When doing the right thing is wrong - a lesson
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.