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CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — A Henrico teacher has been found guilty of strangling, beating, and forcing her stepsons, ages 9 and 11, to do excessive exercises on multiple occasions.
Barbara Paul, who has been employed by Henrico County Public Schools since 2016, was charged with multiple counts of strangulation, child abuse and neglect, child endangerment, and assault and battery after detectives found videos from cameras inside the family’s Chesterfield home that showed the alleged abuse.
Thursday, she was found guilty on more than 40 counts after less than two hours of jury deliberation.
She is currently on administrative leave without pay from Henrico County Public Schools, according to spokeswoman Eileen Cox.
In closing arguments, prosecutor Mary-Kate Rada Collins showed pictures of the boys wearing matching shirts with orange sleeves while she referred to the videos, which the jury watched during the three-day trial.
Collins said a video from September 3 showed Paul demanding the 9-year-old try to guess a word she was thinking while he did 34 minutes of wall sits and jumps because he didn’t bring his planner home.
While he was doing the exercise, the prosecutor said she said, “I’m a teacher and you’re ignoring me. You must be out of your f-ing mind.”
On September 6, Collins said the 11-year-old had to do one hour and 18 minutes of exercise, including jumping and wall sits, because he put his pencil in his lunchbox instead of his backpack.
The prosecutor said Paul told him, “I am about to bust you so hard your soul will leave your body.”
Paul then smacked him in the face, kicked him, punched him, and performed leg sweeps while he was jumping which would knock him on the ground, according to Collins.
The prosecutor said that on September 8, the 9-year-old was forced to do wall squats for two hours and 21 minutes because he let the Amazon driver deliver a package.
Four days later, the 9-year-old missed the bus and was forced to do 58 minutes of wall sits before school, according to Collins.
The prosecutor said when his stepmother arrived home from work that day, she immediately told him to get back on the wall where he did 24 minutes of wall sits and two hours and 15 minutes of jumps.
Collins also talked about videos that showed Paul wrapping her hands around the boys’ necks causing them not to be able to breath and gasp for air.
In one video, she strangled one boy “possibly 3 times” in a row, according to the prosecutor.
“This is not discipline,” the prosecutor said.
Collins said Paul would berate the children about their hair being messy, for reading a book, for studying together, and for “being stupid."
“They’re not letting her get to work early enough as a teacher before the other teachers ask her for things she says. If they cared about her, they would not treat her like s— every day,” Paul said to the boys on one occasion according to Collins.
On October 3, the prosecutor said Paul strangled the 11-year-old and beat him with a belt because, as Paul told him, “you got hit because you wanted to give me a full sentence, and I didn’t ask for a full sentence."
“This is not parental discipline,” the prosecutor told the jury. “This is cruel treatment, torture, torment, and abuse.”
Collins said the alleged abuse was for the purpose of “power and control” and asked the jury to find Paul guilty of all the charges.
In his closing arguments, Paul’s attorney Cody Villalon expressed gratefulness to the jury for watching the videos and hearing the details of the case.
He said he noted several of them crying while watching the videos.
However, Villalon said he wanted the jury to "consider what the law is and apply the law and think rationally in your application of that law.”
He said the jury needs to consider “parental privilege,” which allows physical punishment of children in Virginia as long as it doesn’t cross the boundary of significant harm.
“In the right context parents can cause children to be in physical pain and allowed to cause them to have marks. That is not a violation of the law. Pain is not prevented as long as it’s not considered beyond transient. Transient means it’s passing pain,” he told the jury.
Villalon added that, “just because you don’t think it’s appropriate and wouldn’t do that to your own child is not the legal standard you’re being asked to apply.”
He said there is “no evidence what-so-ever of any injuries that are long-lasting.”
And, he pointed out that Paul performed the acts in front of her fiancé, the children’s biological father Bhalmiki Maharaj, who was a police officer for Henrico County, suggesting that if she wasn’t permitted by law to do it, he would have stopped her.
Maharaj worked for Henrico County as a Police officer from December 2018 to March 2025.
Court records show that Maharaj admitted to detectives that he hit the older boy on the face and hand with a slipper because he was not doing his punishment military style exercises in a satisfactory manner.
The records show Maharaj said he struck the boy multiple times out of “anger and frustration.”
A source told CBS 6 a classmate of the older boy’s noticed a bruise on the boy’s face from the slipper incident and told a counselor about it, which led the counselor to contact other school officials, including a school resource officer who began to investigate.
Maharaj also admitted that he broke the femur of the 11-year-old in the summer of 2022 by striking him with a five pound dumbbell multiple times.
He plead guilty on July 25 to child abuse and neglect, assault and battery, malicious wounding, and child cruelty.
The offenses occurred in 2019, 2022, and 2024.
This is a developing story. Email the CBS 6 Newsroom if you have additional information to share.
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