Texas teacher who had drunken sex with 2 teen students and told cops 'I can't remember anything' avoids prison despite pleading guilty
A high school teacher from Texas who was charged after engaging in sexual intercourse with two students pleaded guilty on Wednesday. Lynne Anne Burge had reportedly claimed earlier that she did not remember the criminal incidents.
The 33-year-old pleaded guilty to two counts of improper relationship between educator and students, and a third charge, online solicitation of a minor, against her was dismissed, according to court records. Burge was also fired from her job as a teacher at Muenster High School in rural Texas and was asked to surrender her teaching license.
The news came to light in September 2018 when the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services received an anonymous tip about the incident. Burge reportedly had sex with two of her high school students, one was described as a 16-year-old male and the other was described as an adult at the time of the abuse, according to an arrest warrant obtained by the Gainesville Register.
The 16-year-old student, during an interview at the Cooke County Child Advocacy Center, said he and Burge began messaging on Snapchat "in or about September or October 2017" and sent sexually explicit pictures to each other on the app. The teen also said the duo drove around the rural backroads while drinking alcohol, and began to kiss before returning to her home where they had sex.
The teen reportedly "fell asleep in Burge’s kid’s bedroom before she woke him up and asked him to get in bed with her," the outlet reported citing the arrest warrant. After authorities interviewed Burge on October 11, she claimed that he was intoxicated on both nights she was accused of engaging in sexual intercourse with her students and did not remember doing so. She, however, acknowledged that she remembered driving on backroads with the 16-year-old while she was drunk.
When police asked if she had sex with her student, she said: "I don't know. I hope not. I don't know. I didn’t think I did because my clothes were on. Usually, if that happens your clothes aren’t on. I don’t know, I don’t know, I can’t remember anything.”
The teacher reportedly also had sex with an 18-year-old student in March 2018. Under Texas state law, an educator is forbidden from sexual contact with a student even if the student is an adult. At the time of the sexual encounters, Burge was married with two children.
Burge has now been ordered to serve years of deferred adjudication probation and will pay a $5,000 fine under a plea agreement, her attorney Rick Hagen said.