Former principal doesn’t remember 2004 allegation against substitute teacher

A former principal of a Gaithersburg middle school where a substitute teacher is accused of groping a girl in 2004 said he has no recollection of investigating the allegation.
Charging documents filed last month indicate that the Forest Oak Middle School student, who is not named, told her mother in 2004 that the teacher touched her several times, including on her thighs and buttocks. Mother and daughter then drove back to the school, where Principal John Burley “was notified of the above events,” according to charging documents.
Burley, now retired, told The Gazette Friday that while he doesn’t recall talking to the alleged victim and her mother about the incident, he must not have perceived it as a case of abuse. Otherwise, he would have called police, he said.
Burley spent 17 years as principal of Forest Oak, ending in 2011.
The former Forest Oak student is one of four females to accuse Jose Pineda, 50, of the 9100 block of Bramble Bush Court in Gaithersburg, of touching them inappropriately in the classroom. The other three alleged incidents occurred in 2013 and 2014 — two at Ridgeview Middle School in Gaithersburg and one at Clemente Middle School in Germantown in September, after which Pineda was arrested.
Pineda is charged with four counts of third-degree sexual offense and four counts of sexual abuse of a minor. He was being held Friday in lieu of $150,000 bail.
Montgomery County police said Thursday that they had no record that law enforcement had been informed of the incident in 2004...

...Burley was told by police that, according to the victim, he said he would make sure Pineda didn’t teach at the school again. Pineda doesn’t appear to have returned as a substitute to Forest Oaks, he said.
“If such a report came to me, and if all of this happened, I would have reported it to the [MCPS] substitute [teacher] office,” Burley said, adding that he would have filed paperwork removing Pineda from the list of substitutes for Forest Oak and then left the matter in the hands of the MCPS central office. Since Pineda doesn’t appear to have taught at Forest Oak after the incident, Burley said that’s probably what he did...

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