Charges in High School Sex Case Are Dropped

A Superior Court judge dismissed criminal charges against Burbank schools fund-raiser Salle Dumm on Wednesday after jurors concluded they were hopelessly deadlocked in trying to decide whether Dumm seduced a teenage football player last summer.

Judge Thomas W. Stoever, after hearing that the jury of nine women and three men were unable to agree on a verdict after nearly three days of deliberations, declared a mistrial and ordered the matter closed.

The judge’s order prevents the Los Angeles district attorney’s office from retrying the case, prosecutors said.

Dumm, 51, who often cringed and covered her face when the trial focused on details of her sexual encounter with the then 17-year-old boy on the night of July 14, 1995, tearfully hugged relatives and friends after the judge announced his decision.

“I feel very blessed right now,” Dumm, president of the nonprofit Burbank Educational Foundation, said outside the courtroom. “It’s been awful on all of us. Right now I’m very relieved.”

Dumm was charged with unlawful sex with a minor, a felony, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor. If convicted, she faced up to three years in prison.

Stoever said he was dismissing the charges because he believed both the prosecution and the defense had done the best jobs they could in presenting their cases. Another jury would very likely come up with the same result if the case was retried, and there was no need to put everyone through another trial, the judge said.

“All parties to this action have paid a very dear price,” Stoever said.

Both the prosecution and the defense lawyers said they respected the judge’s decision. All the jurors declined to talk about the case.

The Dumm case, which generated embarrassment and snickering in Burbank, reverberated through the Burbank Unified School District during the past year. Criminal charges of failure to report child abuse were brought against two former Burbank High School football coaches, who later entered pleas to lesser charges. The president of the school board resigned after admitting he knew of the sex allegations against Dumm but failed to report them to authorities.

The trial brought the focus back to the two central figures and left the decision of who to believe up to the jury.

Although the youth, now 18, said during the trial that Dumm seduced him and offered him money for the Burbank High School football program if he would “do this for your team,” Dumm insisted that the youth climbed on her without any invitation while she was asleep at home and intoxicated after a social gathering there.

And while Dumm never reported being sexually assaulted and never sought medical assistance or counseling for rape, the essence of her defense was that the youth was the aggressor and had sex with her against her will.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David Vaughn, who prosecuted the case, said the rape defense, first presented at the trial, was ridiculous.

Dumm testified she had been drinking too much that night, became ill and went to bed, telling the youth and an adult guest at her home to leave when they were ready. There had been no physical contact at that point between herself and the boy, she said in court.

She awoke, Dumm testified, to find the youth having sex with her. The youth, who weighed between 250 and 300 pounds at the time, held her down, she said.

Earlier, the youth testified that during a night of socializing at Dumm’s home, he had been served three or four vodka and orange juice drinks, massaged Dumm’s neck and touched her breasts. Later that night, he found a note instructing him to go to the bedroom, where he found a naked Dumm leaning against a bed, he testified.

The two engaged in sex after Dumm whispered something to him about how she could help the football team financially, he said.

Dumm was arrested in November when police learned from a football coach about the alleged sexual intercourse between her and the youth.

In July, the youth’s family filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking unspecified damages, saying the boy had suffered emotional injuries from the experience, and that it caused his parents emotional and financial hardship.

Besides Dumm and several other individuals, the lawsuit names the educational foundation and the school district.

Dumm’s lawyer, Jacque Boyle, tried to persuade the jury that the youth is a liar who fabricated what happened between him and Dumm for financial gain.

“He’s going to say whatever is best for him. . . . He’s got that greed factor in mind,” Boyle said. “He wants to be the richest kid in Burbank.”

Richard Garrigues, the lawyer representing the youth and his family, said Wednesday that the civil action would continue regardless of the outcome of the criminal case.

“Had it gone to an acquittal it still wouldn’t affect what would happen in a civil case,” he said.

Dumm, who says she has received numerous offers for television talk show appearances and movie deals, said she has yet to decide what to do next, including whether to file any lawsuit of her own.

“I need to get my thoughts together,” she said.