CAMARILLO : Deliberations Begin in Teacher’s Trial

Jurors began deliberating Tuesday on whether a Camarillo High School drama teacher committed six misdemeanor violations of a state law that makes it illegal to “annoy or molest a child under 18.”

Attorneys finished summarizing the case against William Fisher, 42, Tuesday afternoon after nearly two weeks of trial, and Judge Herbert Curtis III instructed the jurors on the law that the teacher is accused of violating.

Eight of Fisher’s female students, 15 to 17 years old, accused him of inappropriately hugging them and making sexual comments to them in school. Last week, Curtis dismissed two of the eight charges, saying the evidence was insufficient.

Defense attorney George Eskin told the jury of seven men and five women that the girls mistook Fisher’s harmless--though sometimes sexually charged--classroom banter for sexual innuendo and misinterpreted his friendly, supportive hugs as physical overtures.

Eskin said that high school students now live in a more sexually aware world than their parents did, and that Fisher tried to relate to them on that level.

“He wants to reach the kids, he wants to have a rapport with the kids, he wants to have credibility with the kids, so he gives them some latitude, and he becomes their friend,” Eskin said.

Eskin acknowledged to the jurors that Fisher had an illegal affair from 1983 to 1985 at Woodbridge High School in Irvine with a 15-year-old student, who testified during the trial about her sexual relations with Fisher. No charges were filed in that case.

But Eskin dismissed Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen O’Brien’s assertion, during her closing argument Monday, that Fisher’s behavior at Camarillo High followed the same pattern as his affair with the Woodbridge student. Eskin said Fisher never pursued relationships with any of his accusers. Eskin likened the students’ accusations to the 17th-Century witch hunts led by young girls.

During her rebuttal, O’Brien told jurors that Fisher’s remarks and actions fit the letter of the law because they would “annoy or irritate a reasonable person” and demonstrate “an abnormal or unnatural interest in children.”

If convicted, Fisher faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine for each charge.