The REAL Complaints About Julie Amero

There is no doubt the victims in the Amero case complained about Julie Amero but the police reports never transcribed what the real complaints were.

Why? Julie Amero was tried and convicted by school administrators in the press and to the parents. The police were merely the instruments of getting her to a "fair trial" that would in the immortal words of a Norwich Bulletin -cough- journalist, "She’ll get what’s due to her"!

Today, the phrase "fair trial" in America is as meaningful as the words "new and improved" on a bottle of detergent. Fair trials have simply become the public spectacles in which enraged public mobs mete out their anger through the play-acting of the court. The state, prosecutors and police are endowed with unlimited resources by which to toy with the accused and their rag-doll defense attorneys. And the public are forever fascinated by these Kafka inspired passion plays.

It is STILL unclear what Julie Amero was convicted of and it torments her as much as those who try to defend her. She was depressed at her trial and, not surprisingly, remains distressed. She has a right to be. Her situation is not significantly different from a torture technique on political prisoners around the world.

"Confess!", the prisoner is told.

"To what?", the prisoner replies.

"You know what!", the torturer retorts. And so it repeats, over and over. The prisoner confessing to every petty foible they can imagine and many they did not do. But nothing satisfies the torturer.

We all have proof Amero did nothing inappropriate. Smith, the prosecutor has and had it. So did the police, the school administrators. The judge should have known, should have had the same suspicions we all have, but played the willing fool instead. Why spoil the public humiliation, the gratification of a hungry mob, why ruin the spectacle? In small town America you can get away with kangaroo courts if nobody is watching.

Here's what they knew or should have known had they read the statements of the students.

Only three "victims" claim to have seen pornography from their seats. This group is clustered in the second Language Arts class. None of the students sitting in the same seats in the first or third classes report any such thing. Many of these students use precisely the same description of what they saw, "little pictures". To put this into context, the screen sizes used in schools are the smaller 14 or 15 inch monitors so when we are told students sitting approximately 10 feet away looking at a screen tilted at an angle away from them see little pictures we can believe they were little.

But seven other students were not to be denied. They all admit that when they heard the rumor that the teacher was surfing for porn, they made excuse to visit her desk. So a small parade of students, find a question, or need to use the bathroom, or have a piece of paper that needs to be thrown away at the teacher's desk. Almost to a student, though, they admit they want to see the porn.

But here's where the students start complaining.

Victim #8 complains that Julie clicks off the screen. Victim #3, corroborates this.

Victim #1 so aggressively approaches Julie that she has to push his face away and admonishes him not to look at the screen. In the sequence of events, victim #1's behavior implies an a priori expectation that something on the screen is or will be of interest and this may be the trigger source for the rumors that swirl around the first Language Arts class and co-ordinate around the special interest group in the second Language Arts class.

A student who is not listed as a victim but who loudly claim to know everyone else's experience walks up and sees nothing more than a server error message on the screen. His vicarious descriptions of classroom logistics makes interesting reading nonetheless because the porn story oneupmanship between students shows a storyline here.

Victim #7 complains that Julie turned the monitor to the wall when he approached.

Victim #8 complains that when the teacher noticed her advances, she clicked off the monitor. The police narrative changes the word 'monitor' to 'screen'.

Victim #10 claims, "when she realized I was coming she shifted her body to block the screen. She let me print my story and I went back to my desk."

In fact in all three classes Julie was in only a handful of students make salacious claims and those we'll talk about at another time. Furthermore, we know from police documents that other students walked up to Julie's desk and report no pornography but because they aren't "victims" the police ignore their statements.

And we also know that Principal Fain has preceded all police interrogations with his own vigilante interrogation of over 60 students armed with Mr. Hartz's CD of pornographic sites visited. So by the time the students talk to police they already predisposed and maybe even encouraged to elaborate on the events of that day.

The irreparable harm that these blundering, groping moral guardians of society inflict on Julie Amero is the true crime. Yet not a one of the guilty has even been inconvenienced.

And far from being negligent there's plenty of evidence that Julie did the right thing over and over again but never realized she was attempting to stop a phenomenon that is as relentless as a Hollywood monster that won't die.

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