Bizarre Killing Tests Trauma Team : High School Copes With Arrest of Teacher’s Aide, Students

Students and staff members at Escondido’s Orange Glen High School felt confident they could deal with on-campus traumas that might upset the psyche of a suburban high school.

Several years ago the school established a “trauma team,” made up of a psychologist, counselor, teacher, an administrator and a cadre of 30 students trained as peer counselors. If there was an untimely death of a teacher or student, or some other tragedy that would skew life on campus, the school was ready to deal with it as best it could with its own resources.

Twice this year, the trauma team was activated to deal with the unrelated suicides of two students, a freshman and a senior. Students and adults trained in counseling huddled with the young people and helped them work through their sorrow, disbelief and shock.

But last week, the trauma team was called into action for news even more bizarre, a story that has unfolded bit by bit:

First, the word last week that the estranged husband of a popular teacher’s aide had been fatally stabbed outside his apartment in Cardiff.

Next, the news on Monday that the woman herself, assigned to a classroom of students with learning disabilities, had been arrested in the man’s murder.

And finally, the news that two students at the school were arrested late Wednesday night, suspected of being adolescent killers-for-hire for the classroom aide. On Friday, each boy was charged with murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

“We’ve become trauma experts even when we didn’t want to,” school psychologist Peggy Decker noted wryly Friday.

Stunned by the News

School officials say the two teen-agers, both freshmen, had a small circle of acquaintances who were stunned by the news, but that most of the students on the 2,000-student campus had little direct knowledge of the boys and did not seem personally affected by the events.

Still, the trauma team had its hands full, first in helping the students and co-workers of 41-year-old Roberta Doreen Pearce deal with the news of the killing--and, a week later, coping with the arrest of Pearce and the two students.

Decker said she met with Pearce’s students as soon as the school got word of the slaying Jan. 31--and before it was known that Pearce was a suspect.

“We gave them the factual information, that we understood her husband had been murdered, and we assured them we would be thinking about her and providing her with our support,” Decker said.

The students, she said, handled the news well. “They were sad and surprised. That would be anyone’s reaction, that this wouldn’t happen to someone you know,” Decker said.

The incident was “played down” the rest of last week, Decker said.

“I expected I’d even see some of her kids individually who might have been especially upset, but I didn’t,” she said. “Mostly I talked to some staff members about how we’d support her (Pearce) when she came back.”

Then Pearce was arrested at her Valley Center home last weekend.

“That was a real shock to all of us, because she was so competent and did such a good job with the students,” Decker said.

The trauma team met Monday morning and discussed its next step: Breaking the news of her arrest to her students.

“They were shocked--especially some of the kids who were very close to her,” Decker said. The strategy, she said, was to turn the incident into a civics lesson, so the students could better understand the reality of what would be happening next. They were motivated to learn, she noted.

“We talked about arrest, about bail, and we stressed about innocence until proven guilty and that the lady they liked and cared about still exists,” Decker said. “We really stressed the innocence until proven guilty.”

Pearce has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The students, she said, “are going through a grieving process--a loss, a disbelief.”

Outside Pearce’s classroom, relatively few students seemed traumatized by the week’s turn of events, said school Principal Ed Brand.

“There’s been more concern by the staff--of what they’re feeling and how they’re dealing with this--than by the students,” Brand said.

Monday is a holiday, so a staff meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday “to lay out the facts as we know them at that time,” he said.

“We’re aware of the few kids who are having the most difficulty with this. They’re in shock. They’re disbelieving, how someone so close to them would even consider doing something like this. And, as more information has come out about the brutality of it all, it’s bothering them even more.”

‘Effective Listening’

The student acquaintances of the two boys who were arrested are being encouraged to talk out their disbelief with fellow students specially trained in peer counseling--or, as Brand calls it, “effective listening.”

But, because the circle of friends surrounding the two teen-age suspects is relatively small, there has been no need for group counseling sessions, Brand said.

The principal said the staff was especially surprised by the alleged involvement of the younger boy, a football player on the school’s freshman team whom he characterized as a “run-of-the-mill kid.”

“His arrest shocked all of us,” he said. The older student, Brand said, had been transferred to Orange Glen from Escondido High School where he was troublesome, and paper work already had been under way to return him to his home school because his behavior had not improved at Orange Glen.

The staff, meanwhile, is rallying around itself.

“I’ve told everyone that we’ve had our share of real crises this year. In the past we’ve been a nationally distinguished school and a state distinguished school, but we’ve gotten hit this year with some real bad situations, and now we’ve got another one,” Brand said.

“I told my staff that the more these kinds of things happen, the more we’ve got to stick together and help one another out.”

And, on Friday afternoon, long after the students had filtered home for their three-day weekend, the staff gathered in an office on campus for a farewell party for a teacher who was leaving the school.