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	Teacher Broke No Law with Strip Card Game The Associated Press, carried in Herald [Idaho] May 27, 2006 http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/05/27/100wir_b5teacher001.cfm COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - A Christian school teacher who played a version of strip poker during a camping trip with pupils broke no law, but the principal who may have delayed reporting the incident to police has been cited. Lake City Junior Academy Principal Twila Brown was given a misdemeanor citation Tuesday under a state law requiring school officials to report suspected child abuse or neglect within 24 hours. A parent complained that Brown was told that teacher Andy Armstrong, 42, played a game of "dirty Hearts" with five fifth- and sixth-grade pupils during a school-sponsored camping trip in April, but didn't notify parents or police for nearly a week. Armstrong, a physical education and science teacher from Coeur d'Alene, was immediately suspended from the private Christian school and later fired. Brown did not return a call seeking comment. Armstrong's telephone has been disconnected. The Kootenai County prosecutor's office agreed with an investigating officer's conclusion that no law applied to Armstrong's participation in the card game in which holders of losing hands remove articles of clothing. "There are no criminal statutes that seem to fit these facts," Chief Deputy Prosecutor Lansing Haynes told The Associated Press on Friday. "Playing a card game where the young persons don't display their genitals is conduct that just isn't handled in the statutes." For a crime to have been committed, the children would have had to be approached in a sexual way, either through contact, soliciting, or photographing them in a sexually explicit manner, Haynes said, adding he thinks the school handled the situation appropriately. Kootenai County sheriff's Deputy Christopher Kerzman investigated after Brown told him Armstrong taught the boys a variant of the game Hearts, where articles of clothing were removed for lost points. None of those involved, including Armstrong, completely disrobed, nor did Armstrong ask anyone to perform sexual acts, the deputy wrote. "They were to only remove as much clothing as it took to get to their 'boxers' or 'underwear,'†" Kerzman said in his report. "Based upon what Brown told me, I could not locate a crime that described Armstrong's behavior," Kerzman wrote. The Christian school and Camp MiVoden on Hayden Lake, where the alleged incident occurred, are operated by the Upper Columbia Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Superintendent of Schools Keith Waters issued a written statement defending Brown.
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