Annysa Johnson

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

An irate father is blasting leaders of a Lutheran school in Racine, saying the principal wrongly accused his 12-year-old daughter of selling sex toys in class and that school officials' statements about the incident have humiliated the child.

Milt Habeck is demanding the dismissal of the principal, president of the board of education and two pastors at Trinity Lutheran Church & School, where his three children attend under the Racine Parental Choice voucher program.

He said Principal Pamela Amling pulled his daughter, Frances, from a basketball game on Feb. 9, telling her coach she was being suspended for selling sex toys, and that a press release issued by the Rev. David Gehne on Wednesday misrepresents the events surrounding the incident.

"They humiliated her; they shamed her," Habeck said of the incident. "Imagine a sixth-grade girl being told she was selling sex toys in front of friends and strangers. The whole basketball team ended up wailing and crying," he said.

Efforts to reach Amling and Gehne were not successful on Thursday.

Gehne's news release said school officials did not characterize the toy — a small cylindrical tube often called a "water snake" — as a sex toy. He said a number of students had sexualized it, which was disrupting class, and that several parents had complained about the sexual overtones associated with it.

Habeck said his daughter first discovered the water snake at her Sunday school, where it was used to calm an autistic boy who was agitated. He said she bought a box and got permission from her homeroom teacher to sell them at school.

On Feb. 9, he said, Amling confiscated several from his older daughter's 7th-grade class and then began searching lockers for more.

In Frances' locker, he said, she found a box labeled "Dillys" and the names of students who had bought them.

"The principal saw the word 'Dillys.' She got in her car, drove to the high school and rushed to the floor to the basketball coach," he said.

Habeck said Amling appears to have interpreted "Dillys" to mean dildos, or penis-shaped sex toys, and that his daughter and her friends had no knowledge of the word.

"It was completely innocent. They had no idea," he said, initially likening the term to the Dilly Bar popular ice-cream treat.

"A dilly means it's a humdinger, it's special, not because it's close to something used by adults," he said. "Maybe one of the girls she collaborated with had visited Dairy Queen and seen the name Dilly."

Habeck said he is pulling his three children from the school for the next school year.

Habeck said his daughter's basketball coach has corroborated his version of events, but other teachers have refused to step forward. He said he believes they are afraid to contradict the principal.