Teenager facing charges for prank

A prank inspired by the R-rated college comedy “Van Wilder” has a Coeur d’Alene High School student facing criminal charges.

The 17-year-old was arrested and charged with three counts of disturbing the peace after allegedly sending brownies with semen on them to a fellow student on Valentine’s Day. That student shared the brownies with two other teens, according to Coeur d’Alene Police reports.

The Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office said the student could face a maximum of 90 days in juvenile detention for each charge. The student has agreed to admit to the charges, according to court records. Sentencing has been scheduled for April 4.

According to police reports, the student was upset with the other student for “putting peanut butter in his grilled cheese sandwich” days earlier. He told School Resource Officer Jeff Walther that “he hated peanut butter and it made him more mad than he could explain,” the report stated.

The brownies were reportedly sent “from a secret admirer.” The students who ate the brownies afterward heard from classmates that the teen “told everyone in school how he masturbated on the brownies,” the report said.

Walther was contacted at his in-school office after a fight broke out between the two teens in the school cafeteria. After first denying that he had put semen on the brownies, the teen admitted to Walther that his sister was baking brownies for her friends and he took three of them and masturbated onto them.

He told Walther he got the idea from the 2002 movie “Van Wilder.” Characters in the movie deliver pastries filled with dog semen to a fraternity house as a prank. The Coeur d’Alene student was arrested and booked into juvenile detention.

Parents of the three victims were notified so they could have their children tested for anything that could be transmitted through the body fluid, according to police reports.

Panhandle Health spokeswoman Susan Cuff said the chance of the students’ health being affected would be “extremely remote.”

“Semen wouldn’t survive the stomach acids and digestion process,” Cuff said. “Anything that’s in it would not survive being out of the body for any period of time.”

Cuff said the only possible concern could be the spread of Hepatitis B, but for students to contract the disease, she said, the semen would have had to come into contact with an open and bleeding sore.

School Superintendent Harry Amend said he could not comment on student discipline issues or say if the student was still attending school. He also would not comment on any health concerns or say if parents were notified.

The father of the accused teen said his son “is doing fine.”

“This is a huge misunderstanding,” said the father, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of his minor son.

The Spokesman-Review typically does not identify minors charged with crimes.

The father said the family’s attorney had asked him not to comment and there was “probable pending litigation against the school district” for “false arrest and all kinds of things,” including “false imprisonment.”

Coeur d’Alene attorney Muriel Burke declined to comment on the case or confirm whether her client planned to file suit against the district.

Kootenai County Judge Robert Burton signed a conditional release order Feb. 17, allowing the student’s release from juvenile detention.

One condition of the release was that the student have no contact with the students who ate the brownies.