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- OKLAHOMA CITY
(Reuters) -
An Oklahoma high school suspended a 15-year-old student
after accusing
her of casting a magic spell that caused a teacher to
become sick, lawyers
for the student said on Friday.
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- The American Civil
Liberties Union said it had filed
a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, on behalf of student
Brandi Blackbear, charging that
the assistant principal of Union Intermediate
High School in Broken
Arrow, Oklahoma, suspended her for 15 days last December
for supposedly
casting a spell.
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- The suit also charged the Tulsa-area Union Public Schools
with
repeatedly violating Blackbear's civil rights by seizing notebooks
she
used to write horror stories and barring her from drawing or wearing
signs of the pagan religion Wicca.
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- ``It's hard for me to believe
that in the year 2000 I
am walking into court to defend my daughter
against charges of witchcraft
brought by her own school,'' said Timothy
Blackbear, Brandi's father. His
daughter is now a 10th grader.
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- Joann Bell, executive
director of the ACLU's Oklahoma
chapter, said the ``outlandish
accusations'' had made Blackbear's life
at school unbearable.
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- ``I, for one, would
like to see the so-called evidence
this school has that a 15-year-old
girl made a grown man sick by casting
a magic spell,'' Bell
said.
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- A
lawyer for the school district declined to comment.
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- The lawsuit, filed on Thursday,
alleges that Blackbear
was summoned to the office of assistant
principal Charlie Bushyhead last
December after a teacher fell ill, and
was questioned about her interest
in Wicca.
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- According to the lawsuit,
Brandi Blackbear had read a
library book about Wicca beliefs and, under
aggressive interrogation by
Bushyhead, said she might be a Wiccan. In
fact, Blackbear is a Roman Catholic,
according to the newspaper Tulsa
World.
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- ``The interview culminated with Defendant Bushyhead accusing
Plaintiff, Brandi Blackbear, of casting spells causing (a teacher at the
school) ... to be sick and to be hospitalized,'' the lawsuit said.
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- The lawsuit stated
that because of the ``unknown cause''
of the teacher's illness,
Bushyhead advised the 15-year-old girl ''that
she was an immediate
threat to the school and summarily suspended her for
what he
arbitrarily determined to be a disruption of the education
process.''
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- Doug Mann, the school district's attorney, declined to
comment,
saying laws protecting the school records of juveniles barred
him and
the district from responding outside of court.
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- ``It's totally unfair that we
are gagged by federal and
state law and they can say anything they
want,'' Mann said. ``If the parents
will sign a release for what's in
the girl's files, we will talk about
the true facts.''
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- The lawsuit alleged
Blackbear's civil rights also were
violated when school officials
prohibited her from wearing or drawing in
school any symbols related to
Wicca, a religion that dates back to pre-Christian
nature
worship.
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- The ACLU is seeking an undisclosed amount of punitive
and
financial damages for Blackbear, a declaration that the school violated
the girl's rights, an injunction preventing the school from banning the
wearing of any non-Christian religious paraphernalia and an order
expunging
her school record.
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