Cupertino Union School District -- Child Abuse: Part x, The Miraculous Apparition of Colleen N.

 During Karen M.'s deposition, our lawyer Andrea had asked her exactly who was present in the office on the afternoon I collected P. from Dilworth Elementary -- on the day of the culminating incident that led up to the lawsuit. Karen M. had responded with refreshing honesty. To be fair, she had included the falsehood that P. had run into a window frame and bumped her head, but in terms of those present, she was truthful. She mentioned that she herself, Heather D., the behaviorist, Sandy J., the therapist, I, and my four children were present. 

During the trial, however, we witnessed the miraculous apparition of Colleen N., patron saint of child abusers, who retroactively materialized from the ether at the eleventh hour to save the day. According to Karen M. in her trial testimony, Colleen N. was in the office that day, and Colleen and I had stood side by side and watched as P. ran into a window frame and bashed her head. Karen M. added some embellishments to try to make the story seem more plausible. Colleen had left her purse on the floor of the office and P. had trampled it. The implication was obvious: I was a terrible person who had decided to use my child's accident to sue a poor, innocent schoolteacher. 

Now I had spoken to Colleen months before the trial and asked her if she had seen anything that afternoon. She told me she was at the school that morning and had helped to search for P., but she had not collected her son from school that day. That particular day was a Tuesday, and her mother picked up her son on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, no, she was not there.  

By now I was distraught. Karen M. was lying, and she had obviously colluded with Colleen N. in fabricating this falsehood. Colleen was scheduled to testify next and would doubtless affirm their story. And why would the jurors believe me over Colleen? Most people don't lie. Why would they assume Colleen was lying? I was convinced we would now lose the suit, my daughter would be branded as a liar, and we'd have to pay the district's legal expenses. But there was one little strategy that remained to us. 

There was a break in proceedings after Karen M.'s testimony. Just before Colleen was due to take the stand, we gathered outside the court room, waiting for the doors to open. Colleen N. sat nearby emanating resentment and rancor. There then followed a little discussion -- within Colleen's hearing -- about the "CCTV footage" from the office that day. This would clarify exactly who was present when I picked P. up from school. Now I don't know if such video actually existed, but one thing Colleen and I both knew for certain -- if it was out there somewhere, she wasn't in it!

As the discussion proceeded, Colleen looked increasingly furtive. And then, as sometimes happened when she was stressed, her eyes began to writhe in her head and her head began to loll from side to side. She was clearly thinking hard. I wondered whether she was genuinely delusional, in which case she would probably place herself in the classroom in full view of the "camera," or whether she would simply flat out lie, in which case she would need to find a reason why she did not appear in the putative video. As it happened, she flat out lied.

On the stand, Colleen claimed she wasn't actually in the office. She wasn't quite sure where she was. Down a corridor, maybe ... somewhere ... She didn't know where her son was either, but apparently he was "around." And she hadn't actually seen P. run into the window frame. She had heard a thump. At that, she dramatically clutched her heart.

"As a mother, you just know that sound," she pronounced rather breathlessly, the very image of the loving and caring parent, the archetypal mother figure whose concern for P.'s welfare was boundless. 

"Did Paige cry?" asked Andrea. A sage question.

Now Colleen was stuck. Her claim that she had heard rather than seen P. hurt herself was fairly clever. If "the video" surfaced, she would have plausible deniability. She could claim she must have heard something else and had simply made an honest mistake. Now she had to commit to Karen M.'s story or not, and she clearly didn't have much faith in it. We had a little more writhing of the eyes and lolling of the head.

"Real tears or crocodile tears?" she eventually spat, rather damaging her carefully crafted depiction of herself as a tender-hearted mother figure.

"Well," persisted Andrea, "did she cry?"

Colleen seemed panicky. All she could do was repeat, wild-eyed, "Real tears or crocodile tears?" 

At this point, both Karen M. and the district's lawyer, Mark D., were looking extremely puzzled. Despite the gravity of the situation, I had to hide a smile. Mark later tried to "fix" the problem. 

"Well, you see, yes, Karen M. didn't mention in her deposition that Colleen N. was present in the office that day, but she didn't say she was not there. And that means she could have been there."

This made no sense. Of course the teacher would have mentioned the presence of such a witness in her deposition! It would have been one of the first things she said. If that had been how P. was hurt, the case would never have gone to trial. Mark D. must have known that Karen M. and Colleen were lying. I give him credit for not being stupid enough to believe them. And yet he presented them and their story to the court. 

I truly believe that manipulating poor, crazy Colleen N. to perjure herself in federal court was a clear case of witness tampering. The "CCTV footage" story was not witness tampering. Those involved were not trying to get anyone to lie. Instead they were trying to get Colleen to tell the truth, or at least to lie a little less. 

Further, there is no doubt in my mind that the district's recruitment of character witnesses for Karen M. also constituted witness tampering. Two other parents, Cindy S. and Jim O., both said "someone from the district" had contacted them before the trial, and they were fed Colleen N.'s apocryphal account. Of course they both initially believed what they had been told. Why would they not? It had taken me a very long time to realize just how ruthless and unscrupulous our opposition actually was. The district's strategy was to isolate and demonize anyone who stood up to them, and the administration was quite content to lie and employ lawyers, whatever the cost, to advance that process.

But who would the jurors believe? I anxiously scanned their inscrutable faces.

Later, I would learn that they thought Colleen was unhinged and malicious, and they would completely dismiss her testimony. They had listened as Colleen N. claimed she was in the office half an hour after school ended -- which was when I arrived to pick up P. -- because she had stayed on to talk to Sally P., the summer school principal. But they also recalled that Sally P., in her testimony, had made it very clear that she had not seen or talked to Colleen N. that afternoon. They would recall that Sally P. had testified that Karen M. brought P. to the office, saying there had been an accident and that she needed an ice pack for P.'s head, a couple of hours before I picked her up from school, and they would doubt that there had been a second blow to the head. They would note that the nature and location of the bump on P.'s head was not explained by running into a window frame but was exactly explained by P.'s account of being driven headfirst into the floor. They would note that the supposed window incident didn't explain the abrasion, documented by police photographs, on P.'s shoulder.

Above all, they would conclude that the district's defense was comprehensively dishonest. Ultimately, the district's lies actually helped us.