Brandi the Teenage Witch?

Girls' Life, Feb, 2001

Sabrina is just made up laughs tar TV, right? So why, then, would a girl be suspended from school tar casting a spell? This happened in real life in Tulsa, Okla., where administrators at Union Intermediate High School accuse Brandi Blackbear, 15, of hexing a teacher. School administrators say that, as a result of Brandi's bewitching ways, the teacher was later hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy.

Brandi was suspended from school for 15 days. "I for one would like to see the so-called evidence this school has that a 15-year-old girl made a grown man sick by casting a magic spell," says Joanne Bell, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma. "These outlandish accusations have made Brandi Blackbear's life at school unbearable." Trouble is now brewing for Union Intermediate High as the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the school and its principal on Brandi's behalf. "This lawsuit will allow her to reclaim some of her self-esteem by vindicating the violation of her rights in a court of law," says ACLU attorney John Butler. Many are likening this case to the 17th-century witch trials of Salem, Mass. We say somebody should tell Union Intermediate's principal The Craft is just really bad fiction.