CAMARILLO : Teacher, 42, ‘Acts Like He’s 16,’ D.A. Says

A Camarillo High School teacher who is being tried on charges of making improper advances to his students was described by a prosecutor Monday as “a 40-something-year-old man going on 16.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen O’Brien made her closing argument to jurors in the Ventura County Municipal Court trial of William Fisher, 42. Defense attorney George Eskin’s closing argument was postponed until this morning after a juror became ill during a break in Monday’s proceedings.

O’Brien told jurors that Fisher “is a grown, adult man who wishes he was 16, acts like he’s 16, is attracted to young high school girls, and he uses his position to gain their trust, their camaraderie to his own ends, and we know those ends are sexual.”

Fisher was arrested and suspended from his job last November after eight female students complained that he inappropriately hugged them, made sexual comments and stared at them. He is not accused of having sex with any of the students but is on trial for six misdemeanor counts of a state law that makes it illegal to “annoy or molest a child under 18.”

Last week, Judge Herbert Curtis III dismissed two of the eight counts originally filed, agreeing with Fisher’s attorney that the evidence was too thin.

Some of Fisher’s students have testified on his behalf during the trial, which has lasted eight days. They said some of his accusers had misinterpreted innocent banter and sexual wordplay in the free-spirited atmosphere of Fisher’s classes.

“Basically you felt free to say what you wanted to,” Christian Gregg, a junior, testified last week. “If you had a comment you thought was funny, you’d say it. . . . If somebody would say something funny, Mr. Fisher would come back and try to say something funny.”

But on Monday, O’Brien asked jurors, “What better context--when sexual innuendoes and easy banter are going on all the time--what better context for the defendant to get hugs and touches from girls he was attracted to?”

She said, “It is that type of environment he promoted in these classes. It is that type of environment in which he exploited these young girls and his desires.”

O’Brien recalled the testimony of two girls who said Fisher offered extra credit to each of them if they would clean his house while wearing French maid costumes.

She also reminded jurors that a 15-year-old student had testified that Fisher told her, “I would die to see what’s under your shirt.”

O’Brien also reminded jurors of a two-year affair that Fisher began in 1983 with a 15-year-old student whom he was teaching at Woodbridge High School in Irvine.

Now 22, the woman testified last week that Fisher began by counseling her on family matters after school, then complimented and hugged her whenever he saw her, and finally started a sexual relationship with her.

In her argument to the jury, O’Brien said Fisher followed part of that pattern with each of the Camarillo High School students, gaining their confidence, hugging or complimenting them, and acting “like a flirty guy,” as one girl testified.