In fact, I’m sure she’s got an ‘A’ average right now. I can’t see what could have happened in class that would send her over the edge.”
“What about in her personal life? Has she broken up with her boyfriend? Her parents split up or anything?”
“You know, that’s just it. As much as I’ve taught Trish for over three years now it’s just . . . I mean . . . You know how with some kids you just have a closer relationship than with others, kids that you’re almost friends with?”
“Are you kidding me? Have you seen the group of kids that just left here?”
“But you know what I mean?”
“I think so, yes.”
“I like Trish. She’s a great kid. But we just don’t have that kind of relationship. I haven’t seen any information from her counsellor to indicate anything is going wrong. She hasn’t seemed any different. I just don’t know.”
I let this sink in for a moment to allow Carl a moment to collect his thoughts. When a suitable amount of time had passed—the lunch period wasn’t terribly long—I reluctantly stepped into the next, most difficult part of the conversation. “I hate to have to even ask this, but since you’ve taken me on as your legal counsel, we need to be frank with each other. Completely frank, okay?”
He looked back at me with apprehension. “Okay,” he replied.
“Carl, is there any truth to Trish’s allegations whatsoever?”
“Win, I told you . . .”
“Hold on,” I interrupted. “Hear me out, here.” I paused again. It’s hard to ask your friends if they’re sleeping with teenagers. “Is it possible you’ve done or said something Tricia could have misconstrued as some sort of sexual or romantic advance?”
I have to admit that watching the expression on Carl’s face spoke volumes to me. I’d found in my vast legal career that people’s faces very often answer a question much better than their words do. Face reading was a handy skill as well as disadvantageous. Sometimes, as legal counsel, especially as defence counsel, knowing the truth about your client isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Everyone deserves to have his legal interests fairly represented by counsel. And as a Legal Aid defence lawyer, I had to know I would be called upon to defend those who not only were guilty, but those who would not, under any circumstances, admit to their own guilt: not to their lawyer, likely not even to themselves.
Of course, at least part of the reason I had become disillusioned with the legal profession was the fact that I had to defend guilty people—defend them vigorously, and attempt to obtain their freedom. Somewhere along the way, a really good legal principle had been perverted: even a guilty person should not use the legal system to avoid justice; only to ensure proper legal procedures are followed in apportioning justice to the accused. In eight years, I’d had to subconsciously look the other way many times when forced to defend a client I knew was guilty. It’s a generally accepted defence practice not to ask a client outright about his or her innocence.
In Carl’s face, all I could see was confusion and genuine hurt. He not only couldn’t understand why Trish was making spurious allegations, it was causing him no small amount of anguish. He didn’t really even have to answer my question; he chose to anyway.
“I just don’t see how. I honestly don’t think we’ve ever even made physical contact. Ever. Let alone anything sexual. We’ve never kissed, we’ve never held hands, brushed shoulders, or bumped into each other in the hallway. Where the hell can she possibly be getting this from?”
“I don’t know, Carl. There could be a thousand reasons why she’s targeting you as the object of attention. It’s unlikely the reasons have anything to do with something you’ve done or haven’t done.”
He turned and faced me again. “So you believe me then? You believe I didn’t do anything wrong? I would never do anything to hurt a student, Win. I wouldn’t.”
“I know. I believe you. You’re right. I haven’t known you for long, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
He smiled slightly for the first time since he’d come into the room. “Thank you. That means a lot to me to have someone on my side.” He stood up and walked towards me. “Where do we go from here?”
“For starters,” I told him, “I’m going to have to talk to Tricia.”
Four
Let’s start with the confession right now that from a very early age I have had little success talking with members of the opposite sex. That I managed to talk to a woman long enough to actually get married was an amazing feat. Dissolving the marriage with a bitter, acrimonious divorce was a much easier task to accomplish. For a man who has made two careers essentially out of talking to people, my lack of communication skills was well documented by anyone who’d ever made the “mistake” (generally their term) of dating me. I have this uncanny ability not to talk about emotions, desires or anything that has to do with relationships.
Often my lack of skill runs so deep, I found myself destroying relationships I didn’t even know I was in. One evening in Grade Ten, a girl I went to school with challenged me to a game of tennis. It took me a long time to agree to play—nearly a minute—because I wasn’t much of a tennis player, and I really liked this girl. I mean, I really liked her (that’s Grade Ten-speak). What chance would I have if I showed her how much I sucked at the game? And why was she asking me anyway?
It was an unusually warm spring evening as we walked up to the tennis courts nearly two miles away. Sweat had formed on my brow, partially from the heat and partially due to my nervousness at spending an evening with this goddess from French class. We were walking past the well manicured lawn of a quaint little two-storey house about a block from home, when suddenly Melissa (a name I’m making up because even I can’t remember her actual name) grabbed my hand and pulled me through the oscillating lawn sprinkler, soaking us both in refreshing cold water. As we reached the edge of the lawn, I laughed, let go of Melissa’s hand and continued on to the tennis courts. Melissa later told friends she didn’t want to see me any more, since I obviously had no interest in pursuing a romance. Who knew that grabbing my hand was an expression of her romantic desires?
With a foundation based upon that type of historical success, I can’t say I was looking forward to sitting down to have a heart to heart chat with a female student about her “alleged” relationship with her teacher, my colleague, my friend. Sometimes, so I’ve been told, a teacher is one of the only people to whom a student is able to open up. A good teacher is often a good counsellor, even more so than the professional counsellors.
There are definitely protocols to follow in the kind of situation Carl had brought to me. Relationships between teachers and students were common enough that formal procedures had been established about how these situations should be handled. I hadn’t really gotten around to reading those formal procedures, hoping I would never find myself in a position to have to know them.
I knew at least what the union’s position was: no teacher should report on the professional conduct of another without first reporting their concern to the colleague in question. Even after that concern is raised with another teacher, he or she must be informed—in writing—of the intention to raise the issue with school management. The exception to this rule came when any sexual abuse, exploitation or inappropriate relationship
