CINCINNATI (AP) - A former high school teacher
is accusing school district administrators of discriminating against her
because of a rare phobia she says she has: a fear of young children.
Maria Waltherr-Willard, 61, had been
teaching Spanish and French at Mariemont
High School in Cincinnati since 1976.
Waltherr-Willard, who does not have
children of her own, said that when she was transferred to the district's
middle school in 2009, the seventh- and eighth-graders triggered her phobia,
causing her blood pressure to soar and forcing her to retire in the middle of
the 2010-2011 school year.
In her lawsuit against the district,
filed in federal court in Cincinnati,
Waltherr-Willard said that her fear of young children falls under the federal
American with Disabilities Act and that the district violated it by
transferring her in the first place and then refusing to allow her to return to
the high school.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Gary Winters, the school district's
attorney, said Tuesday that Waltherr-Willard was transferred because the French
program at the high school was being turned into an online one and that the
middle school needed a Spanish teacher.
"She wants money," Winters
said of Walter-Willard's motivation to sue. "Let's keep in mind that our
goal here is to provide the best teachers for students and the best academic
experience for students, which certainly wasn't accomplished by her walking out
on them in the middle of the year."
Waltherr-Willard and her attorney,
Brad Weber, did not return calls for comment Tuesday.
Winters also denied Walter-Willard's
claim that the district transferred her out of retaliation for her unauthorized
comments to parents about the French program ending - "the beginning of a
deliberate, systematic and calculated effort to squeeze her out of a job
altogether," Weber wrote in a July 2011 letter to the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission.
The lawsuit said that Waltherr-Willard
has been treated for her phobia since 1991 and also suffers from general
anxiety disorder, high blood pressure and a gastrointestinal illness. She was
managing her conditions well until the transfer, according to the lawsuit.
Working with the younger students
adversely affected health, the lawsuit said.
She was "unable to control her
blood pressure, which was so high at times that it posed a stroke risk,"
according to the lawsuit, which includes a statement from her doctor about her
high blood pressure. "The mental anguish suffered by (Waltherr-Willard) is
serious and of a nature that no reasonable person could be expected to endure
the same."
The lawsuit was filed in June and is
set to go to trial in February 2014. A judge last week dismissed three of the
ex-teacher's claims, but left discrimination claims standing.
The lawsuit says that
Waltherr-Willard has lost out on at least $100,000 of potential income as a
result of her retirement.
Winters said that doesn't make
sense, considering that Waltherr-Willard's take from retirement is 89 percent
of what her annual salary was, which was around $80,000.
Patrick McGrath, a clinical
psychologist and director of the Center for Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive
Disorders near Chicago,
said that he has treated patients who have fears involving children and that
anyone can be afraid of anything.
"A lot of people will look at
something someone's afraid of and say, 'There is no rational reason to be
afraid of that,'" he said. "But anxiety disorders are emotion-based.
... We've had mothers who wouldn't touch their children after they're
born."
He said most phobias begin with
people asking themselves, "What if?" and then imagining the
worst-case scenario.
"You can make an association to
something and be afraid of it," McGrath said. "If you get a phone
call that your mom was just in a horrible accident as you're locking the door,
you can make an association that bad news comes if you don't lock the door
right. It's a basic case of conditioning."
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