English Teacher Arrested After Showing R-Rated Film to Class

SANTA PAULA —  A Santa Paula High School English teacher who was reprimanded last week for showing an R-rated movie in class was handcuffed and arrested in front of her students Monday after she refused to leave the classroom for a meeting with school officials.

Mary Louise Rawn-Peterson, 41, was taken into custody by police on trespassing charges after district Supt. William Brand suspended her for defying his order to leave the classroom, he said.

Rawn-Peterson, a first-year teacher at the school, was reprimanded Friday for not obtaining permission from school officials to show the film “American Beauty.” The movie tells the story of a man experiencing a midlife crisis who falls in love with his teenage daughter’s classmate.

Brand said the incident began when Assistant Principal Rosalinda Alvarez, and then Principal Tony Gaitan, tried to meet with her outside class to discuss the reprimand. Santa Paula Union High School District policy requires prior permission from the school board to show any movie in class.

“We wanted to be sure that our expectations would be met,” Brand said.

After the teacher refused to leave her class, Gaitan called the superintendent and the Santa Paula Police Department, Brand said.

Police arrested Rawn-Peterson about 9:40 a.m., after Brand suspended her. She was released an hour later on her own recognizance. She is scheduled to be arraigned April 4 and could face up to a year in jail if convicted of the charge.

Santa Paula Police Chief Bob Gonzales said he regretted that officers had to arrest a teacher in front of her students.

“We don’t pick and choose where violations take place,” he said. “We just do what we’ve got to do.”

Brand said it was embarrassing to deal with the situation in a classroom. The students were asked to go outside, but did not, he said.

Rawn-Peterson, a Ventura resident, said she showed the film, nominated for eight Academy Awards, including “Best Picture,” as part of the students’ studies of the English writer William Blake.

“This film is about real experience and how much the main character learns how to really live,” Rawn-Peterson said.

“They normally see such trash, and none of them had ever seen anything like it before,” she said.

An R rating means no one under age 17 is permitted to view the movie in a theater without being accompanied by a parent or adult guardian. Rawn-Peterson said most of the students who saw the movie are 18 and had received permission from their parents. She fast-forwarded through a nudity scene in the film, she said.

Brand said the suspension could lead to Rawn-Peterson’s termination. The teacher, who is still in her probationary period, said she previously had received a negative performance evaluation by the district.

Rawn-Peterson, who has retained an attorney to represent her, said she believes the poor evaluation was motivated by her complaints about the district’s education practices. Last semester, she taught an Advanced Placement class with 35 students, many of whom she said were unprepared for the rigorous course load.

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Several students defended their teacher. “She was just sticking up for what she believes in,” Adrianna Rivera, 17, said.

Rivera, who was in Rawn-Peterson’s first-period class at the time of the arrest, said she thought school officials could have dealt with the situation more professionally. She and a few other students started crying when the teacher was hauled off.

“Why couldn’t they wait until after school or until break?” junior Rene Zamora asked.

Zamora said he and several of his classmates plan to attend an upcoming school board meeting to show their support for Rawn-Peterson.

Less supportive was Elizabeth Bonds, 17, who said the teacher sometimes had trouble in the classroom. “She didn’t teach me so much about English or books,” Bonds said, “but she did teach me about expressing myself.”

Bonds, a senior, said that showing the movie “might have been a little bit over the line.”

Fellow English teacher Steven Halverson said he believes parental permission should be sufficient for teachers to show movies in the classroom.

“The board policy is that absolutely no R-rated movies [can be shown], but I feel, personally, that it’s not a good policy,” Halverson said. “I think it needs to be modified, because I think movies are the art form for our culture and they deal with social issues that need to be discussed.”

Rawn-Peterson said she obtained a videotape of “American Beauty” from a friend who is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Films nominated for Academy Awards are typically distributed to voters for consideration for the awards.

A spokeswoman for DreamWorks SKG, the film’s producers, said the company stood by the film’s rating. “Unfortunately, we are not responsible for what Academy members do with their [video copies],” she said.