter in which he stated that he had posted the entries.
Interestingly, the open letter sent by Piotr Żak states that the document’s author is Katarzyna Żak and that it was written by “architect Piotr Żak.” The document may therefore have been edited by two people.
“Since Piotr Żak claims that he was the one who wrote it, he will be charged. The case will soon go to court,” announces Krzysztof Gwizdała, head of the Istotne.pl portal.
(information: ii)