When doing the right thing is wrong - a
lesson
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June 3, 2013 |
By Mike Weland
Heather Fairchild, 12, is not a bad girl, though
she did a bad thing. She readily admitted it,
and apologized to her school, though on advice
of a public defender she denied it in court.
Doing the right thing in school parlayed into
the wrong thing in court, and according to her
mother, Amanda Fairchild, she's being set up to
be made an example.
"This has been an expensing, exhausting ordeal,"
Amanda said. "From the outset, I've heard over
and over, from prosecutors, police and school
officials, that they were going to make an
example of her, that somebody has to pay for all
the fake bomb threats."
It might not be quite the right example, though,
as there's a lot more to the story than meets
the eye.
Amanda, a mother of five, was on her way to the
Boundary County Middle School January 15 when
she received a call that yet another bomb threat
had been found on the wall of a stall in a
girl's restroom. When she arrived, she was told
by principal Dick Behrens that Heather was one
of the suspects.
She asked to see the evidence, and was shown the
wall on which "Bomb 1:00" was written.
Later, Amanda sat down with Heather, who
admitted that she had done it.
According to Amanda, the act of her daughter has
roots that goes back years, and that it wasn't
an act of defiance or an ill-advised prank, but
one more cry for help in a place where help
has been consistently denied.
Both Amanda and her daughter had rough
childhoods; Amanda spent most of her most
formative years bouncing in and out of foster
homes, picking up bad habits that would take
years to overcome.
Heather was born long before her mother made the
turn-around, and, like Mom, she was taken from
her home, spending eight of her 12 years going
from foster home to adoptive home, being classed
as "a ward of the state."
The scars of the ordeal run deep, but Amanda
eventually overcame her demons and transformed
her life. On August 11, 2012, with the
endorsement of Heather's final adoptive family,
Amanda and her husband, Scott, who never gave up
the fight, regained full custody of their
daughter.
In fact, Amanda earned enough trust that she was
appointed Sunday School supervisor at Bridgeway
Assembly of God, and Scott chosen to accompany
their pastor on a mission to serve an orphanage
in Vietnam.
Heather had been diagnosed in 2009 with
post-traumatic stress disorder, and she is prone
to sudden and debilitating anxiety and panic
attacks.
When Amanda was enrolled at the middle school
last fall, Amanda explained to staff the trauma
her daughter had endured and requested that her
daughter be provided a special aid or a
psycho-social rehabilitation (PSR) specialist to
help Heather adapt. The agency that had been
working with her offered to provide a PSR at no
cost to the school, but the request was denied.
Turns out Heather, who pulled down a 3.25 grade
point average while in class, was too smart to
need special services in spite of diagnosed
mental health issues.
When Amanda saw that Heather wasn't coping well,
she pulled her out of school and schooled her at
home, where Heather could get the help she
needed.
Heather was making progress, and Amanda
re-enrolled her, once again requesting that
arrangements be made to provide the help her
daughter needed. Being again denied, she asked
that Heather be allowed to attend half-days to help her
through the transition, also denied by school
staff.
She went back to class at Bonners Ferry Middle
School January 7.
One of the big issues Heather still contends
with now is separation anxiety; she is terrified
of being away from Mom and family.
"When I went to Spokane to pick Scott up from
the airport in Spokane, I left the kids with
grandma," Amanda said. "While I'm waiting for
the plane, the phone rings. 'Mom, can you come
get me?' her distraught daughter sobbed. 'Honey,
I'm in Spokane! I can't!'"
Mom, through talking, was able to calm her
daughter, who was having a hard time breathing
through an attack of panic and fear the girl
didn't understand. They come, she said, from
nowhere.
After her admission of making the false bomb
threat, Amanda said she and her daughter had a
long talk. Heather told her she had a panic
attack, and went to the office asking to call
home, but was not allowed.
As the attack worsened, she admitted, she did a
thing that had been done eight times before ...
she went in and wrote a threat on the bathroom
wall.
By then, there were cameras and other security
measures in place; Heather, Amanda said, wasn't
covert.
Amanda and Heather met with principal Behrens
and school resource officer Tiffany Murray, and
were told that Heather would be suspended and
likely expelled.
Amanda asked why the services her daughter
needed, required by Idaho Code, were constantly
denied; she was told, she said, that the
district didn't want outside providers in the
schools.
In the days after, Heather spent considerable
time with her psychologist and psychiatrist.
Amanda requested a "manifest" hearing with
school officials to develop an IEP, an
individual education plan the state mandates for
special needs students.
"Heather is very smart, but she was shown to
have a severe emotional disorder," Amanda said.
Over a period of two weeks, she said, an IEP was
developed to enable Heather to stay in school,
and on February 19, the IEP, which required that
Heather write a letter of apology to the school,
was approved.
Heather would go back to school and get the help she
needed.
Later the same day, Amanda was informed that a
felony criminal charge had been filed; the
apology letter to the school, Officer Murray
told her, constituted not an apology, but an
admission of guilt in a court of law.
Before the day ended, she called her pastor and
resigned her position with the church.
"I was under the impression that no charges were
going to be filed because we met the school's
requirements, which included a letter of
apology," Amanda said. "We did the Christian
thing, admitted guilt, and worked toward
atonement. We did the right thing, but it turned
out wrong. I didn't want to burden my church, or
our children, so I stepped down."
She hired an attorney, and while the court case
ground on, Heather returned to school on a half
day schedule, did well and earned a very
respectable grade point average.
Emotionally, however, she regressed, fearing
what the law might impose.
Incidentally, a bomb threat occurred February
19, this time in a boy's bathroom stall at the
high school ... and Amanda learned that one of
her sons that he was among the first to be questioned.
"Mom, I didn't do it ... my classes are on the
other side of the building that time of day."
Her son, also a special ed student, had been
doing great and progressing by leaps and bounds at
Riverside High School; thrown into Bonners Ferry
High School after Riverside was closed suddenly
on Christmas break, he has yet to pass a single
course.
Amanda formally requested that none of her
children be subject to questioning unless she or
her husband were present; principal Kirk Hoff,
she said, denied her request.
At a court hearing in June, scheduled as a
disposition hearing during which Judge Debra
Heise was to render judgment and impose
sentence, Amanda said she was shocked when
Boundary County deputy prosecutor Tevis Hull
instead requested that charges be reduced, from
a felony of False Reporting of an Explosive
Device in a Public or Private Place," to a
misdemeanor charge of "Threatening Violence on
School Grounds."
On the advice of their attorney, Heather
admitted her mistake in court, and she and her
family will appear in court yet again July 11 to
hear the gavel fall.
"Heather's scared and I'm scared," Amanda said.
"We've been told she's likely to receive the
same sentence handed down to Justin Fletcher."
Fletcher, also 12, who readily admitted guilt to
the felony charge, is working through his
sentence with his family.
Heather, Amanda said, will have her family's
support as well, though one aspect has her
terrified; being separated from her family to
serve two days in juvenile detention in
Sandpoint.
"I'll help my daughter through community
service," Amanda said, "We'll stand with her to
pay fines and make any apologies. We know there
is a price for what she did, and we'll pay it.
But I am so scared what will happen to her if
she is put in detention. She panics thinking
about it. All the progress she's made, her
learning to trust, of doing the right thing ...
the Christian thing, could be lost."
Remarkably, of the ten threats that have
disrupted Boundary County schools, there is a
third student affected. The name has not and
likely won't be released thanks to heeded advice
by council. No confession was made. There was a
suspension, and a request for expulsion, which
requires action by the school board.
It was denied for lack of conclusive and
convincing evidence; and no criminal charges
were filed.
The school board could not weigh in on Fletcher;
he is not a public school student. The board
never had a chance to weigh in on Heather; there
was never an expulsion hearing, as she did all
that was requested and all was handled
administratively.
In so doing, she may be punished twice for the
same crime.
She had the right to remain silent, she chose
instead to do what was right.
Mom has done her best to console Heather and
prepare her for what might lie ahead next year;
offering to enroll her in the Sandpoint Charter
School. Heather is scared that she'll
be teased and outcast here for what she a
momentary lapse of reason.
She tells Mom she doesn't want to.
She'd rather go to school in Bonners Ferry, she
said. She's proud of her school. |
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