Teacher With Pedophobia, Or ‘Fear Of Kids,’ Loses Disability Case Due To ‘Unreasonable Accommodations’
Yes, there is such a thing as pedophobia, or the fear of children (quite obviously the opposite of pedophilia). One Ohio teacher, Maria Waltherr-Willard, sued a high school at which she formerly worked for moving her to a middle school — and not accommodating her disability, which she claimed was a crippling fear of children.
This may sound ridiculous, but pedophobia is just as real as its opposite, pedophilia, or other seemingly irrational fears. And yes, gerontophobia — or the fear of old people — also exists.
Waltherr-Willard, who is 63 years old, reportedly taught Spanish and French at a high school in the Mariemont school district in Ohio for several decades but was involuntarily transferred to teach at a middle school in 2009. The teacher’s lawsuit claimed that the high school’s move did not accommodate her disability, and overlooked her hypertension as well as general anxiety disorder. Teaching young kids “adversely affected [Waltherr-Willard’s] health, due to her disability,” the lawsuit states. She also claimed that the 7th and 8th graders she taught at the middle school triggered her phobia and made her blood pressure soar, and forced her to retire in the middle of the 2010-2011 school year.
Now, it goes without saying that middle school children — particularly 7th and 8th graders — can be cacophonous hell agents to begin with, but add a clinical fear of kids to that recipe and it's not surprising the teacher wanted to retire.
However, Waltherr-Willard recently lost her case, with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio rejecting her disability claim. The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) “requires an employer to accommodate a disabled employee, but it does not require unreasonable accommodations,” the court stated. Since the high school no longer needed her because they were adapting an online French course instead of one taught by a teacher — and the middle school needed a Spanish teacher — the court claimed that the ADA doesn’t require employers to create a new job for people with disabilities.