JURY ACQUITS MAN OF RAPING TEACHER SCHOOL OFFICIALS DECIDE THERE'S

A 34-year-old Chewelah high school teacher wasn't raped when a student-turned-boyfriend and another man had three-way sex with her, a jury decided Thursday.

A Stevens County Superior Court jury of eight men and four women deliberated about six hours before acquitting Tony Borg Jr., 21, of second-degree rape and unlawful imprisonment.

It remains unclear what effect the verdict will have on the April 29 trial of co-defendant Michael J. Conner, 22. Conner is accused of holding the victim down while Borg raped and sodomized her. Meanwhile, Chewelah School District officials have determined there is probable cause to fire the Jenkins High School teacher for unprofessional conduct. An investigation indicated alleged abuses by the teacher "more likely happened than they did not," Superintendent Marcia Costello said. The teacher remains suspended with pay while dismissal proceedings continue. In addition to her job, she could lose her teaching certificate as the result of an investigation to be launched by the state superintendent of public instruction. Costello declined to discuss the allegations except to say they are unrelated to the teacher's relationship with Borg last year after he was no longer a student. Court documents indicate the school district investigated accusations that the teacher had a sexual relationship in 1993 with a 17-year-old male student. The district also looked into allegations that she tried to lure another high school boy into a sexual relationship that year. While admitting a brief sexual relationship with Borg - so intense that they had each other's name tattooed on their ring fingers - the teacher denied the other allegations. She said that, as an adult, she has never had sexual contact with a student, and her accusers are friends of Borg and Conner. One of her accusers claimed she engaged in heavy petting, kissing and topless contact with him in the bunkhouse he lives in next to his parents' house. When confronted by the boy's stepmother, the teacher "admitted everything and begged for forgiveness and understanding," Conner's court-appointed attorney stated in a court document. The attorney, John Troberg, said another boy claimed to have had a sexual relationship with the teacher that began in 1993, when he was a student. The boy said the teacher asked him to live with her, and she implied he would be paid with sex for providing child care and performing household chores, Troberg wrote. The woman said she drove the first boy home and accepted an invitation to look at his bunkhouse, but her 7-year-old son was present and nothing improper happened, court documents show. She said the second boy "was contacting me at my home and asking me to help him stay away from drugs." For the jury in the Borg case, it was a question of whether the woman consented to sex after what she described as a "cordial social evening" with Borg and Conner in her home. Jurors heard police testimony that both men admitted pressing sex on the woman even though she resisted. Deputy Prosecutor Darla Copeland Gross also presented evidence that the teacher suffered numerous bruises.

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