Opinion ID: 1320451
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: The appellant, Richard Malfregeot, was employed by the Harrison County Board of Education as a teacher and coach at Bridgeport Middle School (hereinafter, BMS) during the 2005-2006 academic year. During that year, the appellant met L.L., [2] a thirteen-year-old female, while traveling on a school bus to a BMS football game. The appellant, seated directly behind L.L. and her best friend C.E., engaged L.L. in conversation. Following the bus trip, the appellant would often see L.L. at BMS and would talk and joke with her. As the academic year progressed, contact between the appellant and L.L. significantly increased as the appellant began to speak with her at BMS multiple times per day. Many of these encounters occurred at L.L.'s locker. According to the appellant, L.L.'s locker was located within an area he was responsible for monitoring as a part of his duties as a teacher. However, L.L. testified at the appellant's trial that BMS is divided into different sections or pods and that her locker was located in pod 8-2, while the appellant's classroom was located in pod 8-1. L.L. stated that in spite of the fact that the appellant's classroom was in a different part of the school, that between classes when students went to their lockers, the appellant would be standing within five feet of her locker waiting to talk with her on a daily basis. In addition, L.L. and other witnesses testified that other teachers did not visit students' lockers on a daily basis. During these encounters, the appellant did not discuss academic or school-related topics with L.L. Instead, the appellant discussed personal matters such as L.L.'s appearance and very often told L.L. how lucky her boyfriend was to have her as a girlfriend. Trial testimony also revealed that the discussion of such personal matters between teachers and students at BMS was an uncommon occurrence. L.L. further testified that the appellant would walk around the school in the morning to exercise and would often invite her to walk with him. While L.L. repeatedly denied the invitation, the record does not indicate that the appellant extended a similar invitation to any other student. L.L. also stated that the appellant stopped by her lunch table three or four times per week, every week, to talk with her and the other students who were present. In addition, she said that the appellant would on occasion stop by her gym class to visit with her. The contact between the appellant and L.L. was not limited to verbal communication. The appellant acknowledged that on several occasions he placed his arm around L.L. and had held her hand. L.L. testified that such physical contact made her uncomfortable and that she would shrug her shoulders in an attempt to discourage the appellant from touching her. She further testified that on one occasion the appellant rubbed her shoulders and played with her hair while she sat in a computer lab at the school. She said that she did not tell the appellant that his conduct made her feel uncomfortable because he was a teacher, an authority figure, and that she felt embarrassed and intimidated by the age difference between the two. Another such encounter between the appellant and L.L. occurred when the appellant summoned L.L. to his classroom to type a one-paragraph letter pertaining to the football team, of which the appellant was a coach. While there is no direct allegation that any inappropriate physical contact occurred during this instance, the appellant had effectively arranged for the two to be alone in his classroom in spite of the fact that L.L. was not enrolled as a student in any class taught by the appellant at BMS. During the appellant's trial, the BMS principal testified that she did not encourage teachers to be alone in the classroom with students. L.L. further testified that the appellant had displayed photographs of her on a bulletin board at the front of his classroom. The appellant contended that some of the photographs had other students pictured in addition to L.L.; however, the one common characteristic among them was that all of the photographs had L.L. in them. The appellant did not personally take all of the photographs, but he had nonetheless obtained several photographs of L.L., one of which revealed her dressed in pajama-like clothing at a slumber party. L.L. stated that when she learned of the photographs hanging in the appellant's classroom she became upset. She said that she had not given the appellant permission to display the photographs and she immediately asked him to remove them from his wall. The appellant, however, refused. In fact, L.L. stated that she asked the appellant on approximately five occasions to remove the photographs; each time he refused. The photographs were eventually removed by another student. At trial, the principal of BMS testified that if a teacher is asked to remove photographs from the wall, then they should come down. Another encounter between the appellant and L.L. occurred on Sunday, April 2, 2006, when the appellant was at BMS working at a concession stand for a BMS athletic event. M.L., the younger brother of L.L., and several of his friends were in attendance and wished to play football. Due to the fact that they did not have a football, M.L. asked the appellant if he could let them use one of the school's balls. The appellant told M.L. that he would have to first speak with L.L. to be sure it was alright for him to provide the football. The appellant then asked M.L. for L.L.'s personal cell phone number and called her. L.L. did not answer the phone call, and the appellant left a voice message stating, L.L., D.G. is waiting for you at Bridgeport Middle School. D.G. was another student at BMS, and the appellant was aware that L.L. had a crush on him. The appellant later admitted that he knew D.G. was not at BMS on the date and time of his phone call and that he was simply playing a joke on L.L. The appellant could not provide an explanation as to how he would have reacted if L.L. had gone to BMS that day. L.L. testified that upon listening to the message on her phone left by the appellant, she became very upset and that the appellant's conduct made her feel freaky, scared, weird, and terrified. At trial, L.L.'s friends and family also testified that following the phone call L.L. was extremely upset and scared. Moreover, on April 3, 2006, the appellant approached L.L. at her school locker and showed her that he had saved her cell phone number on his cell phone. Following the appellant's phone call to L.L., she reported the incident to her parents and the school counselor who, in turn, informed the school principal. Thereafter, the school principal commenced an investigation that ultimately led to the May 2, 2007, conviction of the appellant in the Magistrate Court of Harrison County, West Virginia, for the misdemeanor offense of stalking/harassment in violation of W.Va.Code § 61-2-9a(a). The appellant subsequently filed an appeal, and a trial de novo was held in the Circuit Court of Harrison County. [3] In an order dated October 3, 2007, the circuit court found the appellant guilty of the offense of stalking/harassment in violation of W.Va.Code § 61-2-9a(a). The circuit court sentenced the appellant to six months incarceration with credit for time served and fined the appellant $500.00. In the same order, the circuit court suspended the appellant's sentence and placed him on unsupervised probation for a period of two years beginning October 3, 2007. This appeal followed.