One of the four current and former Grafton High School administrators who are defendants in a $10 million wrongful-death lawsuit has had the case against him dismissed by Circuit Court Judge R. Bruce Long after Long decided there was no evidence against him.
The case was dropped against Joseph Erfe, one of the guidance counselors at the school. The case remains against current assistant principal Karen Fahringer, former assistant principal Craig Reed and former principal Paul Hopkins. Arguments have centered on whether the administrators did enough to intervene against alleged bullying toward Christian Taylor, a 16-year-old Grafton High student who committed suicide in 2010. His mother, Alise Williams, filed the suit.
A motion was filed in the last minutes of Thursday’s proceedings by defense attorney David Corrigan to have the case dismissed against all four of the defendants. Long will rule Friday morning on whether the case can be dropped against the other three. If he lets the case proceed, the defense will make its arguments and the case will be decided by the jury of six men and three women.
Fahringer testified Thursday morning about what she did to prevent the alleged bullying. She said she interviewed some students while Reed interviewed others — their principal Paul Hopkins had assigned them to work as a team when they developed a plan to address the concerns brought forth by Taylor and his friend, Alec Vigil, about three weeks before Taylor hanged himself using a dog leash in his bedroom closet. Their interviews spanned both the group of alleged bullies and Taylor and his group of friends.
She said she monitored the students in the hall, which Reed also testified to doing when he took the stand Wednesday.
“Until May 27, they couldn’t move in the building without us noticing,” Fahringer said of the group of alleged bullies and Taylor and his friends.
Over Wednesday and Thursday’s proceedings, the administrators testified to moving the two groups apart in the cafeteria where much of the alleged bullying is said to have occurred, according to members of Taylor’s group who testified on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Alise Williams took the stand after Fahringer. She testified that she looked Reed in the eye at a meeting a few days after the bullying allegations surfaced and asked him if he could keep Taylor safe, because if he couldn’t, she would remove him from the school. She said he answered yes to that question.
Williams sobbed as she testified about the morning of the day Taylor committed suicide – Memorial Day 2010 – saying he came and wrapped his arms around her and said, “I love you mom, no matter what,” and that he stayed in that position for about 20 minutes.
During cross examination, Corrigan asked Williams about her past, including a 22-month jail sentence in Oklahoma when Taylor was a young child. Williams testified that during that time, she knew Taylor and another one of her children lived with Taylor’s father and grandmother, though she was unsure of the living arrangements. Corrigan also asked about a daughter, whom Williams had given to a family friend after the friend suffered a tragedy. Williams said the friend’s son had accidentally shot a man who was having an affair with his wife after discovering them in bed together, then turned the gun on himself. The son of the family friend died, and Williams said she felt bad for her friend – the mother of the shooter- so she gave the woman her newborn daughter.
In the afternoon, the defense presented two expert witnesses: the first was Earl Wayne Flora, a Williamsburg psychologist who reviewed documents connected to the case. Flora said his review of the court documents led him to believe that Taylor suffered from a major depressive disorder with psychotic features that were tied to his mood. When Corrigan questioned Flora, the conversation centered on how he had never met Taylor and how Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder was the only condition Taylor had ever been diagnosed with by a medical professional. Flora testified to attending Bible College and starting a church in Puerto Rico before moving to Florida, where he earned a doctorate in psychology from the Caribbean Institute for Advanced Studies, which is now known as Carlos Albizu University.
The second expert witness, Frank Marlow, once served as a superintendent of schools in the Northeast. His testimony was presented via a nearly three-hour videotaped deposition. Marlow testified he had never met Taylor or any of the students or administrators involved in the case. Like Flora, Marlow testified to having reviewed court documents connected to the case, which he used to formulate his opinion. It was in his opinion that the administrators did not do enough to address the bullying claims. Marlow said he would have suspended the alleged bullies for at least 10 days based on evidence presented in the case.
Corrigan asked Marlow what specific events he would have cited to suspend the alleged bullies, to which Marlow replied a student had said in a deposition that they had made fun of a girl’s pants and a pair of fingerless gloves Taylor wore.
The Trial So Far
Tuesday’s portion of the trial featured the opening arguments. One of Williams’ attorneys, Joseph Stellute, said in his opening argument that he would prove a group of bullies picked on Taylor in the mornings, at lunch, in the halls and after school, especially in the weeks leading up to Taylor’s suicide. He said the bullies would call Taylor “emo” and “gay” and that they told him to “go in the corner and cut your wrists and kill yourself.”
Stellute said the administrators referred to the alleged bullying as a “he said, she said” situation.
Corrigan said in his opening argument that Taylor did not bring the bullying to anyone’s attention until he was called to the nurse’s office due to a series of self-inflicted cuts on his arms. He said the administrators then put a plan in place that included e-mails to all of Taylor’s teachers that allowed him to leave class whenever he needed to so that he could speak with someone, the monitoring of hallways where Taylor might run into the alleged bullies, separation of the two groups during their lunch periods, interviews with the alleged bullies — who denied the bullying or knowing Taylor — and phonecalls to the parents of the alleged bullies.
You can read about Tuesday’s portion of the trial by clicking here.
During Wednesday’s portion of the trial, attorneys questioned friends of Taylor, including his girlfriend and a boy who was not a family member but lived in Williams’ home. They testified that Taylor seemed to be in high spirits in the days before his death, and that they drank together the night before Taylor died, with Williams supplying the alcohol and becoming drunk during the party.
A girl who had sat at the alleged bullies’ lunch table characterized the name-calling as something that cut both ways and were never violent. She claimed the incidents stopped after administrators pulled the students aside and moved their lunchroom seating arrangements.
You can read about Wednesday’s portion of the trial by clicking here.
