Why are Jane and John Doe Hiding?
Under the American legal system, there are appropriately few exceptions to the principle that a lawsuit must include the real name of the plaintiff – and that the accused be allowed to face their accuser in court.
The exceptions under which plaintiffs can file suit under a pseudonym usually include sexual abuse, which has been the case in a number of lawsuits against Roman Catholic archdioceses, as well as mental illness, personal safety and abandoned children.
But in a disturbing end run around that time-honored standard, the parents of a high school student are hiding behind a “Jane and John Doe” moniker in their civil suit against Bruce H. Smith Jr., a history teacher at Pleasant Valley High School in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.
The Does accuse Smith of showing their daughter and other 16- and 17-year-old students photos of Sharon Tate and other nude and dismembered victims of the Charles Manson Family, and teaching from an unpublished personal memoir that includes sexual references.
The Doe’s lawyer, Cynthia Pollick, did not respond to my query about why they are being secretive, nor is it clear whether the federal court in which the suit was filed will allow it to go forward with pseudononymous plaintiffs.
What is obvious is that the Does, who are demanding a jury trial, are troublemaking wackjobs.
They claim in their suit that their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated, that the district “retaliated” against them by revealing their names, that Smith “scared them” when he called them in an apparent effort to mend fences, and that they “have suffered substantial anxiety and emotional distress.”
The school district denies revealing the Does’ names and says it followed proper procedures after the parents complained.
Smith has not spoken publicly, but students say that he regularly gives students advance warning before presenting graphic images or excerpts from his memoirs, and uses them to reach students desensitized to violence and sex.
In the end, the Does will do far more harm to their child than Smith could have ever done.
This is because Smith is a teacher so beloved that area Internet bulletin boards are full of emails from present and former students praising him for his infectious teaching style and condemning the Does. There even was a demonstration in support of Smith outside of Pleasant Valley High School last weekend.
It is widely know at the school who the Goodie Four Shoes are, and their daughter surely will be teased, ridiculed and ostracized, a lesson that is not part of Smith’s creative curriculum.
This is a situation where it would be justifiable to out Jane and John Doe in the local newspaper for their self-righteous cowardice, but the Pocono Record doesn’t do bold or courageous, so I’m not holding my breath.
13 Responses to “Why are Jane and John Doe Hiding?”
Yet another example of parents’ failures actively working against the education system and a good counter-point to Jason’s recent post.
As far as the daughter being ostracized, that’s a good lesson too. Society’s negative reactions to stupid, selfish acts discourage others from behaving the same way. Think about how much more screwed up the world would be if sensible people let acts like this go unchallenged.
Here’s another endorsement of Mr. Smith that was posted on a Pocono Record message board by a former student:
“ok let me say one thing all these parents are talking about all the thing Mr smith said in class and are getting mad get over it im a 18 year old senior at VHS and I think Mr smith is one of the best teacher PV got. and if u don’t want your kids hearing this well don’t like them watch MTV or VH1 or HBO bc all these kids in hes class hear more crazy thing just walking down then hallway. bc the thing that come on some of these show and or channel are sex sex sex and im sure that “john and Jane doe” don’t have any problem with that girl watching this. like if your kids haven’t heard about SEX well there bigger problem then what Mr smith said. like what are ur parents teaching you bc when they go off to college their gunna have a big wall in front of them and she not gunna know what to bc her mom or dad didn’t teach her. people need to stop being so up tight and for the person who said that your kids only like hes class bc its a joke maybe u thought it was a joke but I don’t just bc he know how to teach don’t hate. hes a really good person people need to listen to one of hes class before they can just judge him”
I don’t know what they’re teaching at Pleasant Valley, but it isn’t grammar, punctuation, or spelling.
LOL G Weightman, good point. Logical thinking seems to be a bit lacking in the curriculum as well.
Shaun, do you really not think (from the evidence that’s been presented) that this teacher may be crossing lines of propriety? Maybe he generally is a good teacher and we’ve all known those types who treat the kids as adults (which is a good thing, as long as some boundaries are maintained). But why in the world is it considered appropriate for a high school teacher to “reach students desensitized to violence and sex”? That’s part of the curriculum?? And even if we felt that this was a good objective, is he really qualified to do it in an appropriate manner?
C Stanley, do you ever wonder where school administrators are in these situations? Isn’t their job to oversee and guide teachers?
It’s also worth considering that a teacher who can connect with kids as Smith obviously does is doing something right. Something that we need more, not less of.
I think that the school needs to worry more about student like the one G. Weightman just showed us and less about the creative style of one of their teachers. 18 years old and writing like that? Even taking out the instant messaging acronyms the whole thing is painful to read.
You have every right to be offended by shocking images, but if it’s true that they were given ample warning of the subject matter, well tough. I was shown aborted fetuses in jars and lungs blackened by cancer in the seventh grade, and frankly I think it did me good. If you have a problem with it then talk to the teacher, or the administrator. The last thing we need is our precious few creative teachers shutting themselves down because of fear of litigation.
C Stanley:
A most appropriate question.
Based on what I have read, including the lawsuit, and my knowledge of the area, a case might be made that the teacher crossed the line.
Yet the high school principal and school district superintendent are supporting the teacher and doing so publicly. This is a surprising and, I daresay, welcome development in an area that is at heart extremely conservative and at a time when school officials need to be especially midful of not being seen as too liberal or politically correct.
My conclusion would be that Smith is such a good teacher, albeit an unconventional one, that the bad publicity and court showdown are prices worth paying.
I think there’s a lot more here than what we know. One of the articles you link to, Shaun, implies that the teacher was probably suspended for 10 days in response to some prior complaint. I don’t know, in a world where teachers do ignore barriers too often (and an oversexualized culture where teenaged girls provoke that), some of the things that he’s alleged to have said or done are a bit too creepy to pass the sniff test. He might be a great teacher in a lot of regards, but the administration should definitely take these accusations seriously AND parents should be able to make complaints without being ostracized as it appears is happening to this family (you wonder why they want to try to protect their identity?)
And the problem with the policy of allowing kids to opt out of viewing provocative materials is, of course, that ostracism. From reading the articles, it’s obvious that when this student expressed a desire to not partake, she was ridiculed for it and everyone is saying that this family just “doesn’t get it”. Well, count me as one who doesn’t get it either, I guess. As a parent, I’ll teach my kids to understand the horrors of violence and the morality of sex, thank you very much. Teachers need not apply for that job.
C Stanley:
Good points all, although your last one — that it is the parents’ responsibility to teach their kids what the real world is about — is too often observed in the breach. That does not mean that the Teacher Smiths of the world are compelled to do si, but if kids don’t learn this stuff at school they too often don’t learn it at all, or learn it the hard way on the street.
Well, Shaun, that attitude is exactly why the religious right feel that they are justified in pushing for the inclusion of religious ideas in public schools. Neither ‘side’ has the right to enforce their own views on morality on kids in a public school setting.
I think we tend to infantilize young adults and older adolescents today.
Sorry, but in my opinion, 16 and 17 year olds are not precious little innocents requiring a cocoon around them. Hell, at 17 you can go Iraq and watch bloodshed and the horror of war firsthand.
That said, this line struck me:
I am trying real hard, but I cannot see how these subjects would come up in a standard history lesson. It is not that these discussions will scar little Jane and Johnny for life at their age, but rather if they are appropriate for any classroom, and for the teacher to be talking about them.
Seems likely, IMHO, that you have a teacher that is trying a bit too hard to still be ‘one of the kids’, and trying to show how cool he is, etc. Or, maybe he is perhaps a little too interested in the habits and actions of late teen girls. That is WAY more worrisome to me, within the confines of these articles, than the Manson-related stuff.
Austin Roth,
That’s mainly my point too, that some of the comments are pretty close to red flags for sexual boundaries between teacher and student being crossed.
But even on the Manson/ desensitization stuff, I still object to the idea that this editorializing is the job of a public school. It’s not even a matter of trying to protect my kids from the modern culture, it’s that I want to prevent them from being indoctrinated into anyone else’s view of the modern culture. If they’re going to allow a teacher to engage in that at all, at the very least it ought to be in an elective course and let the opt in/out be in the form of taking the class or not taking it. This kind of commentary has no place in a high school level required course classroom.
I’m troubled by the fact that the teacher had the students read his “unpublished memoir” – or, as most people would call it, his journals. It’s one thing to have students read sexually explicit material. It’s quite another matter to have students read sexually explicit memories of their teacher. To me that’s crossing a line.
Another note: The description of this teacher reminds me of one of my high school English teachers. This teacher – I’ll call Mr. F. – was one of the best teachers I ever had. He was unorthodox and enthusiastic and really engaged us. He was also fired after an incident where made some inappropriate sexual comments to a girl in my class. I won’t go into details, but at the time I thought it was ridiculous. I thought the girl was overly sensitive and I was pissed that she got a great teacher fired.
With 20 years hindsight, I now believe that while firing Mr. F. may have been an over-reaction, he did cross a line, and it was a line he crossed often. Part of his teaching style was that we felt like he was one of us. I think at times he worried a little too much about being one of us that sometimes he forgot he was the teacher. He related a little too closely to the teenage boys in the class, and he was a little too flirtatious with the girls. It sounds as if Smith is a similar type of teacher.
I can’t speak for all teenage girls, but when I was one it made me very uncomfortable when older men flirted with me or made it clear they were attracted to me. I can imagine that some teenage girls in this class would be uncomfortable reading about their teacher’s sex life and having him discuss sexual material. I know I would have been. And I would’ve been afraid to speak out against a popular teacher too.
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