Jury Decides Teacher Did Not Sexually Bother Pupils : Courts: The panel finds the drama instructor innocent on five counts but deadlocks on a sixth charge. The judge dismisses that count.

A Camarillo High School teacher accused of making sexual advances to students is innocent on five counts of “annoying or molesting a child,” a Ventura County Municipal Court jury decided Wednesday.

The jury deadlocked on a sixth charge, which the judge dismissed.

William Fisher, who went on trial two weeks ago after reversing his guilty plea to four of the charges in June, wept and made celebratory phone calls to his lawyers and friends after the verdict was read.

“It’s been a year in hell,” said Fisher, 42, who remains suspended from his teaching job. “It’s ruined my teaching career, I’m $50,000 in debt due to attorneys’ fees, detectives and surviving to eat. I made $192 this year.”

Fisher said he is considering switching to teaching college or professional acting classes.

One of Fisher’s 15-year-old students, the girl who triggered the criminal investigation and trial by telling school administrators that he rubbed her knee, called the verdict shocking.

“Whoa, I think that’s dumb. I thought they were going to find him guilty for at least a couple of them,” the girl said. “At least now people know that he’s been tried for that. I’m really surprised.”

Fisher said he originally pleaded guilty to keep prosecutors from subpoenaing his former lover, with whom Fisher began a two-year affair in 1983 when she was his 15-year-old student at Woodbridge High School in Irvine.

“I made a mistake in Orange County, and I was being punished for my past” in the trial, Fisher said. “I’m not the first high school teacher to fall in love with a student.”

Fisher initially was charged with eight misdemeanors under a law that forbids “annoying or molesting a child under 18.” He was charged after eight of his female students complained that he had made sexual remarks to them and touched them inappropriately.

But midway through the trial, Judge Herbert Curtis dismissed two of the counts for lack of sufficient evidence. And late Wednesday afternoon, the jury emerged from 10 hours of deliberation and pronounced Fisher not guilty on five of the charges.

The jury failed to reach a verdict on the sixth charge, involving a 17-year-old girl who testified that Fisher offered her extra credit if she would clean his house while wearing a French maid’s costume. Curtis dismissed that count.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen O’Brien called the verdict disappointing.

“I have to respect the jury and the hard work,” O’Brien said. “However, I feel the conduct is irritating, disturbing and criminal within the statute. But they’re the community members. They set the standard.”

Fisher blamed the criminal complaint against him on hysteria at Camarillo High School.

“It’s a shame the whole thing happened, because not only did it destroy my teaching career, but these days the profession is in a shambles, and now we’re told we can’t banter with our students, now we’re told that we can’t care about their lives,” Fisher said. “It’s a frightening situation when a molestation case can be construed out of words in a classroom.”

Fisher said of the charges: “Maybe I said things I shouldn’t have. Maybe I annoyed some of these girls, I don’t know. Maybe they were annoyed because I gave them a bad grade, or I didn’t give them a part in a play.” Fisher said the girl who complained first about him lied about his touching her because she was dissatisfied with a C grade. Told of this remark, the girl replied, “It wasn’t because I got a C grade at all . . . I felt uncomfortable when I was in his classroom.”