A former teacher at Bradford District High School (BDHS) has been banned from teaching after having an inappropriate relationship with a student in the 2015-2016 school year.
On July 6, 2021, Nathaniel Roger Todd Fisher was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT); his certificate of qualification and registration was revoked as a result. He is no longer a member of the OCT and may not teach in any publicly funded schools.
In the fall of 2019, the victim reached out to BradfordToday to share her story on events that transpired between her and the teacher.
For Mary (her name has been changed to protect her identity), high school was not a fun place to be. Looking back, she says she was always kind of a loner, quiet and didn’t really fit in with the rest of the crowd. She was anxious and depressed and cried most days.
Fisher, her computer science teacher at BDHS, took notice.
Mary had been taking Fisher’s classes throughout her entire high school career, but it was in her final year of high school that he began sending her messages, she said.
“Back in high school, I had major social anxiety and depression; he saw this in me and tried to help me by sending me positive messages through his school email,” she said.
It started with a simple message from his school email account. From there, the communication evolved into frequent messages in the form of both handwritten notes and messages on outside-of-school web accounts. The nature of the messages seemed harmless to Mary.
“I didn’t think anything inappropriate about it,” Mary admitted. “I was looking for a friend.”
Fisher had taken an interest in Mary's life, noting her hobbies and interests, and spoke to her through outside-of-school online communities that she was part of.
As the weeks went on, the letters and notes to Mary began to increase. Fisher began mentioning personal details of his life, including his recent separation from his wife.
Mary said she never responded to his handwritten notes, but only to his emails.
Mary shared 75 pages of notes and drawings Fisher had sent her.
“And that’s not even all of it,” she said.
Most of them expressed his appreciation of and fascination with her, and why she was a great person.
Mary says the relationship was never physical, except for a few hugs, and one moment in class when he had put his hand on top of hers.
Mary said that up to that point, she felt their relationship was similar to that of a father and daughter. She saw him as a friend and someone she could trust; the touch threw her off guard.
“A lightbulb went off and I started to feel uncomfortable and then it just all clicked in my head — 'shoot, this guy must think more of me than I think of him',” she remembered. “I didn’t want to believe it and I really wanted a friend. I thought maybe he could get past these feelings."
Shortly after the hand touching incident, Mary accidently left her computer open and her parents discovered the messages from Fisher. They were shocked by the constant correspondence between a teacher and their daughter. They searched her bedroom, and found the stack of hand-written notes from Fisher.
Mary said she was crying when her parents discovered the notes, and began deleting all of Fisher’s messages from her computer, while trying to warn him of her parents' discovery.
“This guy is obsessed with you, he needs to get help,” she remembers her dad telling her. But at the time, Mary did not realize there was anything wrong with the communications.
“My dad called the school as I was deleting the messages,” she recalled.
The following day at school, Mary said she saw Fisher, with his lawyer, being brought to the office and she was approached by a school counsellor while on her way to class. Mary was brought into the office where she was told that the actions of Fisher were inappropriate, and that it wasn’t her fault.
Fisher was instructed not to contact Mary again, and Mary said Fisher left school that day.
With only a few months left until graduation, both the school and her parents decided it would be best for Mary to take the rest of the year off to deal with the emotional stress of the situation. She was still able to graduate that year.
But even after the incident was reported, Fisher continued to contact Mary with messages referring to her family as “toxic” and “controlling.”
“I’m sorry for contacting you again after I said I wouldn’t. I’m trying. I don’t want to give up on you. I don’t feel good that I broke that word. I feel that I have to, for myself. To try to sort it out in my mind and heart,” Fisher wrote, as reported in the Ontario College of Teacher (OCT) disciplinary document.
“I was very depressed and afraid of my dad," Mary said, of the time. "He wasn’t abusive. I was just afraid he would be angry at me, but there was no reason for me to be scared of him... (Fisher) latched onto the fact that I was afraid of my dad, and used it to try and separate me from my parents.”
According to the OCT disciplinary document, Fisher did encourage Mary to leave her family and to have a relationship with him.
Shortly after the communications were reported, Mary — her self-esteem at an all-time low, lonely, and not knowing who to trust — was hospitalized for having suicidal thoughts.
The communications from Fisher reportedly continued, with anonymous messages sent for “months” through other websites.
Mary said she did not realize he was messaging her, because his messages were going to her spam folder. She only discovered them nearly five months after they had been sent. One of the messages she found was about a mattress, which the OCT report said he had purchased with her in mind.
After viewing the messages, Mary went to the police, who told her to block him from all websites. They also called Fisher and advised him to stop contacting Mary, but she said the messaging continued, as he allegedly created fake accounts to send anonymous messages.
Mary said she had to go through years of therapy and counselling after the ordeal.
She wishes that her parents had found out about the issue sooner than they did. Since she was 18 by the time it was reported, no criminal charges were laid against Fisher.
“This didn’t happen through your typical social media, like Instagram. It was anonymous messages, it was indirectly on different websites I was on, so I would suggest watching your kids,” Mary said.
Looking back, she says she wishes she could have seen things differently then. She wants to warn others, of what to do if they find themselves in a similar situation.
“He was clearly in a state of mind where he should not be teaching students. He tried to point my anxiety, depression, and any anger I had to my family, manipulating me,” Mary said.
Fisher's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
