Miss stars in sex tape with her students
Mobile-phone footage showed the shocking scene – but was it a crime?
Hey... It’s Coach Colleps. Do you know what time the baseball game starts? An innocentenough message, many would agree, sent by Brittni Colleps, then 27, in spring 2011, to a boy named ‘Aaron’. Aaron was an 18-year-old athlete at the school where Brittni was a teacher and coach.
But within 24 hours of this first message, things had taken an incredibly inappropriate turn. The conversation was no longer about sports. It had become extremely explicit, with Colleps admitting to her student she was an anything goes in sex kinda girl.
I like pullin’ hair, bitin’, scratchin’, spanking, I even like being choked, Colleps wrote.
She discussed her favourite sex toys and, from there, it only became more graphic. An English teacher at Kennedale High School in Arlington, Texas, USA, Colleps was also mum to three children, and the wife of a soldier, Christopher.
The couple, who’d been married for nine years, had a varied sex life.
They’d even engaged in group sex before, together.
But, Christopher, then 31, was stationed out of town on military duty.
And in his absence, Colleps had made a series of terrible decisions that started with those messages.
Hundreds of explicit texts between Colleps and her student were exchanged.
Then, in April 2011, things progressed further.
Graphic footage
With Christopher away, and the kids out of the house, Colleps invited the athlete over to watch a movie.
They ended up having sex. And the student reportedly returned to Colleps’ home at least four more times.
In May, he brought three friends to Colleps’ house for dinner.
That night, the teacher cooked all of the students spaghetti – but cooking wasn’t all that she did.
The students claimed their teacher then put on lingerie, got out her sex
toys and led the four teenagers to her bedroom.
Afterwards, what happened in that room was circulated via mobile-phone footage around the school.
The images showed a woman with her back to the camera, engaged in sexual intercourse.
The graphic footage featured four teenagers.
Colleps felt she had no choice but to turn herself in to the police.
As the boys weren’t underage, Brittni Colleps didn’t face rape charges, but was charged with multiple counts of an improper relationship between student and a teacher.
When she went on trial in Texas in summer 2012, her teenage students were all given pseudonyms.
The prosecution argued that, while the boys were all of age, the law protects students from a relationship with someone who is in a superior position.
Reams of explicit text messages from Colleps to the boys were read to the jury. The graphic sex tape was played.
As one of the students gave his testimony, he pointed out a tattoo on the woman’s back that he said clearly identified her as Brittni Colleps.
A fifth student, not involved in the group sex, said Colleps had started texting him, too.
Eventually that had led to her picking him up near his house and driving him to her home. There, he said, they had sex two days in a row.
Two students also said that, although Colleps was a little worried at first about sending explicit pictures, she ended up sharing nude photographs with them.
She also shared a video which showed her with a sex toy.
Not-guilty plea
Brittni Colleps pleaded not guilty, but she declined to give evidence.
Defence lawyer Lex Johnson argued that no crime had taken place, as all of the teenagers were over the age of consent.
‘These were not boys; these were not children. These were grown men who connived, conspired, worked each other to be with this woman,’ he told the jury.
Some of the students told the court that they didn’t feel like victims and were happy to be at Colleps’ home on the night of the group encounter.
Colleps’ mother Shirley Bush took the stand for the defence.
She said that she was disappointed with her daughter but that Colleps had always been a model child and a ‘generous person’.
Shirley told how, after she’d been diagnosed with cancer, a seven-monthspregnant Colleps offered to shave her own head, too, so she wouldn’t feel so alone.
‘Have mercy on her as someone who has done nothing wrong except in that time period.
‘Have mercy on her kids, they don’t understand this,’ Shirley Bush begged.
One of the victims, named only as ‘John’, told the jurors that Colleps had already been paying for her actions.
He said that she should only lose her teaching certificate, but didn’t want to see her jailed.
When called as a witness, Colleps’ husband told the courtroom he was angry with his wife, but that he’d stand by her.
He was working through their problems by going to church and praying, he added.
He maintained his wife didn’t do anything illegal, though he admitted her actions were ‘morally and ethically wrong’.
‘That’s between me and her and God,’ he said.
Moral judgement?
In his closing statement, Colleps’ defence lawyer Lex Johnston said her actions were ‘victimless’.
‘I didn’t hear from any children,’ he said. ‘These are grown men that are old enough to go to war.’
He went as far as to say that the five students were ‘just as guilty in this crime’ as Colleps, judging by the content of their texts to her.
And after hearing a great deal of emotional testimony, the jurors had a big decision to make.
Given the boys were all aged 18 at the time of the offence, had Brittni Colleps really committed a crime? Or was it – as her husband Christopher claimed – that her morals were being judged?