Technically, J.B. Fanjul is innocent.
Third District Judge Ann Boyden said the evidence against him was "not sufficient" to convict him of having sex with a student, and sent him on his way last week.
He joked about going on a "world tour with the Spice Girls."
Technically, the crime he was accused of disappears. Technically, he could go back to work at West High School. Technically, next fall, he might be in a classroom full of boys and girls again.
Personally, I'd be more comfortable if the 46-year-old teacher became a backup dancer for a girl band.
I sat through two days of Fanjul's four-day trial. It was plenty of time for me to get the icks.
Undisputedly a brilliant educator, an award-winning teacher, Fanjul taught U.S. history and Spanish at West High School for eight years. He's been on unpaid leave since he was arrested last fall on charges he had sex over a period of five months with a then 15-year-old student.
"He's the best, very energetic, very engaging," says Teri King, West's student government adviser whose classroom is around the corner from Fanjul's.
He was a Pied Piper. Kids -- including his alleged victim --- flocked to his room during free periods, lunch breaks, after school. They played Guitar Hero or watched videos. He helped with homework, offered relationship advice. He e-mailed, texted and instant-messaged students at all hours of the day. They sluffed other classes to be with him. With two or three students at a time, he went to soccer practices and poetry readings and jazz concerts and the library.
"It was a little different," said one of his students, still trying to protect a beloved teacher. "It's unusual to have a relationship like that with your teacher. It wasn't inappropriate. It was just different. Unique."
I'd call it inappropriate. Whether or not he repeatedly manipulated, fondled and sexually abused a teenage girl -- the judge decided there wasn't enough evidence to conclude he had -- Fanjul clearly crossed a line.
School principal Margery Parker testified Thursday that he thought "outside the box," was "unconventional," perhaps a risk taker. She acknowledged some of his methods violated both social norms and district policies that are designed to keep teachers from getting too cozy with their students.
"J.B. Fanjul reaches an eclectic bunch," said defense attorney Ken Brown. "He befriends them, and, yes, he probably violates district policy. But he does not commit a crime."
I never had a teacher like Fanjul in high school. But if I had, I would have been creeped out. At least, I hope I would.
His teenage accuser was not.
There are reasons she wasn't on guard: Her mother died when she was seven after a five-year battle with cancer. Her father is scarred from a fire she helped put out. She entered high school as a precocious seventh-grader. Gregarious and popular, she was a class officer her freshman and sophomore years. Then, when she was 14, she had an affair with Marco Herrera, her 51-year-old guidance counselor. During his 2007 trial, she lied on the stand to protect him. She was heartbroken when he pleaded guilty.
And then she met Mr. Fanjul.
When she transferred into his class, he seemed to take her under his wing, asking female teachers to be role models for her. He told other students he worried about her being ostracized as her story spread. He tried to set her up with another student, "get her out there."
She said the relationship turned sexual; he denied it. She wore a ring she said he gave her on a chain around her neck. Prosecutors logged as evidence a football jersey and a dildo she said he bought her. There was no DNA, no semen-stained dress. But evidence showed they e-mailed and talked on the phone repeatedly last summer -- three to 12 times a day at one point, conversations ranging from one minute to 61 minutes. She kept the relationship secret; her father and stepmother installed spyware on her computer to retrieve the correspondence.
In the end, after hours of explicit testimony and days of students and teachers alike casting a 16-year-old girl as a "troubled," "flirtatious" man-eater, her parents' efforts were for nothing: Fanjul's attorneys put on a classic blame-the-victim defense.
"This girl pulls out condoms like I pull out gum," said Brown.
After a one-sentence statement, Boyden stalked out of the courtroom with no explanation.
Fanjul's family members and the crowd of female West High teachers who served as his character witnesses and unofficial hand-holders burst into tears. He claimed he had escaped a "high-tech lynching," thanked God and then told his wife, in Spanish, not to say more.
Inside the courtroom, his accuser blinked and then covered her face. Her father lowered his head. Then they quietly slipped out the back.
