The Show Goes On : Students Stage Play to Honor Former Teacher Guilty of Molestation

Achild molestation case quite literally took a dramatic turn Friday when a group of Camarillo High School students staged a production of “Macbeth” in honor of their former drama teacher, who is scheduled to be sentenced next week on child molestation charges.

The classic tragedy was staged in a makeshift theater in the back yard of William H. Fisher, who pleaded guilty last month to four misdemeanor charges of child molestation for hugging female students and making sexual comments to them.

Each charge could bring a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Sentencing is set for Monday.

Six of the 13 cast members in Friday’s production were scheduled to be in a production of the play that Fisher was directing and hoping to perform last fall. But the play was never performed because Fisher was suspended from his job.

But Friday, according to a notice of the production sent out by students, the students decided to finally put on the show under Fisher’s direction as “a celebration of solidarity and belief in this fine man.”

“We know Mr. Fisher, we know who he is and what he stands for,” said Jeannette Maxwell, 18, who graduated from Camarillo High last year. “He was the kind of teacher you could talk to about things you couldn’t share with your parents or other teachers. I looked to him as a father figure and a friend.”

Maxwell said cast members did not believe the allegations of nine female students who complained to investigators that Fisher made sexual remarks in class.

“I don’t believe it happened, and neither does anyone else in the cast,” Maxwell said.

In an interview Friday, Fisher, 43, called his dismissal from Camarillo in November a “witch hunt” stemming from an affair that he had with one of his students while he was a teacher in Irvine.

Ventura County prosecutors have said Fisher had an affair with a 14-year-old student and had paid for her abortion after she became pregnant.

But Fisher said Friday that the student was 16, that the two were in love and that he had given her a diamond ring and had hoped to marry her.

“I’m being punished for my past,” Fisher said. “I made a mistake eight years ago when I had a relationship with a student I loved very deeply. It was wrong, and I know it was wrong.”

Fisher acknowledged that he had violated a position of trust by falling in love with the girl.

But he said prosecutors attempted to make the affair “sound ugly, like I was a pervert. But that was not the case. We had a mutual, loving, caring relationship. They wanted to make me sound like a slime ball, and I wasn’t.”

Fisher said his decision to resign from the Irvine School District was by mutual agreement. Despite the incident there, Fisher was hired by Camarillo High School. He said Friday that he deliberately omitted details on his application of why he left Irvine.

At Camarillo High, prosecutors said, students complained that Fisher made sexual remarks in the classroom about the bodies of his female students.

Despite his guilty plea, Fisher denied the allegations of sexual molestation Friday.

“I may have acted inappropriate from time to time--and I’m not talking about in a sexual manner,” he said. “But I’ve never sexually molested anyone in my life.”

Fisher described one female student, who claimed that he had fondled her knee during a rehearsal of a play, as “a flat-out liar.” He said a video camera had taped the alleged incident, proving that it did not occur as she described it, and that he had presented the tape to the judge.

Fisher, however, said he decided to plead guilty to the four child molestation charges as a “compromise for no jail time” and to spare his students from having to take sides and testify in the case.

“My main reason for pleading guilty is I don’t want the kids to go through the trauma of a trial because of the stress involved,” Fisher said.

Fisher and student director Aaron Craig, who is playing Macbeth in the production, said they expected about 50 to 75 guests, mostly family and friends of the cast members, at private stagings Friday and Saturday evenings.

The cast members, who are doubling and tripling up to portray the 28 characters in the play, have been rehearsing at a local community center and at Fisher’s home for nearly two months.

Helen Hodges, the mother of cast member Rochelle Hodges, 16, said she planned to attend tonight’s performance.

“Mr. Fisher has always been very kind to Rochelle, especially after her father died,” said Hodges, 52. “I talked to her lengthily about the situation and she told me she has never seen or heard anything inappropriate, sexual, whatever. . . . If I felt there was anything to the story, I certainly wouldn’t have her there. I believe in her judgment.”

Cast members credited Fisher with founding Camarillo’s drama department.

“It was just great,” said Maria Kleschick, a 1989 Camarillo graduate who is portraying Lady Macbeth. “They went from no drama department to a fantastic drama department.”

Fisher said the production could be his last chance to work with high-school-age students, depending on what happens at Monday’s sentencing. He said he has already relinquished his teaching credential.

“After 21 years, I have to start over again in another field,” said Fisher, who added that he is hoping to find work in theater arts. “Whether I was found guilty or acquitted, I’m never going to teach again at public schools. I’m moving on to something else.”