Girl Shown Photos of Dead Father in School

Sept. 14, 2005 -- -- A 12-year-old Knoxville, Tenn., girl was traumatized when she was shown gruesome photographs of the car crash that killed her father during a health class presentation by police to educate youngsters about the dangers of drunken driving, the girl's mother said.

Marla Higginbotham, the girl's mother and a drug awareness educator for Think Drug Free America, questioned whether it was appropriate to show the graphic photographs to such young children.

The graphic pictures that were shown to a Holston Middle School health class by a Knoxville Police Department officer contained images of the badly mangled body of the girl's father after he was thrown from a car during a collision.

"I disagree with photos, live body images, and that's only for elementary and middle," Higginbotham told ABC News affiliate WATE-TV in Knoxville. "Now when the kids get older, you have to use age appropriation, and that's a different story, but when we're talking about elementary and middle school, they're not mentally, I don't think they're developed enough."

Knoxville Police spokesman Darrell DeBusk told The Associated Press that the presentation was made at the request of schoolofficials, and that there have been no complaints in the past.

"It really drives home the point that [drunken driving] happens in this community," DeBusk said.

School officials said the police officer read the man's name -- William F. Cabbage -- before showing the pictures to the students and requested that anyone who knew the victim leave the room.

Higginbotham said the family did not know that the crash that killed the girl's father involved alcohol and her daughter did not recognize her father's formal name -- but she realized she was looking at her father after the officer making the presentation told the students the date and details of the crash.

"She literally just dropped in my arms and I just stood out there, for what seemed like forever and just weeped," Higginbotham said of the moment her daughter told her about the incident.

She said the girl's teacher didn't know the man in the graphic pictures was the father of one her students.

"She was very, very apologetic," Higginbotham said. "She was very sorry -- that teacher was very sorry. But it was done, so what do you do?"

Higginbotham said she has been taking her daughter to counseling, to help her deal with the pain seeing the images caused.

"[The counselor] gave her some mental exercises so that when those images come up, of how to make them gray and push them back until she can get to a happy place," Higginbotham said.

Higginbotham said she doesn't understand why the kids were even allowed to view such graphic pictures without parents being consulted first.

"To me, we have to sign for our children to use the Internet and if I have to sign for my baby to get on the Internet, you should definitely have to sign for something as graphic and as effective as those photos," she said.

Holston Middle School assistant principal Frank Scimonelli told the AP that while many of the topics in the school's health curriculum require parental consent, he was not sure about the drunken driving presentation.

Higginbotham's lawyer, Gregory P. Isaacs, told WATE-TV the issue of the family possibly filing a lawsuit was a "very premature question," and added that "the focus right now is on this little girl."

At Higginbotham's request, both Knox County School System officials and the Knox County law director are looking into the course.

Holston Middle School is the only school in Knox County that was taking part in the police department's program. It's held every six weeks, but until the investigation is complete, the officers will not use the pictures.