Messages By: scribe42

Creepy??? How about SICK, DEMENTED, TWISTED, and so many other adjectives that I can't begin to describe with this freak. I woulda been so outta there YESTERDAY! This guy has gone beyond "stalking" and has managed to personify the very meaning of "Nut Job".

And yet, I know this woman is not alone. My own best friend was put through hell by her ex-husband while they were divorcing. HE was the one who wanted out of the marriage, claiming he'd "never loved her", even though he had been after her since we were in junior high. He got her pregnant when she was 17 so she would have to marry him, all to keep her from graduating and going away to college. Then he proceeded to stop her from getting her driver's license, her GED, and any further education that might have helped her in the future. Then, after three kids (the third he forced her to have!!!) and 15 years of giving her mental, verbal, and some physical abuse, he decided he wanted to leave. (Dr. Phil, someday, PLEASE do a show on these kinda guys who claim they "never loved her" when they want to leave. There is nothing more hurtful and devastating to a woman than that statement.)

And yet, my best friend's ex managed to take hurting her several steps further - he put a tap on her phone, trying to get info on any guys she might be dating for the purpose of trying to take the kids away, told lies to the children about their mother supposedly having affairs behind his back (HE was the one screwing around on her!), and the ultimate was when she was at work (at a convenience store - the ONLY employment she could find with no education), he changed the locks on the house and had his grandmother kidnap the kids, saying she had been asked by their mother to pick them up. My friend came to my house freaking out because she couldn't find her kids, and couldn't get into her house to call her relations in an effort to find them. We called the police, and they helped her get her kids away from his grandmother and the cops forced him to relinquish the keys to the house. And all this was done not just to hurt her, but done in an effort to push her over the bend so he could claim she was mentally unbalanced.

Hearing today's show brought all that back to me so clearly. What is it with some men that they can't just let someone go? Why do they have to do everything in their power to make these women's lives miserable? It is SO horrific to think about....

The only thing that comforts me now is knowing that YOU are going to help her, Dr. Phil. It appalls me to think that this guy believed that you would actually see things his way, as though HE is the victim, and it gives me a good feeling of justice to know that you won't let him continue to get away with this. GET HIM, DOC!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That IS good news, that now ALL WOMEN the world over will know what this guy is about, and hopefully NO OTHER WOMAN will take a chance on this psycho.

However, I somehow doubt he will learn anything from this experience. In his mind, he is RIGHT to do these psychotic things, and anyone who can try to justify such actions to five doctors and not accept what four of then have already told him, isn't going to accept that he is WRONG. He's already said he won't accept what Dr. Phil has to say on the matter - anything anyone tells him will never show him that he is WRONG. And that is sad sad sad.

I completely and totally agree with this - I feel that sooner or later, he's going to kill her if he can't possess her completely and totally. This is so scary to think of, but I can't see any other outcome from a man behaving this way. Jennifer's life is in danger, and I don't even doubt that he would hurt the kids in an effort to punish her. This guy has GOT TO BE STOPPED before a tragedy occurs.

First off, I BELIEVE MRS. OGLETREE. I don't need a polygraph test to prove it to me. She's just another teacher being persecuted under a trend of the past 20 years where students are being believed over the word of respected teachers. Ten years ago as a reporter, I was witness to a set of little witches who accused a long-standing, highly-respected coach and principal of "touching their butts", simply because their mother was a friend of a woman who had an affair with the principal and was mad that the man didn't lose his job over the matter. After hearing their mother complain about it non-stop, they got together with a friend and made up the story, accused the principal, and suddenly he was under major suspicion and ended up having to leave a town he'd lived and worked in for over 30 years. And the little girls? They're grown up now and I'd love to know if they realize what a horrible thing they did to an innocent man just to make their mother happy.

 

As for myself, I left the teaching business for many reasons, but one of the major ones was the fact that I could possibly get sued for failing a student for not doing his work. I was warned by the principal that I could be sued by the parents of this student for "non-teaching" of their child!!! Never mind that they never stepped in to make sure he did his homework or his assignments - it was up to ME to make sure their child did it. In then end, I gave the kid a C- grade so he could pass. I have resented doing that to this day.

 

Another incident that I encountered that resonates with what Mrs. Ogletree is dealing with is less than her problem, but along the same lines just the same. During Research Paper time, I had given my students a calendar of when certain elements were due, and they had signed contracts with me saying they understood what was required of them and their deadlines. Thus, they knew well ahead of time that on a Friday, before their mid-six weeks reports were to be turned in to the Principal, their file cards would be due. As they exited the class, I held out a sack and they dumped them in - all but one girl. She said she had forgotten them in her locker and would bring them by before school let out. She didn't turn them in before I left for the day at 5 p.m. So I turned in her id-six weeks report that she was failing, which meant she wouldn't get to play basketball that coming Thursday. She KNEW the consequences and still failed to produce the cards on time.

 

Next thing I knew, her parents were up at the school claiming that their daughter had told them that she had spoken to me about it and that I had "verbally" given her until the following Friday to turn them in! A blatant LIE, but she had her two best friends all prepared to back her up - never mind that because of the way I had set up their Research Paper contracts, any changes would have to be typed up by me and signed and agreed upon by BOTH OF US. She had no such contract other than our original contract, but because her parents were prepared to get a lawyer involved, the principal (who was a piece of work himself!) immediately caved and forced me to give the girl an extra week to turn in her cards, whereas everyone else was given no such considerations. Having to go into class every day and see this girl's looks of obvious triumph over me will never go away from my mind, and after seeing so many other teachers being abused in a similar manner and having to defend themselves against the word of horrible, lying children just made me lose heart and leave the teaching business for good.

 

When I was a child, I was told by my parents that "if you get in trouble at school, you're gonna get it double at home!" and told to ALWAYS respect my teachers, so it never occurred to me that people would change so much as to let their children get away with such lies and manipulations, and now I'm watching your show and seeing yet another Texas teacher having to defend herself against the lies of little jerks whose parents are too scared of their own children to force them to tell the truth. Or else they're too scared to face their own failures as parents. I'm aware that yes, some teachers have broken faith with their administrations and with their students by committing such atrocities, but the majority of teachers are just hard-working, low-paid individuals who want to make it through to 4 p.m. and go home so they can try and forget what hell they go through every day dealing with these monsters, and it breaks my heart to see Mrs. Ogletree having to defend herself against a society that would sooner believe the worst of her than to confront the worst in their own children.

 

Thank you for letting me air this - I've been choking on it for 15 years and am glad to have a chance to let it out. I pray Mrs. Ogletree gets the vindication she sorely deserves.

I have to agree on the idea of putting cameras into classrooms. It's awful that it should come to that, but both teachers and students need some sort of backup to prove situations. I don't suggest that they be watched round the clock, but that there should at least be a tape recording that can be looked to should accusations be leveled either direction. As a former teacher, I know it would have made me feel safer at times when I had students that were much bigger and badder than myself, but it would have been good to have a record just in case.

I have a family connection to Glen Rose who agrees with you - these are three little punks who got mad at her for not giving them a good grade or whatever, and so they got back at her by making up a lie that they could back each other up on. The fact that one has recanted pretty much points a finger at the other two that they made it up to hurt Mrs. Ogletree, and I'm sorry her family has had to suffer the way myself and other teachers have had to suffer at the hands of lying little punks. I wish parents would make more of a stand against their own kids and insist they grow up with honesty and honor rather than allow them to sink into the muck of lies and destruction and then set them loose on an unsuspecting world.

Another thing everyone is missing about this teacher is this point: She VOLUNTEERED to be on the show!

 

Personally, if I was in her place and guilty, I don't think I'd have the guts to appear on international television and proclaim I was innocent with a straight face. I think it took incredible courage to come on tv and make a stand for herself like she did, and that says a lot to me about her innocence.

 

Of course, there are those who can come on TV and tell a load of lies, and there are those who only have the guts to tell their lies over the phone - I will be most interested to watch the body language of the young man who's going to be on tomorrow to face Mrs. Ogletree. From what I saw in the previews, he's never looking anyone in the eye when he speaks, and Mrs. Ogletree looked Dr. Phil straight in the eye the whole time today. As a former Speech Communications teacher, one of our areas of learning is how to spot non-verbal cues, and for lying there are such things as inability to look someone in the eyes while speaking, tugging at your ear, fidgeting with clothes, etc. I'll be watching him like a HAWK.

To a great extent I do agree with you and Jillyinoc that a teacher should never be alone with a student, but fifteen years ago when I was teaching, I lived right in the middle of town in the only house for rent in the little backwater place, and it was impossible to keep my location secret, and ultimately I had students coming by to say hi. Now, I had NO intentions of ever messing with my own life and job by messing with these kids, and frankly, as an adult I had no attraction to high school kids, and I would encourage them to move along after five minutes or so. Of course, I never had students show up by themselves, always with friends along, and I left the front door open the whole time they were there so there was never a chance I would be suspected of anything, and thus never was. Shoot, even 20 years ago, when I was a student in high school, I remember me and a couple of friends going over to see our journalism teacher at her new apartment to give her a house-warming gift!

 

It makes me sad that because someone like Mary Kay Latourneau broke the rules, that all teachers are now suspected before anything happens. Teachers have it hard enough as it is without this new thing overshadowing their daily work, and I think it's horrible that anyone accused and then vindicated of such charges should still lose their jobs and whatever life they made for themselves because some little punks feel the need to hurt someone just to make themselves feel like big men. SHEESH.

 

But just as a sidenote - right before I made the decision to leave the teaching business, we had a teacher meeting during which our principal advised us to NEVER touch a child, even if it's just a pat on the back. Why? Because we could be accused of "hitting" the kid and get sued. Now, this wasn't a warning for our own benefit - it was for the benefit of the SCHOOL BOARD AND ADMINISTRATION! There is so much fear of being sued in the schools these days that we can't even give kids the positive reinforcement of patting them on the back and saying, "GOOD JOB!" Once he told us that, all the heart of my job went out the window and I gave it up for good at the end of that year. There is no joy left in teaching, and situations such as these are not encouraging for those who want to teach and are very good at it. It's downright SCARY.

These laws and attitudes were in place LONG before George W. Bush took office - I love how people find ways to blame whoever the current president is for laws and other things he never had his hand on. This is an issue that requires ALL AMERICANS to decide that enough is enough and demand that our LAW MAKERS (ie, the House and Senate - remember, the president only approves or vetoes laws, he doesn't create them or support them through Congress!) do something about the situation and make it better. Don't create another witchhunt situation by blaming the President for something that has been evident for far longer than he has been in office.

I've got to laugh when I hear about this issue being a racist issue - from my experience, it's no such thing! In fact, I've never seen a black person so attired in all my time of being aware of the fad, which I became aware of in 1996 when two of my Hispanic students came to school with their pants draggin' the ground. Thank God they were wearing suspenders to make sure their drawers didn't drop, but I posed the question to one of them, what would you do if you were walking through school and your suspenders broke and you suddenly flashed the entire school? It must have made an impression on him because he never wore those pants in school again. And the only other people I've ever seen wear this "fashion" are white kids who fancy themselves "Gangsta's". I'm sure that black kids like to wear their pants that way, too, but I've never laid eyes on one of them. So, since black kids aren't the only ones wearing them, I hardly think it's a racist issue.

HOWEVER, I do consider it an issue of GOOD TASTE, and have to wonder why anyone of any color or persuasion would want to go around with their butts hanging out, skid marks and all. *LOL*