Fact Check

Was 425-Pound Teacher Suspended for Sitting on Student and Farting in His Mouth?

A gross-out story about an Iowa teacher's inappropriate punishment of a student was completely fabricated.

Published Oct. 26, 2017

 (Shutterstock)
Image Via Shutterstock
Claim:
A 425-pound Iowa teacher was suspended after pinning a student down and "farting in his mouth."

In October 2017, two disreputable web sites published an item claiming that a morbidly obese Iowa teacher had been arrested after "sitting on an understudy’s head and flatulating in his mouth abandoning him heaving for air."

The claim first appeared on the World News Daily Report:

An Iowa teacher at Kensington elementary school has been suspended from her functions after allegedly sitting on a student’s head and farting in his mouth leaving him gasping for air.

The 34-year-old teacher, Ann Margaret DeVille, apparently wanted to teach the student a valuable lesson after the young man allegedly made a public comment on her “ugly fat ass.”

“She pushed him to the ground, lifted her robe and just sat her ass on his face and then just let out the biggest fart in front of all his classmates,” she added.

“He was gasping for air. He thought he was going to die,” explained the victim’s mother to reporters.

The post was peppered with additional lurid details. A well-known fake news site, World News Daily Report carries a disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.

Change Post carries no such disclaimer.

Like most World News Daily Report items, the page used extant images found on the internet of unrelated people. The photograph of "Ann Margaret DeVille" was published to Imgur on 6 May 2015, and was obviously unrelated to any incidents involving obese teachers and young students in Iowa. We were unable to identify the image purportedly depicting "Kensington elementary school psychiatrist Ashley Simmons."

Kim LaCapria is a former writer for Snopes.