Teen testifies in driver's education rape case

CAMBRIDGE -- Like thousands of teenagers before her, the 16-year-old Newton South High School student got in the car with Norman Swerling to learn how to drive.

Instead, she testified yesterday, Swerling used the sessions to sexually assault her, on separate occasions fondling her breasts, rubbing her inner thigh, and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

''I couldn't believe this was happening to me," the girl testified in a calm, composed voice in Middlesex Superior Court. ''I felt like I was outside watching myself. I was scared, shocked."

Her account was given on the first day of testimony in the trial of Swerling, 57, who taught driver's education to Newton North and Newton South high school students from 1972 until he was placed on administrative leave in January 2004.

Swerling was indicted by a grand jury in March 2004 on charges that he raped and sexually assaulted the girl, now an 18-year-old college student in Western Massachusetts. The Globe does not identify victims or alleged victims of sexual assault.

''This is a case about violation of trust, the trust that is placed in a teacher when he is with a student," Assistant Middlesex District Attorney Mark Walter said in his opening statement yesterday.

Swerling, of Wellesley, has denied the charges, and his lawyer, Thomas G. Guiney, said yesterday that he would cast doubt on the allegations.

''We wouldn't be here unless there were two sides to this story," Guiney said in his opening statement. ''This man has taught generations of Newton residents how to drive. Everyone in town knows Norman Swerling, and he knows everyone."

Prosecutors say Swerling assaulted the girl on three occasions when they were in the car together. During one of those lessons, the girl alleges, Swerling stopped the car and forced her to perform oral sex.

Thirty days after the first alleged incident, the girl told the school nurse, and police began investigating, according to court documents.

When asked yesterday why she continued to get in the car with Swerling and did not immediately tell anyone, she said, ''I just wasn't comfortable bringing it up. I was just trying to forget about it."

Guiney said in his opening statement that he would try to discredit the teenager.

''It's a 'he said, she said' case," Guiney said. ''Credibility -- that's the crux of this case."

Guiney said the accusations don't make sense, particularly about the assaults the girl said happened at midafternoon, in a car marked ''Driver's Education, City of Newton." Several minutes before the rape is alleged to have occurred, Guiney said, Swerling asked the girl to pull over so he could talk with a friend who was working a police detail.

''Is that the action of a man about to rape a girl, stopping to talk to a police officer?" he asked. ''No."

The alleged victim had Swerling for in-class instruction and another teacher, James Dolliver, for her on-the-road instruction. The girl completed her classroom lessons in December 2003, and Dolliver felt she was prepared to take the driving test.

But Swerling contacted her parents and said that she needed additional private lessons, prosecutors say.

The girl testified yesterday that Swerling ''could be nice" and that she ''learned a lot" from him. But she also said he would become angry during class and made her uncomfortable when he cast her as a prostitute in a classroom skit on drunk driving.

Guiney could cross-examine the girl as early as today.

The trial is expected to last several days and include the testimony of former Newton high school students, former Newton South principal Michael Welch, several school officials, and the girl's mother.

Newton school officials have since removed driver's education from the curriculum, although they insist that the program's elimination had nothing to do with Swerling's case. The city now relies on a private company to teach teenagers how to drive.

Swerling has said he is also certified to teach English, though he has said he may not return if he is acquitted.

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.