Sex Was Forced by Teen, Burbank Fund-Raiser Says

School fund-raiser Salle Dumm, who faced sometimes intense cross-examination Wednesday, insisted that the sex she and a Burbank High School football player engaged in last summer was against her will.

“I did not have sex with him,” Dumm, 51, testified in Superior Court in Pasadena. “He had sex with me and there’s a big difference in the verbiage.”

Dumm, on trial for unlawful sex with a minor and contributing to his delinquency, testified that she awoke in her bed to find that the then-17-year-old youth had climbed on top of her after the two and another adult had socialized at her home last year.

But Dumm was pressed by Deputy Dist. Atty. David Vaughn on why she never reported the encounter the night of July 14, 1995, as a sexual assault.

Dumm acknowledged that she never notified police, a rape crisis center, a hospital or any other authority about the youth forcing himself upon her.

“Did you call the police and tell them you’d been raped?” Vaughn asked.

“No, I did not,” she answered.

Vaughn asked whether Dumm was now accusing the youth, who is 18, of raping her.

“I don’t believe I used the word rape,” said Dumm, who also testified that he pressed her shoulders down on her bed.

The testimony came shortly before Dumm’s lawyer, Jacque Boyle, rested his case.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating today after closing arguments by Boyle and Vaughn. If convicted, Dumm faces up to three years in prison.

The case shook the Burbank Unified School District and led to criminal charges against two football coaches and the resignation of the school board president.

In earlier testimony, the youth said that Dumm, president of the volunteer nonprofit Burbank Educational Foundation, served him vodka and seduced him, saying, “Do this for your team.”

Dumm testified that on the night in question she drank too much alcohol, became ill and went to bed. She said there was little she could do to get free when she awoke.