A Bluffton, SC, seventh-grade teacher is being charged by police with pulling her student under a table and telling him “this is what the Nazis do to Jews.”
AP reported that the 12-year-old student complained that he was on his way to sharpen a pencil last week, when he felt the hand of his teacher, Patricia Mulholland, on his collar. She yanked him and ordered, “come here, Jew.”
She then pulled him about 10 feet to a spot under a table, and made the comment about Nazis and Jews, according to police.
Mulholland was arrested and now faces charges of assault and battery, as well as public disorderly conduct, according to a Bluffton Police spokesman.
The social studies teacher said she had taught the class a lesson about the Holocaust a day earlier, and was merely attempting to give her students a first-hand, follow up lesson on the subject.
Her attorney explained that his client’s “demonstrative attempt to teach about World War II and the Holocaust has been taken to mean an anti-Semitic rant and it was nothing like that.”