Teacher claims discrimination over her phobia – fear of kids

MARIEMONT — A longtime French and Spanish high school teacher is suing the Mariemont school district, alleging it discriminated against her because she has a disability – she has a phobia of young children.

Maria C. Waltherr-Willard, 61, of Greenhills says the district in which she worked for 35 years discriminated against her when it reassigned her in 2010 from its high school to its junior high and then pressured her to resign.

The suit claims the discrimination is based on her age and her disability, a rare phobia called pedophobia, which in this context means an extreme fear or anxiety around young children.

Waltherr-Willard’s lawsuit claims she has suffered from the condition since the 1990s and that Mariemont had made assurances to her and her lawyer that she would not have to teach young children.

Children poisoned while Grandmother used barbecue to dry washing

Four young children had to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after their grandmother brought a barbecue indoors to dry her washing.

The woman, who has not been named, lit the device which she set up in the family kitchen before leaving the house.

Her three-year-old granddaughter collapsed when she was overcome by the deadly gas later that afternoon and was treated in hospital with five of her relatives.

They included two boys aged two and 10 months, a four-year-old girl and the woman's two daughters-in-law, aged 26 and 29.

Firefighters were called to the home on Hockley Avenue, in East Ham, east London, on Wednesday afternoon, soon after the grandmother set up her make-shift launderette.