The state child advocate said Friday that the failure of Montville school officials to report that a substitute teacher was encouraging students to hit each other in a series of timed, one-on-one fights in math class last year is “egregious.”
Sarah Healy Eagan said she is following up with the state Department of Children and Families to find out how they are handling the school district’s apparent failure to follow the mandated reporter law. School employees are among the many professionals who are required by law to report suspected child abuse.
“It should have been a priority to make sure authorities were contacted and that families were in the know about what was occurring,” Eagan said.
Brian Levesque, Montville’s superintendent of schools, said in a written statement that the school system took “immediate action” by firing the teacher.
Calling it “so-called ‘student slapping horseplay,” he said, “At the time, based on the initial video that I viewed and the information I was provided, I didn’t feel that this was a law enforcement matter. Had I known then, what I know now, yes, I should have contacted police.”
Levesque also said no one was injured, although a warrant for the former sub’s arrest said one student suffered a bloody nose, a second began vomiting during a fight and a third suffered signs of emotional trauma.
The former substitute teacher, Ryan Fish, 23, of South Road in Bozrah, couldn’t be reached for comment Friday morning. A woman who picked up the phone said he was sleeping and hung up.
When interviewed by investigators, Fish told police “I’m an idiot” who just wanted to be friends with the students, according to the warrant for his arrest. He was arrested Thursday and charged with four counts of second-degree reckless endangerment, two counts of risk of injury to a minor and one count of breach of peace. He was fired on Oct. 10.
Police set Fish’s bail at $75,000; after his arraignment in Superior Court in Norwich, he was released on a written promise to return to court on May 8, a court clerk said.
Montville police began investigating reports of a “fight club” at Montville High in December, state police said. They learned that the fights happened in a classroom under the supervision of a substitute math teacher, Fish, and that four boys, ranging in age from 14 to 16, were involved, police said.
In interviews with police, Fish said that the fights started in September, and that he thinks there were four, according to the warrant for his arrest. Police said they have evidence — students’ cellphone videos — of two.
“I would let them be teenagers and get their energy out,” Fish told investigators, according to the warrant. He added, “I will admit that I did at one point egg them on.”
The boys who squared off seemed to be unevenly matched, police said, with one much smaller than the other. Some of the boys involved were not students in Fish’s math class, the warrant says.
According to the warrant, a social worker and juvenile court liaison with the state Department of Children and Families alerted police on Dec. 14 to a student who showed up in court with “real and identifiable symptoms of having been traumatized.”
The boy, whom police called Victim 1, reported that he had been robbed and beaten at Montville High by other students. He was taken to the William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich for a mental health evaluation, the warrant says.
The next day, the school resource officer talked to Assistant Principal Tatiana Patton and learned that the school system had known about a “fight club” since Oct. 10, the warrant says. Cellphone videos had surfaced of students slap-fighting each other in Fish’s math class, Patton told the officer. Patton had met with Principal Jeffrey Theodoss about the videos, and Fish was taken to Superintendent Brian Levesque, who fired him.
When the principal confronted Fish about the videos, Fish downplayed the incidents, saying, “Boys will be boys,” the warrant said.
On Dec. 18, a state police sergeant met with the superintendent and showed him a cellphone video from a concerned parent. The video “clearly showed a classroom and two students swinging full force at each other’s heads with open-handed strikes,” the warrant says. It also showed an adult employee, identified as Fish, standing in the background.
The sergeant asked Levesque to provide the Montville police with all cellphone videos and electronic data, such as emails, the school had about the matter, but the superintendent, citing school policy, declined to do so without a search warrant, police said.
When police obtained a warrant and reviewed the video clips, they saw what looked like two fights on two separate days. In one, Fish is seen and heard giving directions to the students who are fighting and moving a trash can out of the way so they can continue their fight, the warrant says.
A Montville detective viewed a video that showed Fish — while smiling and laughing — motioning with his hands in a way that appears to signal the start of a fight. But while one student then charged another, he stopped short of fighting the other student, according to the warrant.
When police began interviewing the students involved in the fights, one said Fish started one fight by saying, “One, two, three,” the warrant says. The student also said Fish “moved things out of the way” so the students didn’t bump into them and “the fight would last longer,” the warrant says. The student said that fight ended when the opposing student started throwing up, although Fish tried to get it started again by saying “Round Two,” the warrant says. The fight didn’t restart because the school bell rang.
The student also told police that Fish told his class that he had smoked marijuana and tried other drugs, and that he let students draw pictures of male body parts on the board, the warrant says.
Another student told police that Fish “didn’t really set up the fights” but would watch, the warrant says. The student said his opponent, Victim 1, got a bloody lip in one slap-boxing match, and that Fish stopped that fight when Victim 1 stumbled, but he started it up again when the teen was able to stand, the warrant says.
According to the warrant, Fish told police the fights started out as horseplay, and that only the most recent one had gone too far.
“The truth is I’m an idiot and wanted to befriend them,” Fish, who was 22 at the time, was quoted as saying in the warrant. “I’m immature.”
Sgt. Mark Juhola, Montville’s resident state trooper, said that fights were allowed, and encouraged, in class is disturbing.
“It bothered me quite a bit. I was appalled,” he said Friday. “It gets into a mob mentality, and that is absolutely scary. It just makes the hair on the back of my neck completely stand up.”
If the DCF social worker hadn’t noticed the victm’s condition, no one would have known about the fights, Eagan said.
“I think DCF did a really good job of noticing what occurred here, and being really sensitive to the needs of the student and of the family.”
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