FARMINGTON – Ending a controversial sexual abuse case, Rachel Burnham pleaded guilty to assault in Superior Court on Friday.

“This is a plea negotiation,” Franklin County Assistant District Attorney James Andrews said Friday. “It does not encompass everything we would like to see. It is part of a long, drawn-out ordeal.”

“It has been a long, bitter, contested battle,” he said.

Justice Joseph Jabar, Andrews, and Burnham’s lawyer David Sanders, of Livermore Falls, all called the plea agreement a compromise for everyone involved.

Burnham was initially charged with a count of unlawful sexual contact, Class B, a count of unlawful sexual contact, Class C, and two counts of Class D terrorizing. She pleaded down to assault Friday, and was sentenced with 364 days in jail, all suspended, and two years of probation.

The victims in Friday’s case were 3 and 5 at the time, their adoptive mother told Jabar on Friday. The Sun Journal is not identifying the adoptive mother in order to protect the identity of the children in this case.

Often, very young children are not put on the stand in sexual abuse cases, Andrews said Friday afternoon. “They may not qualify as competent witnesses,” he said. “The other issue is that kids that undergo trauma that young will forget it,” he said. “They often will forget many of the details of what has happened to them in the past.”

“There are often things that I know are true, or that I feel very strongly are true. But those things often differ from what I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a courtroom.”

In a statement made before the court Friday morning, the adoptive mother agreed with Andrews’ decision not to let the children testify. “The children have struggled,” she said. “They are managing, but it hasn’t been without a lot of hard work on their part.” Burnham, 30, of Farmington, is currently on the Maine Sex Offender Registry, as part a previous case, the victims’ adoptive mother told Jabar. She was put on probation then, too. “Evidently, she didn’t learn any lesson from that.”

But Burnham’s lawyer Sanders had a different story to tell. The previous offense took place when she was in her early 20s. The victim was 15, he said. Since Burnham has a borderline intelligence, he argued, their relationship was like one between peers. It was still illegal, but not on the same caliber as the current allegations.

The facts in the current case are hard to determine, Sanders said. “There is substantial evidence the children have been coached and manipulated,” he said.

“Children are very suggestible,” he said after the trial Friday. “And if you tell a child over and over again that something happened, they begin to believe it.”

It is probable that no one will ever know what really happened to them, if anything, he added.

The children’s adoptive mother said in an interview late Thursday that she was prepared to give in and accept the plea deal. But the fact young children’s testimony usually is not considered believable infuriates her, she said.

“What it’s saying to me,” she said, “is as long as you get a victim, and you get them young enough – go ahead! I think that’s very wrong.”

Burnham’s sentence comes with special probation conditions, Jabar said. She must undergo a sex-offender evaluation and risk assessment, and then complete whatever therapy the evaluation recommends.

She also must comply with all recommendations made by the Department of Heath and Human Services and her intensive case manager.

Burnham also is barred from having any contact with any child under the age of 16, except her own biological children. Contact with them can only take place under the supervision of DHHS staff members, or people contracted by the agency.

Probation conditions began Friday.