Former Gaithersburg Teacher Sentenced For Sexual Abuse

GAITHERSBURG, MD — A former Silver Spring history teacher and congressional candidate was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison for pleading guilty to the sexual abuse of two former students.

Maxwell Bero, 31, taught history at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School (now known as Odessa Shannon Middle School) in Silver Spring from 2013 to 2016, before transferring to Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg. Bero was arrested in 2020 for sexually abusing two eighth grade students from 2014 to 2015. He was charged with six counts of third-degree sex offense and one count of sex abuse of a minor.

There are no allegations of abuse related to Bero’s time at Watkins Mill High School.

“You were a teacher,” Montgomery County Circuit Judge David Boynton said to Bero, as reported by The Washington Post, before sentencing him to 50 years, with all but 8 years of that sentence suspended. “A teacher has the ability to support and help a person develop and grow and flourish, or to absolutely crush them. And that’s what you did.”

According to charging documents, Bero told the class they could communicate with him directly through the social messaging app Kik, and the messages with two female students became flirtatious. Bero sent a nude photo of himself from his bachelor party to one of the students, according to court documents. For the rest of the school year, Bero and the 14-year-old girl sent each other nude photos and messages about “sexual fantasies.”

Bero eventually arranged to meet the student after school, where he groped and fondled her, according to documents.

Bero began messaging with the second student on Kik and Snapchat in early 2015. According to documents, he sent the girl a nude photo and asked her to send one in return, and she refused. They continued to exchange messages about “sexual fantasies,” but when Bero asked the second victim about engaging in sexual relations in his car, he refused, and the two stopped communicating.

On Friday in court, Bero apologized for his conduct for nearly nine minutes, and called his conduct “inappropriate, criminal, and morally reprehensible.”

“For a long time, my mind could not accept that it was me who participated in this inappropriate criminal conduct,” he said. “I have accepted that the good I have done does not erase or minimize my conduct which brings me in court.”

One of his victims, now 21, said that the abuse left her with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. “I have lots of trouble sleeping. I cry almost every day,” she said, as reported in The Post. “I have tremendous trouble feeling safe in my own body.”

Bero received just 8 years out of a possible 50. After his release, he will be on supervised probation for five years, and remain a registered sex offender for life, according to Bethesda Magazine. The sentence was capped at 10 years due to a plea deal, according to The Post.

In 2020, Bero ran an unsuccessful progressive campaign against Rep. David Throne in the Democratic primary to represent Maryland’s Sixth District. Victims came forward about a year after he began running.