As a first-grade teacher, Susan L. Burke was supposed to teach her students at Greencastle Elementary School reading and math. Instead, she brutally assaulted several of them, according to Montgomery County prosecutors.
Burke choked her 6- and 7-year-old students to discipline them, including grabbing one’s neck “with such force that he was unable to breath,” prosecutor Ryan Wechsler told the jury during her opening statement.
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But Burke’s defense attorneys said the case is built on the statements of impressionable young children, and their words are the only evidence against her.
One student came forward with an allegation, “and from there, it took off,” defense lawyer Todd Mohink said in his opening statement.
Burke’s trial on second-degree assault charges began Monday in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
The 36-year-old choked seven children in her 16-student class between August 2010 and January 2011, prosecutors said.
When one 7-year-old boy got in trouble, she “placed two hands around his neck, and squeezed,” Wechsler said. She said students in Burke’s class were assaulted by “one of the few adults that was supposed to keep them safe.”
Mohink countered that prosecutors would not show the jury “one bruise, one cut, one anything” that Burke inflicted on her students.
He said the students’ statements are unclear and inconsistent. Under questioning from school administrators, counselors, police and their parents, Mohink said, the children gave their answers “to satisfy all these people.”
Burke, who was charged in February, no longer works for Montgomery County Public Schools, according to schools spokesman Dana Tofig.
She was also indicted on child abuse charges for allegedly harming two other students, but those counts have been separated from the assault offenses.
Burke was charged with fraud, theft and credit-card misuse in Carroll County in 2010, but prosecutors dropped the charges, according to court records.
Greencastle administrators who testified Monday said Burke was largely silent in January when officials told her of the students’ accounts of the assaults.
“I think the thing we noticed was the lack of reaction,” said Arienne Clark-Harrison, the Silver Spring school’s principal at the time.
She said Burke did not become emotional or upset by the allegations, and only said that she had not touched a child “in a manner she felt was inappropriate.”
Clark-Harrison said she first talked with Burke about putting her hands on her students last October, after a child said that Burke had grabbed her arm.
Twelve jurors and three alternates – nine men and six women – were selected Monday to hear the case.
Testimony continues Tuesday. Some of the students who were allegedly assaulted are expected to testify.
