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Teacher's aide on rape count says she loves teen

BY CHRISTINE ARMARIO | christine.armario@newsday.com

10:02 PM EST, February 25, 2008

A teacher's aide at Greenport Elementary School charged with raping a 15-year-old boy told police she warned the teenager they "should not be having sex because he is too young. But I love him and he loves me."

Her statements to Riverhead police were contained in court filings made public Monday.

Maria R. Commins, 39, married and a mother of three, said the relationship started around the boy's birthday and that they'd had sex seven or eight times around Greenport before they were caught Friday at a Riverhead Holiday Inn Express.

Commins was arrested Friday after Riverhead police were tipped off by a private investigator hired by her husband. She pleaded not guilty at her arraignment Saturday and was released on $500 bail. Commins is scheduled to appear at Riverhead Town Justice Court Tuesday.

In her statement to Det. Robert Boden, Commins recounted buying beer from a Greenport supermarket Friday, visiting her gynecologist for birth control pills and stopping by a CVS in Wading River, where she bought the condom the teen used during sex. Around 11 a.m., she picked up the 15-year-old -- a friend of her son's -- from his house in her Ford Taurus station wagon.

They went first to Friendly's in Riverhead to eat, and then on to the Holiday Inn, where Commins said she paid cash for room No. 205.

"We went inside the room and we both had a beer," Commins said, according to her statement. She said they then had sexual intercourse. Later, they heard a knock at the door from police officers.

"I asked the policeman to wait a minute so we could get dressed," Commins told the detective, her statement says. "The policeman asked what we were doing and I don't know what I said. He saw the beer in the room and he then took me to the police station where I am now."

Commins said she had sex with the teen at a location on Moores Lane in Greenport, a thoroughfare just blocks from her family's home on Cedarfields Drive, and by the Greenport power station.

"I was scared that I was going to get pregnant," she said in explaining why she'd gone to get birth control pills.

The boy's name is redacted from the statement filed in Riverhead court, and has not been released by police because of the nature of the charges.

Commins is charged with two counts of rape, endangering the welfare of a child for the sex act and unlawfully dealing with a child for giving him beer. She resigned her teacher's aide position Sunday.

Superintendent Charles Kozora described her on Sunday as a wonderful person and employee -- a sentiment echoed by neighbors on her street who remembered her active involvement in the schools and her children's lives. Commins is originally from Spain and Kozora noted she was bilingual and "shifted around through many rooms because she was very talented."