A Question of Conduct

It was a bright, ordinary high school auditorium, scene of a thousand earnest morning assemblies, commencements and Christmas pageants. Last week, instead of the familiar back-to-school routine, it featured a hearing--very nearly a trial--of considerable drama. Before a crowd of parents, teachers and reporters, a pretty, dark-eyed girl with long blonde hair testified that one of her teachers had molested her. Most schools sooner or later experience similar episodes, and the whole affair seemed to evoke some half-remembered "children's hours" from the movies. What made this case look different was the fact that the accused happened to be a Negro.

Actually, race seems not to be a major issue. Maurice C. McNeill, 36, a native of North Carolina, started teaching biology six years ago at the senior high school in Baldwin (pop. 35,000), a Long Island suburb, 35 minutes from New York. One of his pupils was Susan Schaffner, 16, who had racked up a succession of A's and B's until McNeill gave her a C+ in sophomore biology. To upgrade the mediocre mark in hopes of improving her chances to enter a good college, Susan this summer took a repeat course in biology. While working 45 minutes in his office, she charged, McNeill repeatedly kissed and fondled her.

Protecting Girls. Married and the father of two, McNeill was suspended by the Baldwin school board for "immoral conduct." The board then called for a hearing, which McNeill insisted be public--and all of Baldwin, so it seemed last week, came to listen.

In her testimony, Susan claimed that McNeill had caressed her five times during the 45-minute session. At one point, she said, "Mr. McNeill placed his hands on my breasts and squeezed them!" Later, one of Susan's close friends and classmates, Stephanie Smith, testified to a similar incident. Assigned to tutor her at home after she had broken a hip in an auto accident, McNeill "put his hands on my breast and said, 'Where did you get these secondary sex characteristics?' " Backing up her daughter's testimony, Mrs. George Schaffner, whose husband is an accountant, explained that "we would never have subjected Susan to this terrible ordeal unless we believed in her and the truth of her charges--we took this action to protect other girls in our community." Similarly, Mrs. Henry G. Smith said that she first "feared getting Mr. McNeill in trouble," but then decided that "neither Stephanie nor I wanted him around any more."

McNeill's attorneys, paid for in part by a faculty-sponsored defense fund, managed to cast considerable doubt on the girls' testimony. Witnesses claimed that Susan had such a hatred for McNeill after she got a low mark on a test that she pounded her desk, cried "I hate you!," later called him "a son of a bitch" and talked about "dirty black niggers." His lawyers raised the question of why she had kept still for 45 minutes without trying to protest--although a class was in session in an adjoining room, the doors were unlocked, and the interior of McNeill's office was visible through three door windows. The lawyers also wanted to know why Stephanie Smith had waited from June 13, when she claims to have been abused, until Aug. 2 to report the offense.

"Wonderful Man." Colleagues testified that McNeill is a highly animated teacher who often pokes or prods students in sheer enthusiasm, but they almost unanimously refused to believe the girls' charges. In fact, if there was prejudice, it was largely working in McNeill's favor. Baldwin has almost no Negroes, but the town, with surprising unanimity, came to McNeill's defense. Spectators scoffed at evidence supporting the charge, cheered defense witnesses, harassed the school board, whose president, Henry R. Bang, had difficulty maintaining order. The parents of the two girls were shunned by neighbors, while both students and faculty took the stand to praise McNeill as a "wonderful man and teacher." McNeill himself took a lie-detector test, his lawyers claimed, that supported his denial of the girls' accusations.

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