DNA link found in teacher sex case

STUART — Boxes of stuffed animals crowded one wall and stacks of American history books and study guides another in the South Fork High School storage room where a 16-year-old student said her teacher coerced her into having sex with him three times in January, according to evidence released Friday in the criminal case against Shawn Trotter.

On the green-blue institutional carpeting, Martin sheriff's investigators found stains below a scuffed table where the girl said she lay during one of those sexual encounters with Trotter, a popular 35-year-old teacher who was married and expecting a baby at the time.

Detectives cut away the carpet and sent it for analysis. In a report dated May 2, a crime lab technician concluded one of the stains was Trotter's seminal fluid mixed with the girl's DNA.

A second stain also proved to be Trotter's seminal fluid, but that was mixed with the DNA of an as-yet-unidentified person. Martin sheriff's detectives are still looking at claims that Trotter was involved with other students, but thus far he is facing three charges of sexual intercourse with a minor involving the 16-year-old.

"It happened again. I lost control of my life," the girl was quoted as telling a friend after her second encounter with Trotter in the storeroom that adjoined his classroom.

She said she was worried she might become pregnant because Trotter did not use a condom in the third incident, according to investigative records.

She told at least three friends about the encounters, saying she was not attracted to Trotter - she described him as fat and smelly - but that she worried he would tell her parents about secrets she confessed to him in after-class talks regarding some minor drug use and a past relationship.

She said she "didn't have control of the situation," according to investigative reports.

Friends encouraged her to report the incidents to school officials, but when she didn't, one of them went to an assistant principal.

That sparked the investigation Jan. 31, two days after the third alleged encounter in the storeroom.

Trotter, whose contract was not renewed by the Martin County School District, denied the accusations. He is free on bond and living with his wife and baby daughter in Vero Beach.

His lawyer, Nicole Menz, said nothing in the lab report specifies the source of cells that carried the girl's DNA or that the two became mixed as a result of a sexual encounter. "These can be present as the result of a sneeze," she said.

She plans to interview the crime lab expert this month.

Other evidence includes videotapes from the school that show Trotter and the girl entering the classroom together after regular school hours with Trotter wearing a red striped shirt on the day the girl said they had their first encounter. The tape shows them leaving together 32 minutes later with Trotter wearing a white shirt.

On the second day the girl mentioned, both are seen entering and then leaving the classroom after school had ended for the day.

A tape on the day of the third encounter shows them leaving the classroom together more than an hour after the official end of the school day.

Trial is tentatively scheduled for late July. Trotter would face a minimum of more than 17 years in prison if convicted as charged.