San Fernando Valley : High School Athlete Tells of Seduction

After she plied him with three or four screwdrivers, a 17-year-old high school football player testified, 51-year-old Salle Dumm stripped, lured him into her bedroom, and grabbed him, saying, “Do this for your team.”

The actions of Dumm, a fund-raiser for Burbank High School charged with seducing the youth, were described publicly by the boy for the first time Thursday.

But Dumm’s lawyer insisted that it was the youth who took advantage of his drunken client, and argued that sex occurred but without criminal intent on Dumm’s part.

After cross-examination of the boy, the judge ordered Dumm to stand trial on one felony count of having sex with a minor and a misdemeanor count stemming from her allegedly giving alcohol to the youth--crimes that could land her in state prison for three years.

Dumm, then-president of the Burbank Education Foundation, is a longtime school and football booster.

According to the boy, Dumm told him, “Do this for your team. I can help out your team financially.”

The case has sent shock waves through the high school football program, and led to the resignation last week of Burbank School Board President Joe Hooven, who was told about the incident shortly after it occurred last summer, but did not tell police.

Throughout the three-hour hearing before Burbank Municipal Judge Rand Rubin, Dumm listened silently, at times shaking her head as the victim described the sexual encounter in detail.

Dumm appeared poised throughout most of the hearing.

But leaving the courthouse, and free on $30,000 bond, she broke into tears on the shoulder of a female bystander.

“There’s a lot I’d like to say, and I can’t,” Dumm told reporters.