When Ulama Finn-Hendrickson began working at CedarBridge Academy in 2000 she was, she says, full of enthusiasm and "as fit as a horse".

Newly arrived on the Island with her Bermudian husband, the Jamaican mother-of-four was looking forward to a long career at the Island's largest public school teaching reading skills to her students.

Seven-and-a-half years later, Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson is unable to use her right hand after intervening in a row between two male pupils, has long-term health problems associated with an allergy to mould and cockroaches which began on the Island, and has not worked at her beloved profession for well over a year.

She would love to be teaching but the Ministry of Education decided — wrongly, as a judge ruled on Friday — that her decision not to return to CedarBridge after it was found to be contaminated with mould meant she had resigned.

Government failed to pay her salary for the last 13 months and now owes her back pay totalling at least $90,000 and legal costs of more than $70,000.

Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson, of Pembroke, is one of a number of teachers who believe they were made sick by potentially deadly mould and other allergens, such as a cockroach infestation, found at CedarBridge.

An independent inquiry into the crisis discovered that staff and students, including one who almost died, were made ill "very probably" by the mould.

The support of colleagues who have also suffered health problems and her family's encouragement have carried Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson through the last year and fortified her in her quest for justice. She says studying for a distance doctoral degree in training and human development also stopped her from "going crazy".

The 55-year-old says her symptoms — "great headaches", sinus and ear pain, puffy eyes, dizzy spells and stomach troubles — crept up on her gradually at CedarBridge, eventually culminating in her taking sick leave in autumn 2006.

Earlier that year she says her contract at the school was suddenly terminated without explanation, a few months after she raised concerns with management about her timetable. She was later reinstated. "I thought what I was feeling — the depression, the ugly feeling, I felt so bad about myself — I thought it was because I was fired that year," she explains.

"I didn't realise I was affected by the mould. But when I started to get sick I was at CedarBridge." She recalls the terrible smell in her room off the library — a room which her replacement Leonard Tucker told this newspaper also made him seriously ill — and says it still seems to linger in her nostrils.

In September, 2006, she cleaned the room herself to try to improve the atmosphere, unaware that school authorities had known about potential problems for months, if not years.

In November 2006, Education Minister Randy Horton closed the school for a $4 million clean up. By this time Finn, as friends know her, was at home too sick to work. As details of the mould crisis emerged, she engaged lawyer Paul Harshaw to act on her behalf in dealing with the Ministry of Education.

He contacted Government twice to explain that she would not return to the Prospect secondary school until she was given proof that it was safe. No one at the Ministry ever replied, even when a third letter warning of legal action was sent in February 2007, after Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson's pay was stopped without notice.

By this time, doctors had identified aspergillus — one of the hazardous fungi found at CedarBridge — in her system and discovered that she was allergic to cockroaches. A report never released to the public but eventually obtained by her lawyer revealed that the school had a cockroach infestation.

"My colleagues were still being sick, some coming out in an ambulance," she says of the months following the clean up. "I couldn't go back. I made the right choice."

Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson was eventually given leave to seek judicial review and Puisne Judge Ian Kawaley ruled in the Supreme Court on Friday that her pay should never have been stopped and that she remained employed by the Ministry of Education at all times.

That conclusion was no surprise to her, she says. She never wanted to stay away from work and would happily have been reassigned to another school, as several of her allergy-stricken colleagues were.

"I'm always at work. I have been teaching for 32 years," she says. "But with this, I had to go the hospital three times. I'm still not me. I don't feel right. Even today it's like ants are crawling into my ear."

Her belief that the management of CedarBridge failed to provide staff and students with a safe working environment is backed up by comments made in the independent Wachiira report on the mould crisis, published last May.

It concluded that "the CBA administration seemed to deny over a long period that there were serious IAQ (indoor air quality or mold problems".

Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson's time at CedarBridge has left her with physical problems which will never go away and constant medical bills. The right-handed teacher has never received a penny in compensation for the January 2003 incident which left her right hand almost useless.

It's fair to say that her decision to take a job at the Devonshire senior school has had a devastating impact on her life — but she has no regrets.

"I have met some great people and some great students that I still see on the street," she says. "But I'm sad that people who we put our trust in, that they betrayed that trust."

She is determined to return to teaching in the public school system now a judge has declared her right to do so. But would she ever return to CedarBridge?

"Please, no, no, no!" she says, looking genuinely stricken. "To me, CedarBridge is a hostile environment right now. I don't know if it has been cleaned up — no one has ever told me. It is toxic city.

"I want to be in an environment where I don't have to be looking over my shoulder. I'll go wherever, so long as it's an environment where teaching and learning can take place."

Mrs. Finn-Hendrickson, who is employed as a teacher by the Ministry of Education, agreed to be interviewed by The Royal Gazette on condition that she only answer questions relating to her case and to information in court documents which are in the public domain.