Mather Case Leaves City Divided Girls Who Complained Of Popular Teacher’s Hugging Called Heroes, Liars

All the girls wanted was for their teacher to stop touching them, to stop making them feel uncomfortable.

They never thought their quiet, tearful complaints would lead to massive upheaval at school, the likely ruin of a teacher’s career and ultimately their own defeat.

Now, eight months after they took a stand against a popular teacher - and lost - these five teenagers have become reluctant flashpoints in a controversy that has polarized the city.

They have been dubbed both heroes and liars. They have been pointed at, whispered about as they walk down school halls.

Favorite teachers have sided against them. Friends, unable to believe their claims, have turned on them as well. They have lived through months of nightmares, stomach-aches and depression.

And in the end, they have been left deeply distrustful of a system that taught them to tell an adult when something feels bad, but failed to believe them when they did.

“I did my best and I told the truth and it didn’t do anything,” one girl said during a recent interview.

“It was like, all that for what? To get humiliated,” said another girl.

Earlier this month, a jury found teacher Paul Mather innocent of charges he sexually abused two of the girls by fondling their breasts and buttocks. But the jury’s decision has far from ended the controversy. Whether Mather will be allowed to return to teaching in Coeur d’Alene remains uncertain.

From the beginning, Mather has contended that although he is a touchy person, his hugs were meant only in a kind way and never strayed into inappropriate areas. Mather did not respond to a request for an interview made through his attorney.

Monday night, the Coeur d’Alene School District is expected to begin dismissal proceedings against Mather for unethical conduct. If the school board fires the 49-year-old Canfield Middle School teacher, it would pave the way for the removal of his teaching certificate and the end of his career.

It is a move that the girls’ parents say is years overdue.

According to police reports, Mather was investigated in 1989 for having sex with a 16-year-old girl he met in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Although the school attorney looked into the case and Mather’s wife told investigators he admitted the crime to her, Mather kept his job.

Should the school board decide to try to dismiss Mather now, it will be able to consider that incident.

“If the school board would have done their job then, none of these girls would have gone through this,” said one father. He and other parents are calling for serious changes in the way teachers relate to students. “The school board rolled the dice with our children’s lives.”

‘I assumed it was kid stuff’

Teddy bear posters and stuffed animals still decorate the girls’ bedrooms. As hobbies, they list talking on the phone, going shopping and hanging out with their friends.

Now between the ages of 13 and 15, they are neither children nor adults. Most haven’t even gone on their first date.

They are star students and good athletes. One girl says she got all A’s and one B on her latest report card - her nose crinkling in disgust when she mentions the B.

Now, looking back, some of the girls’ parents see what they couldn’t recognize last spring.

“Her attitude was really bad,” one mother says of her now-15-year-old daughter. “She’d slam the door to her room. She’d cry over nothing.”

Another mother noticed that her then 12-year-old daughter started going straight to bed after school. She didn’t want to eat. She didn’t want to talk.

“I remember asking her one day what was wrong. She said, ‘You don’t know what’s happened, you don’t know what’s going on.’ I just assumed it was kid stuff,” the mother says.

What was going on, the girls say, is that they were confused and upset by Mather’s touches at school. They were embarrassed and afraid - afraid Mather would be mad, afraid he would get in trouble, afraid they would get in trouble.

“A lot of times I was thinking he was too nice to do that,” said one girl, now 13, who was a student in Mather’s seventh-grade class.

Although the girls only intended to have a counselor ask Mather to be more careful about how he touched them, their concerns made their way to the principal, the authorities and eventually into every newspaper and television station in the region.

“I didn’t know it was going to divide the community like it has,” said another girl, whose friend helped start a car wash in support of Mather as others tried to remove him from his coaching positions.

The families try to stay anonymous, fearing the repercussions and embarrassment for their daughters.

Still, one girl was approached by a boy wanting to know all the intimate details. “He asked me really gross stuff,” the girl says. Another was approached by an angry fellow student. “She said she didn’t know how I could lie and called me some bad names,” the girl says, biting her lower lip as she describes the run-in.

At the trial, they were dismayed as best friends and once-favorite teachers testified against them. One teacher had taught them to report uncomfortable behavior. “I don’t see how (she) can teach ‘Come talk to us about it,’ and then she doesn’t believe us,” said one girl.

Afraid to go back to school

When the jury acquitted Mather, shocked family members cried and, in the days that followed, withdrew. One father couldn’t speak about it for days.

“I keep waking up every morning thinking, ‘When is this not going to be the first thing I think of?”’ said one mom.

The girls were afraid to go back to school. “I was afraid students would come up and say, ‘Ha ha, he’s innocent and you lied,” one girl said.

“I think the biggest disappointment is that because he was acquitted the girls names aren’t cleared,” said the mother of one teen. “It’s like they were left with the guilty verdict almost.”

One girl’s grandmother, who sat through nearly the entire trial, had a stroke two days after the verdict. Her granddaughter blamed herself.

Pat Kukuruza, a victim counselor at the prosecutor’s office, fears the jury’s verdict will have a devastating affect on the willingness of other victims to report sex crimes. “Young girls will not report things like this now because they’ve seen what this group had to go through.”

Faith shaken

The families try not to let the incident consume their lives but find it difficult.

Some of the girls worry about what their current teachers think of them, if they don’t like them or might give them bad grades because they spoke up against Mather. Two girls find themselves avoiding male teachers.

Their fathers are angered at talk of their daughters’ ordeal. They are dismayed to see how quickly the incident has aged their children.

“I think it was a blow to realize that as careful as we are we can’t be careful enough,” said a mother.

For some of the families, the ordeal has not only shaken their faith in the judicial system, but also in the public schools. They wonder why a teacher once investigated for rape was allowed around their daughters. They wonder why he was allowed to hug students even after the principal warned him not to in 1993.

“I really want to believe in the public school system,” said one mother. “There are more good teachers out there than bad … but I have a harder time.”

Despite the turbulence of the last eight months, several families said they have grown much closer. And they have found that many students and teachers are supportive of them. One girl said a boy approached her at school and told her she was his hero for being so brave.

“The whole reason we came forward was because we didn’t want it to happen to someone else,” said a 14-year-old girl. “I know I still did the right thing.”

, DataTimes