False Accusations Make Teacher’s Life a Nightmare

Just after 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 16, gym teacher Ronald Heller was called to his principal’s office. He was shown written statements from several sixth-grade students saying they’d seen him in the girls’ locker room, hugging one girl in her bra and panties, slapping another on her behind and calling yet another “hot sexy mama.”

The wind went out of him.

“I did not do this,” Heller, 54, said. “This is a lie.”

He looked at the names--six girls and a boy. Only two were in his class. The rest he didn’t even know.

The principal of Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown, Md., handed Heller a letter informing him that he was suspended with pay, effective immediately. He was given 15 minutes to leave the school.

“I was flabbergasted,” said Heller, a teacher and coach for 32 years. “I thought it was all a big mistake and that I’d be back at work by Friday.”

For nearly a month, he stayed home, doing yardwork and watching “SportsCenter,” waiting for Montgomery County, Md., police to investigate. No one from the school could talk to him. And he had to get permission from the central office every time he left home. “I felt like I was on house arrest,” he said. He couldn’t sleep. He lost weight.

The lowest point came when detectives said they had two days to decide whether to arrest him. Heller called his wife, Ronnie, a special education teacher of 23 years. “I got real emotional,” he said. “I started crying.”

For nearly a month, the girls stuck to their story--even embellished it. One told police that she remembered he’d brushed her breast when he was taking a ball from her. Another said he’d given them a group hug outside the locker room.

But with each flourish, investigators were becoming more suspicious. Holes in the once-airtight story started appearing. Finally, one student--the boy--confessed. They’d made it all up. Then, one by one, the girls recanted.

On March 13, the six girls, whose names are being withheld by police because they are juveniles, were arrested for making false statements to the police and were suspended from school for 10 days. The boy was suspended but not arrested.

Montgomery County State’s Atty. Douglas F. Gansler said he wants to teach them a lesson by having them do community service with real victims of sexual abuse. School officials are expected to decide soon whether to let them return to Roberto Clemente or transfer them to another school--or expel them.

“We’re in a difficult position,” said community Supt. Donald H. Kress, who oversees county schools in the Germantown area. “How do we treat Mr. Heller fairly, and how do we provide appropriate punishment without throwing these kids away?”

Heller was exonerated and returned to school March 14 to an avalanche of flowers, letters, e-mails, cards and hugs from colleagues.

The case has become a national phenomenon and Heller, who appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, a lightning rod for teachers who hesitate to hug a weeping student for fear that any touch might be misconstrued and end a career.

The outpouring of sympathy for Heller is matched only by the vitriol heaped on the students. Gansler, in televised interviews, said the youngsters “maliciously conspired” to get Heller fired. And on talk radio, he fielded a rash of angry callers who wanted their hides.

The school system’s internal e-mail system is flooded with comments. “Ron Heller is a wonderful and moral person and he has been through enough,” said one. “He does not need to see these lying, conniving students walking the halls.” Another called the girls “evil.”

This much is true: The students lied. Heller’s life and reputation were nearly ruined. But what might never be known is this: Why did a group of 11- and 12-year-olds make up such a vicious story about a teacher they didn’t know?

Clique Chooses Chat Over Sports

One of the six girls wears a Tigger watch. She has long, professionally manicured nails, painted white. She sleeps on purple flowered sheets with a cat named George. Posters of stuffed teddy bears and glossy magazine pages of the pop group ‘N Sync adorn her walls.

On the small TV in her room she keeps her peach lip gloss, blue Shimmer in Glimmer body lotion and sweet-smelling Splish Splash body splash.

Until now, the worst thing she had lied about was when she lent her younger sister her Barbies but then told her father the sister took them. She is in honors classes and was a straight-A student until the Big Lie. Now she’s barely making C’s.

This girl, whose family agreed to let her speak to the Washington Post only if she remains anonymous, acknowledges she doesn’t really know Heller. Sometimes he helps out in her physical education class, when she and her clique of friends like to sit around and talk and he tries to get them involved in sports. And she doesn’t like that.

“He always comes up and says, ‘Hellooo girls,’ if we’re sitting in a circle. ‘You girls think you’re better than the boys with your nails,’ ” she said in a high mimic. “He’s just annoying.”

‘We Thought It Would Be Fun’

The week of Feb. 14, Heller disciplined two of her friends--a boy and a girl--for bad sportsmanship, the boy for taunting kids and the girl for giving up and pouting when her team began to lose. He set up a meeting with them two days later to talk to the school counselor about their behavior.

Her friends were angry. One said she was going to tell the counselor that Mr. Heller entered the girls’ locker room and that she’d heard that he touched girls’ behinds.

The morning of Feb. 16 was cold. The girl’s mother drives a school bus, and the girl and her friends gather on it before school. That morning, the talk was all about Mr. Heller in the girls’ locker room. The girl’s mother overheard them. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this was happening?” she asked her daughter, then marched the girls into the counselor’s office to make a report.

As the girls got off the bus, they started to giggle nervously. One said, “Oh my God.” But instead of telling the counselor that they were just repeating rumors, they decided to say it had happened.

One by one, the girls were called into the office to make a statement. As one left, she told the next one what she’d said, so their stories would match. Teachers at the school said the girls showed “attitude” sometimes, but were good kids. There was no reason not to believe them.

“We thought it would be fun,” the girl said, sitting in the living room of her parents’ townhome. “The whole idea of being the center of attention, going to the office and everyone in school knowing. Everyone thought it would be cool.”

And, she said, they thought that would be the end of it.

But when she got home from school that day, Det. Errol Birch, with the Montgomery County Police Department’s pedophile unit, was waiting for her. She decided to lie.

“We didn’t think it would get so big, like the police involved,” she said. “It all happened so quick. We wanted to keep going because we didn’t want to get in trouble.”

Over the next few days, she started to feel sick. “My neck and back hurt. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I’d just sit there and cry. It was like there was this big weight on my shoulders,” she said. “I felt really bad for Mr. Heller. I don’t think I ever thought he would get in trouble. Besides him being annoying, he’d never done anything serious to me.”

Still, when Birch interviewed her and the other girls again, on Feb. 23, she lied again--and added more details. “Everyone made more stuff up,” she said. “They started just throwing things in.”

By that time, police had doubts. The girls said they had complained to two female gym teachers. One short interview with them proved that wasn’t true. Even confronted with that, “they stuck to their guns,” Birch said. “They seemed credible.”

By this time, some of the girls weren’t speaking to each other. Some wanted to tell the truth. Others were afraid. This girl was torn. “I didn’t want to get my friends in trouble,” the girl said. “I didn’t want them to be mad at me.”

Kevin P. Dwyer, president of the National Assn. of School Psychologists, said early adolescence is an age where the not-quite-child, not-quite-woman is given to lying, saying hurtful things about other girls to secure her own place in an increasingly important social pecking order.

“They editorialize and massage the truth. And some are clearly vicious lies,” he said. “At this age, they’re self-absorbed, they’re clumsy, they don’t think things through or see long-term effects. And they’re desperately in need of having a peer group they can identify with. They’d do anything to keep from being rejected from their circle.”

On March 1, police spoke to the boy for the first time. He said it had gone too far and it was time to stop. Nothing was true. The boy was then suspended.

On March 8, Miles Alban, a retired Montgomery County police officer who is an investigator for the school system, met with four of the girls.

He had his doubts too. “ ‘Hot sexy mama’ is just not language used by people in our generation,” Alban said. “That’s kid stuff.”

Alban told the one girl: “This is serious business, and it’s going to have some serious consequences. If it didn’t happen, tell me now. Let’s end it.”

Without hesitation, she said, “It never happened,” and began to cry. In subsequent interviews, each girl recanted within minutes.

In the car with her father, the still-sobbing girl blurted out, “I thought I was going to hell.”

*

When Ron Heller interviewed at Roberto Clemente five years ago, he knew times had changed. High-profile sex-abuse cases and a flood of false accusations of sexual misconduct had made teachers more careful--paranoid even, that a hug, a pat, any touching of a student could be misinterpreted.

He had three rules: no gymnastics, no coed wrestling and no class discussions during sex education.

Heller is a typical old-school coach--short and square, direct and tough. He’s affectionate in the old-school way too. He gives kids nicknames like “Haircut” and “Jason of the Golden Fleece.” He makes up rhymes, like “Laura, Laura makes the grass grow green, makes the boys all scream, when she grows up she’ll marry a man named Johnny and live in a submarine.”

Sitting in an overstuffed yellow armchair in his airy home, Heller freely admits he’s from another era--he started teaching in 1967--and doesn’t quite “get” “Dawson’s Creek,” MTV and the “whatever” attitude of today’s preteens.

“I’m a dinosaur. I tease kids sometimes because I really enjoy working with kids,” he said. “I came from an era where if you had a fat kid in your class, you called him Fatty. If you had a skinny kid, you called him Skinny. If he had red hair, you called him Red. It wasn’t malicious, it’s just the way it was.”

Most of the nicknames and rhymes, he said, are for his special-needs kids. “Do I rub their backs? Of course I rub their backs. They’re the only ones I touch,” he said. “Because they’re the ones who need a little more help.”

He’s strictly hands-off with regular kids, with the teams he coaches and games he referees on weekends. “There may be a player writhing in pain on the side of the field, and I may know that if I pull on her leg it will make her cramp go away, I’m not touching her. No way,” he said. “I’ll yell, ‘Coach, come take care of your player.’ ”

For 32 years, he’d been careful. Like other teachers, he makes sure he’s never alone with a student and always leaves a door open when meeting with one. He’s been to the trainings. He knows the rules. And still, he suffered every teacher’s worst nightmare.

The worst part is that kids who didn’t even know him had the power to turn his life upside down.

Heller’s attorney had him take a lie detector test March 8. Heller and his attorney, Paul F. Kemp, said it showed he had never called anyone a “hot sexy mama,” much less fondled anyone.

By Friday, March 10, it was over. All seven students had owned up to the lie. And the school system was beginning the paperwork so he could return to school.

He wants to make sure the girls don’t.

“They come,” he said, “I leave.”

The girl wants the world to know she’s not a bad person: “What I did was wrong. I can’t change what happened. I just want to get back to normal, get back to my life and everybody to forget about it.”

As punishment while she’s suspended, the girl has to do the dishes and clean up around the house more. She found out through a neighbor that she’s lost her part in the school play.

She doesn’t quite understand that she’s been arrested--she wasn’t taken away in handcuffs, like on TV. On the way to the police station, she asked her father, “Am I supposed to smile for this picture?’ ”

Like the other girls’ families, her brother and sisters are taunted at school. One younger sister went to the health room with a stomachache for five straight days. On her mother’s school bus, elementary school kids shouted, “I hope she gets 10 years!”

Her parents want to see that she’s learned a lesson. “It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit if they decided to keep them after school every day to scrub toilets, sweep up trash and do custodial work,” her father said.

But then it’s time to heal. “Hopefully we can get past this, and hopefully without having to move out of the neighborhood. But I can see it getting to the point where no one wants to play with my kids.”

The girl has written letters of apology to Heller and everyone involved. But her parents are afraid to send Heller’s, scared that it could be used against them if Heller sues. “We’re living hand to mouth as it is,” her father said.

In round, girlish script, she asks for forgiveness: “Dear Mr. Heller, I don’t even know where to begin. The truth is you never did anything to me except being friendly. . . . I know [you’re] probably wondering why a group of good kids would ever make something up about you like this.

“And the reason,” she wrote in pencil, “is still a question to us.”