Ex-Teacher Withdraws Guilty Plea : Courts: The former Camarillo High School instructor now faces trial on nine counts of misdemeanor child molestation.

A former Camarillo High School teacher who had admitted hugging and making sexual comments to four female drama students withdrew his guilty plea Monday to misdemeanor charges of child molestation.

William H. Fisher, 42, pleaded guilty late last month to four counts of misdemeanor child molestation and was scheduled to be sentenced Monday.

But before his sentencing hearing, Fisher withdrew the plea and pleaded not-guilty--setting the stage for a scheduled July 16 trial on the nine counts of misdemeanor child molestation that he originally faced.

Fisher had been allowed to plead guilty to four of the counts with the understanding that prosecutors would drop the other five if he were sentenced to jail.

Each charge carries a maximum one-year jail sentence and $1,000 fine.

A throng of supportive students and parents surrounded Fisher after his plea, clapping him on the back, shaking his hand and hugging him. “Good luck, Bill,” one man called out. “You did the right thing.”

Eight of Fisher’s alleged victims solemnly filed out of the courtroom’s other door.

Fisher refused to discuss his plea as he left the courtroom. But his attorney, George Eskin, said, “My client’s position is not guilty of any criminal offense.”

Eskin said Fisher had pleaded guilty because he originally believed he would be put on probation.

Eskin said Fisher also feared that prosecutors would subpoena his former lover--a woman who had a three-year affair with him that began when he was her teacher at an Irvine high school. Ventura County prosecutors have said the woman was 14 at the time the affair began. Fisher has said she was 16.

Eskin called the charges “a perversion of the criminal justice system” in which prosecutors are accusing Fisher criminally of complaints that should have been handled by Camarillo High School officials.

“It sends a very dangerous signal that a child-molestation prosecution can be concocted out of conversations in the classroom between teacher and student,” Eskin said. “Not one of these nine students has made any complaint about any sexual touching.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen O’Brien has said that Fisher is not accused of touching the students in sensitive areas. However, she pointed out that a section of the law defines misdemeanor child molestation as “conduct which is so lewd that a normal person would unhesitatingly be disturbed or irritated by it.”

O’Brien said she expects eight of Fisher’s nine alleged victims to testify during the trial. The ninth is an exchange student who returned to Germany and may not be able to come to Ventura for the trial, O’Brien said.