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NANCY GRACE

Teacher`s Group Sex With Students Caught on Tape

Aired December 6, 2012 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


NANCY GRACE, HOST: Breaking news tonight. Live, Arlington. A military wife, mother of three, busted, busted teaching a lot more than reading, writing and arithmetic. Repeatedly, she invites four boys, students, into bed with her all at the same time.

Bombshell tonight. The married mom thinks her student orgies are secret. Until busted! A cell phone video taking during the underage sex orgy goes viral at her high school. And then hundreds of sex texts uncovered. But tonight the mother of three, Brittni Colleps, says she`s the victim.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is Brittni Colleps a sexual predator?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In my opinion, she is.

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "ANDERSON LIVE": Brittni, I got to ask you, what were you thinking? I mean, what -- why did you do this?

BRITTNI COLLEPS, HAD SEX WITH STUDENTS: At the time, honestly, I really wasn`t thinking. I was at a really dark point in my life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But in Texas, it does. The law clearly says no teacher can have sex with any student at any age.

COOPER: You`re saying it`s not like -- I mean, I`ve read these text messages. It doesn`t -- how could you have sent these messages to students in your class?

GRACE: I can read back all these messages. And I`ll just put it out there. They`re nasty.

COOPER: Christopher, your wife is in jail for five years.

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS, BRITTNI`S HUSBAND: Yes, sir.

COOPER: And you`re -- do you still stand by her?

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS: Absolutely, 100 percent.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five years behind bars for having sex with five of her students.

GRACE: Can I ask you what you tell your children? Because I`m not getting an answer. What do you tell them about Mommy in jail?

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS: We told them that Mommy made some bad decisions.

BRITTNI COLLEPS: I made some bad choices.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us. Bombshell tonight. To Arlington. Military wife, a mother of three, busted, teaching a lot more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. She repeatedly invites four boy students into bed with her all at the same time. A cell phone video taken during this underage sex orgy goes viral at her high school where she teaches. But tonight, the mother of three claims she`s the victim.

We are taking your calls. I want to go out to Brett Larson, investigative reporter. Brett, inviting four high school students into bed with you -- and Brett, I`ve got right here with me the whole stack of all of the sex texts going on between her and some of her students. And I`ve gone through them and highlighted them.

And you know what? I`ll say a lot on the air because it`s the truth, as I would to a jury. But these are so raunchy and triple-X that this teacher is sending to her students, they`re so raunchy, I can`t -- I cannot even say these on the air.

BRETT LARSON, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Nancy, I`m right there with you. I mean, it all starts -- these text messages start off very innocent. You know, what time`s the baseball game, oh, I forgot. And they quickly develop into...

GRACE: Oh, I forget. Do you have a dildo, basically, is the way that one goes.

LARSON: Yes. And it -- it`s, like -- you know, she -- she goes on this, I like to have my hair pulled. I like to -- I`m a dirty girl. Anything goes. And it goes into a range of things that we can`t even say on TV because it`s just -- it`s just so awful. It`s like something you would read in a pornographic magazine, this coming from a teacher to her students. And in some cases, Nancy, the texts were sent while they were in class together!

GRACE: OK, Matt Zarrell, joining me on the story, a lot of these texts -- I was reading through them very carefully and she`s writing during school, saying, Oh, that`s my whole third period. I can`t meet you in the bathroom right now.

MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Yes, Nancy, but one thing that she wants to make sure that is clear is that she didn`t give these students any extra favors in class, didn`t give them any better grades in class for these sexual encounters.

GRACE: Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: I`ve got a question. And I can read back all these messages, and I`ll just put it out there, they`re nasty. I talk dirty, too, like, oh, yes, F that P, your C feels so good, (INAUDIBLE) P, blah, blah, blah. They go down from there.

But my concern is about your children, all right? That`s what I want to know about today. How are they? Do they get to see you? And what do you tell them?

BRITTNI COLLEPS: Yes, I do get to see my children. Luckily, they can -- they`re busy during the week because all three of them play sports and they`re active in church. And on the weekends is usually when I get to see them, and I visit them every Saturday and Sunday. My husband comes every single day to see me. And then my other family members and people from my church come to visit me, as well.

GRACE: Can I ask you what you tell your children? Because I`m not getting an answer. What do you tell them about Mommy in jail?

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS: We told them that Mommy made some bad decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Yes, well, I can think of four bad decisions. That`s one, two, three, four high school kids she invited into her bedroom to have a sex orgy with minors. You`re seeing Warner Bros. TV`s "Anderson Live."

It`s just so overwhelming. I want to go out to a special guest joining us, Elizabeth Beach. This is the prosecutor in Tarrant County, Texas, who prosecuted this case.

Elizabeth, when I first heard about the case, it`s bad enough. But when I started reading all of these text messages -- they are triple-X- rated. I can`t even read them on air. And this is what the teacher is sending the students.

Now, when I interviewed and spoke to the husband, he kept standing by her and saying that it was his fault and quoting the Bible at me. And it seemed like they never really accepted what happened, what really happened. This is a rape. And there were not one but four students involved.

What was she like when you met her in court?

ELIZABETH BEACH, TARRANT COUNTY ASST. DISTRICT ATTORNEY: She was sitting at the counsel table, and she -- when asked to enter a plea, she didn`t speak. She didn`t enter a plea. And she sat fairly emotionless throughout the entire trial.

And of course, as you know, I as the prosecutor don`t have any direct contact with her. I don`t speak to her or anything. But just that was the observation of her sitting at the counsel table in the courtroom, very calm, very emotionless, very stoic.

GRACE: And what`s amazing to me -- unleash the lawyers, Jason Oshins, New York, Penny Douglas Furr, Atlanta. Jason, she claims she`s the victim. And I nearly did a back flip when I heard that. She claims that she`s the victim because one of the students, the underage minors that she was raping -- under the law, that`s child molestation -- had a cell phone going and videoed the whole thing. So she says she`s the victim.

JASON OSHINS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, this wasn`t about rape. I mean, the charge was an improper relationship. And these victims, if you will, they were all of the age of consent. No one would have said anything about this other than maybe the inappropriateness of the relationship, but relative to the fact that all of these young men, though teenagers, were of the age of consent.

It`s Texas`s law that seems overreaching to the extent that they`re charging her with this improper relationship based...

GRACE: Jason?

OSHINS: Nancy?

GRACE: How`s your little son doing?

OSHINS: He`s almost 14 now.

GRACE: Oh, 14. You know, in another couple of years, it`ll be A-OK, under your reasoning, for him to have sex...

OSHINS: It`s not...

GRACE: ... with his teacher with...

OSHINS: Nancy, Nancy...

GRACE: ... three other boys in her bedroom!

OSHINS: Nancy, I respect exactly what you`re saying, and though I...

GRACE: Really? Because it doesn`t sound like it.

OSHINS: Nancy, I view this as an inappropriate relationship. I don`t view this as a criminal act.

GRACE: Really? What about it, Elizabeth Beach? It is a crime.

BEACH: In Texas, it is a crime. It`s a second-degree felony. And the thought behind it, according to the courts, is that students need to be protected from their teachers sexually exploiting them, and secondly, that you want an environment in the schoolroom of learning, not of sending sex text messages between teacher and student, which is exactly what went on here during class time in the school.

And there are additional text messages where she`s telling one of these students to skip class and come meet in her classroom so that they can have a tryst. So obviously, none of that is helpful to a learning environment in the school. That`s the purpose of this law.

GRACE: You know, what gets me is all the defense attorneys are holding their nose when they hear these facts and wrinkling up their faces, but then going on to say how it`s all OK. What about it, Penny?

PENNY DOUGLAS FURR, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, what I read of the Texas legislature was that they said it`s a power relationship. Well, if that`s the case, what about employer-employee? Can they not have sex, either?

GRACE: Well, I appreciate that, going down the slippery slope. Those are not the facts here. Let`s go through the facts, Travis Hudson. Travis is joining us, courts reporter with "Dallas Morning News."

Take it from the top, Travis.

TRAVIS HUDSON, "DALLAS MORNING NEWS" (via telephone): Hi, Nancy. I mean, it was a case where she was simply charged with the improper relations after they were found out through hearsay at the school and after somebody turned in. It`s a Texas law, and she was arrested and charged with it.

GRACE: OK, Matt Zarrell, let`s hear the facts from the beginning, how this whole thing unfolded. And let me remind everybody that video of the incident is not hearsay. Go ahead, Matt.

ZARRELL: Yes, Nancy, the crucial evidence was the video evidence, where there was one sexual encounter with four of her students was videotaped. And that video was shown to the jury.

In addition, the prosecutors were able to match her up to the video based on a tattoo she had on her back. And in addition, there are also, as we talked about, the racy text messages. She also sent nude photos of herself, as well as videos of herself using sex toys to the students.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I`ve got pages and pages of text messages that you would send these students, sometimes while they were even in your classroom, right?

BRITTNI COLLEPS: It wasn`t the way it was made out to be. The whole situation lasted about over a month of time, is all. I mean, they made it seem like it was the whole school year. It wasn`t like that at all. It just happened at the very end.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) your punishment and confinement in the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for five years. We do not recommend community supervision.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brittni Colleps appeared stoic, while the same news was enough to bring her husband to tears.

GRACE: I`ve got a question. And I can read back all these messages. And I`ll just put it out there. They`re nasty.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think what she did was wrong?

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS: I think it was wrong against me and our marriage, but I don`t see the crime outside of that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What if these boys had been 16 or 17?

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS: That`s a different story because that`s illegal, no matter if they`re students or not. The boys, as everybody calls them, in this situation, are not boys. They`re grown men.

Our broken marriage is because I didn`t do the right things as a spiritual leader in my home.

COOPER: You blame yourself for this situation?

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS: I blame myself a lot for this situation. I committed adultery before she even thought about committing adultery. And when she told me, I told her I was going to stand by her, and I went out and committed adultery again. I have just as much on my shoulders for this getting to this point as she does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That`s from Warner Bros. "Anderson Live."

Out to Dr. Leslie Seppinni, clinical psychologist and author. Dr. Leslie, I have found so often that when people do horrible things, they somehow find a quote somewhere in the Bible that somehow makes it all OK. Now, I don`t know the intent behind the Bible. I know what it says. But hiding behind that just doesn`t seem OK to me.

LESLIE SEPPINNI, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, it`s not OK. And in this particular case, I think that the Texas criminal justice system got it right and is needing (ph) mental health and hand in hand (ph) joining together saying that this is not OK behavior. This is about power, dominance and control.

And that`s why she chose these young men, and we need to stop this. Ten percent of women teachers are now abusing their students, and it`s something that we need to take a very hard line about.

GRACE: You know what? That`s staggering. Where did you get that stat, 10 percent of teachers busing students?

SEPPINNI: You can find it all over the Internet.

GRACE: Wow!

SEPPINNI: They`ve been doing studies -- yes, 10 percent of women are now abusing students. And this is a big problem. It`s a problem because, you know, these women also are going to start claiming -- the DSM 5 has just changed its diagnosis, giving them a way out.

GRACE: You know, out to you, Owen LaFave. Everyone, you remember Owen LaFave, Deb LaFave`s husband. His ex-wife, Debra LaFave, was molesting a 14-year-old boy student.

Owen, when you first heard this case -- and you hear the teacher, when I confront her, say, Well, it was not the whole school year. And I want to correct -- I keep saying four students. There were four students in one incident. There`s another -- there`s a fifth boy student.

OWEN LAFAVE, EX-HUSBAND OF DEBRA LAFAVE: This case is completely outrageous. And of course, every time I hear one of these cases again -- and it`s amazing to me that this continues to happen because every one of these is highly publicized -- that it continues to happen, just completely outrageous. And it always takes me right back to my personal situation with my ex-wife.

GRACE: When you first learned about your wife, Debra LaFave`s, relationship with a 14-year-old student, did you believe it?

LAFAVE: I think it`s -- I didn`t. I didn`t personally. I think it`s natural and an inclination that the person you love and you`ve committed to of course wouldn`t -- wouldn`t hurt yourself. So very much like this husband, I agreed to stay by her side.

But you know, when you -- when you get married and you have your vows, it`s -- you know, it`s unconditional and those aren`t empty words. But when you realize that, you know, someone on the other end isn`t reciprocating that same level of commitment and is acting in an outrageous behavior, you know, to the detriment of herself -- and in this case, you know, the real victim is, you know, not only these boys but her three children. It`s a game changer.

GRACE: We`re taking your calls. Jody in Florida. Hi, Jody. What`s your question?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. How are you?

GRACE: Good.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have to tell you first of all how much I love your show, and your children are gorgeous.

GRACE: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They`re so beautiful, and I love them. You know, I just sort of feel like if this was a man, the punishment would be worse. He`d be behind bars for a long time. I feel like when it`s a woman, the punishment is less.

And you know, another thing is she`s obviously an adult, which means she`s older than 18. She was 18 at one point, so clearly, she understands you cannot do this with someone who`s under 18.

GRACE: Jason?

OSHINS: Listen, Nancy, the intent of the legislature is where I come to. We heard the prosecutor speak about, you know, dominance and taking control of people who are sort of the weak.

But at 18 years old, these young men were not weak. They knew what they were getting into. And we wouldn`t consider an inappropriate relationship, we might question, between a 29-year-old and an 18-year-old, but not in this case to punish her with five years in prison. It`s just wrong.

GRACE: Punishment -- Elizabeth -- Elizabeth Beach joining me, the prosecutor who handled this case out of Dallas. Elizabeth, isn`t it true that the judge ran all of these concurrently? There`s five student victims. The sentences were run concurrently, or at the same time. I think she got a heck of a bargain.

BEACH: They do run concurrently. But actually, that statutory that they are required to run concurrently. So the judge didn`t have a choice about that. But the jury is the one that decided there should be a five- year penitentiary sentence for each of the 16 counts in the five indictments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I got to ask you, what were you thinking? I mean, why did you do this?

BRITTNI COLLEPS: At the time, honestly, I really wasn`t thinking. I was at a really dark point in my life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can`t have people like her looking to find her sexual enjoyment in schools.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Wasn`t thinking, Penny Douglas Furr and Jason Oshins. Well, I`m looking through, oh, I don`t know, 25 pages of porn, triple-X-rated text messages that this teacher was sending, that we know of, five students, or as Jason Oshins said off camera, porn, porn in writing.

So how do you say you`re not thinking, Jason Oshins, when, clearly, she was thinking when she was writing all these triple-X texts to her students?

OSHINS: Nancy, I`m not passing on the propriety of the relationship. I find it as inappropriate as anyone else does, especially as an employee, and you know, in the middle of school time, advocating for them, you know, to have trysts while in school.

I`m not saying anything about that is appropriate. She should be fired. She could be barred from teaching. But why five years in prison for a relationship that involved consenting adults?

GRACE: OK, you know what? I`m going to throw this to Elizabeth Beach. Can you try to put some sense into his head, Elizabeth?

BEACH: Yes. Because we all know there are certain people that cannot consent to sex. It`s not considered legal consent. A child can`t consent to sex. An unconscious person can`t consent to sex.

And under our statute, a student in high school or younger cannot consent to sex with a teacher. These are not consenting adults, these are immature teenagers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Can I ask you what you tell your children Bill Clinton I`m not getting an answer. What do you tell them about Mommy in jail?

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS: We told them that Mommy made some bad decisions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A Ft. Worth teacher slapped with a five-year jail term for having sex with five of her students. The student 28-year- old Brittni Colleps slept with were grown men, 18 years old and older.

COOPER: I`ve got pages and pages of text messages that you would send these students, sometimes while they were even in your classroom. Right?

COLLEPS: It wasn`t the way it was made out to be.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More devastating, the evidence of the infidelity. That graphic cell phone video of his wife in bed with four teenagers.

COOPER: How long did this go on with these students? Because you were sending text messages, I mean, a lot of text messages. I`ve got pages and pages of text messages that you would send these students, sometimes while they were even in your classroom, right?

COLLEPS: It wasn`t the way it was made out to be. The whole situation lasted about over a month of time is all. They made it seem like it was the whole school year. It wasn`t like that at all. It just happened at the very end.

COOPER: But Brittni, whether it is, I mean, two days or two weeks or a month, I mean, you`re saying it is not -- I`ve read these text messages. It doesn`t -- how could you have sent these messages to students in your class? In the school?

COLLEPS: Well, since I`m on trial (ph) right now, that`s not really something that I can go into right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: That`s from Warner Brothers, Anderson Live. I noticed when she gets thrown a hard question, she is like, and blinks her eyes and then won`t answer.

I`m going to go out to physician and founder of pediatricsnow.com, Dr. Gwenn O`Keeffe. Dr. Gwenn, everybody is making light of this scenario, because the teen students were of an age where they can consent to sex. But in your practice, when you have seen victims of child molestation, and I`m referring in this case to boy victims, because somehow that seems to be marginalized. Like it`s OK if the victim is a boy. It is not OK. What effect have you seen that have on boys, especially when the perpetrator is in a position of authority?

DR. GWENN O`KEEFFE, MD, FOUNDER OF PEDIATRICSNOW.COM: Oh, it`s definitely not OK, Nancy, whether it is a boy or a girl. And let`s make it very clear that these are not adults. These are teenagers who won`t be fully mature until their mid-20s.

These boys are going to have lasting psychological and physical consequences. They need to have a full exam to rule out sexually transmitted diseases, and they`ve had their entire trust violated by a trusting adult that is almost like a parent. Remember, teachers take that role as parent in school. They really need to have a long-term counseling program to rebuild that trust. And especially for boys, they kind of act like everything is all cool. So it is very, very hard for a boy. They don`t like to act like anything is fazing them. They probably feel incredibly humiliated and violated.

GRACE: Elizabeth Beach, I see that today in the local county jail, she is having beef tacos, rice, pinto beans, tortillas, cookies. She is getting dinner, lunch and breakfast served to her on a tray. You know what? I`ll be lucky if I get a chicken nugget. Why is she still sitting in the county jail? Why hasn`t she been put into the system?

BEACH: It just takes some time for people to be processed out of the county jail and into the state penitentiary system. She is not getting any special treatment by any means. It is just the standard protocol.

GRACE: Well, that`s good to know, that`s good to know, Elizabeth Beach.

Owen LaFave, you blasted onto the scene when your wife, Deb LaFave, was convicted of molesting students, young students at her school. Have you noticed that it is a whole different scenario when the perpetrator is a woman?

LAFAVE: Absolutely, Nancy. I think we`ve got this stigma in society that these boys aren`t victims. That it is almost a rite of passage. And of course, I wrote a book and worked on a documentary and talked to a number of these boys that are victims. And none of them feel like they`re victims at the time. But later in life, they come to this realization that they do have some serious psychological damage that is done as a result of these encounters.

GRACE: Out to the lines. Eugene in New York. Hi, Eugene, what is your question? Eugene, cut the TV off for your question. What`s your question, dear?

CALLER: Yes, how common (ph) are the laws in other states where they have a law against being a teacher and a statute where there is a felony offense?

GRACE: What about it, Jason Oshins?

OSHINS: I`m not familiar with this statute in any other jurisdiction. I sort of, you know, rally against the fact that they are of the age of consent. I understand where Ms. Beach is coming from relative to control of teachers, relative to students, I think it should not apply when the age of consent is present.

GRACE: OK. You know what, Jason? I really appreciate what you think and your feelings and your emotions, and you enunciate them so well and articulate them beautifully, but that`s just not the law. So to you, Penny Douglass, weigh in.

FURR: They`re adults, Nancy, so they should be treated like adults. These are adults who wanted to go to her house and have sex. They weren`t forced there.

GRACE: Second verse, same as the first. You keep -- both of you, it is like a bad echo. That they`re of an age, they are of an age of consent. The whole issue is a teacher is having a sex orgy with her students. Now, I know that you and Jason don`t want to grab the bull by the horns, so to speak, and deal with that, but that`s the scenario that we`re dealing with, with Brittni Colleps. Out to the lines, Katrina, California. Hi, Katrina, what`s your question?

CALLER: Hi. Yes, I`m with the lady that you just talked to. I feel as though they are still kids but they are adults. I don`t understand why the lady, so what? It is a school teacher. Could have still happened. And if she had a different job, it would happened without no one knowing it because most of the time these kids are acting as adults. And that`s not fair to just blame her. Why they don`t blame the kids` parents, if they`re minors, for not raising their children properly? Why are they always blaming the woman?

GRACE: Katrina?

CALLER: Yes.

GRACE: Do you have children?

CALLER: Yes, I do have a child.

GRACE: How would you feel if their teacher started having sex with them?

CALLER: I wouldn`t really feel no type of way. My child is over 18 years old. It happens every day. It is a cougar dealing with a young man.

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: It doesn`t happen every day. Teachers do not molest their students every day. I pray to God, Brett Larson.

LARSON: Say that, Nancy -- this--

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: The caller, Katrina in California, is saying it`s not the woman`s fault. It is not the teacher`s fault. That`s what she`s saying.

LARSON: I don`t agree with that. The teacher in this situation is the adult. She is the older person. And she is violating the law. The law clearly states in Texas that you can`t have sex with your students. The only caveat to that being if there is an age difference of less than three years. Which, 28 to 18, last time I did math on my two hands is ten years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Teekah Lewis was just 2 years old at the time she disappeared. To this date, tonight, Teekah`s mother has never given up. She believes her daughter is alive. She believes someone took Teekah and is raising the child as their own. That`s a mother`s love. There is nothing greater on this earth than a mother`s love.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLLEPS: Yes, I do get to see my children. Luckily, they`re busy during the week because all three of them play sports and they`re active in church.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: You know what? That`s not true. You know, you have your children. What about it? Jason Oshins, you have your children. Yes, they play sports. Yes, they might go to church on Sunday morning. But what about at night, when you put them to sleep? What about when they get home from school? What about when something goes wrong and they want their mother?

OSHINS: Sure.

GRACE: I know your children, and I know you`re one of the best dads in the world.

OSHINS: Thanks, Nancy.

GRACE: But people need their mother.

OSHINS: There`s no doubt about that. They`re missing their relationship with her, and it is important when you`re young to have the connectivity, and it is absent in this home. And certainly from her end, making it as if it is all well while she`s doing prison time, it is not accurate. But again, we`re coming back to the focus of that law and the fact that these young men, though victims to some degree, were of the age of consent. And that`s where I think I draw the line.

GRACE: I don`t believe that`s what I asked you. Out to you, Dr. Gwenn O`Keeffe, physician and founder of Pediatricsnow.com. How does it affect a young child not to have a mom?

O`KEEFFE: Oh, it`s incredibly disruptive. Nancy, you really need that balance and that maternal love and warmth. You know, people who don`t have a mom, they can cope if there is some sort of traumatic event. And I don`t want to minimize that. But if you can have a mom in your life, it is really needed. That maternal love and guidance is something that kids count on. And they look for it in their life. It is just a necessary part of life like air.

GRACE: Out to the lines. Donna in Georgia, hi, Donna, what`s your question?

CALLER: Hi, Nancy. My question is, I have two girls. This teacher should be charged as a pedophile. I mean, we send our kids to learn, not send them off, you know, where a teacher is going to have sex with them. That`s just appalling, it`s out of the question. I`ve heard people think it`s OK, you know, that they`re of age, being 16, I think they`re out here exploring and it`s not OK.

GRACE: You know, exploring. Donna, exploring is not exactly the word I would have used. Owen LaFave, Deborah LaFave`s ex-husband, his wife, his ex-wife molested a 14-year-old student. That was one of the very first teacher sex scandals. Owen, I spoke to the husband, and he really, believe it or not, blames himself for this. He somehow feels like it is his fault that all of this happened. And I`m sure there is some kind of deep psychological reason for that, which I don`t understand. But did you ever feel like, gee, what did I do wrong? Because my wife is molesting her boy student.

LAFAVE: I think in the back of your mind, yes. What did I not do? But I think at the end of the day, you realize that these are children. You know, for them, it may be a little bit of a different circumstance, because I do understand that they said they were openly swingers. So I think when you bring someone else into the relationship, it blurs that boundary. And maybe they had an open relationship. But again, these were her students, and I think that`s where it makes the situation different.

GRACE: OK. Making a situation different. I don`t care if they`re swingers. I don`t care if they`re men from Mars. Brett Larson, she is a teacher. They`re the students. And then she says she is the victim, because one of them taped on their cell phone the sex orgy she had with her students, and it went viral at school. Now, there is a breakdown in the teacher/student relationship.

LARSON: So the video goes viral, and now she is a victim. The fact of the matter is, she was still having this like a scene from a dear Penthouse forum letter. Still having this relationship with these four students. I don`t buy the victim argument because the video went viral. I mean, it`s, you were still in the video. They still were able to show it at school.

GRACE: Elizabeth Beach, he is right. How did the teacher end up saying she is the victim?

BEACH: Well, it was a legal issue at trial. All four boys who were on that video testified that it was a dark room and one boy picked up the cell phone and started filming. And when he started filming, Brittni Colleps said, "don`t shine that light in my eyes." So clearly, according to the four boys, everybody in that room knew that those sex acts were being caught on video at that moment, including Brittni Colleps. And so she was trying to contest the legality of the admission of the cell phone video, but the uncontroverted testimony said she made that statement, "don`t shine the light in my eyes." And so the judge ruled it was admissible at trial.

GRACE: I feel like I`m in "Alice in Wonderland" and everything is upside down. Elizabeth, Jason and Penny. Because here she is, a teacher having a sex orgy with her students, and she is claiming it was illegal to video her? It is like, you know, the cop, the burglar in the jewelry store who gets angry and says, you shouldn`t have surveillance video of me, Penny, that`s unfair that you videoed me.

FURR: Well, Nancy, just because she`s having sex with them does not mean it is OK to tape it. And furthermore, it sounds like the statute says if you`re only three years apart, it is OK.

GRACE: Just because she`s having sex with her students, it is not OK to tape it. You know what? I would say --

FURR: If the teacher is 21 and the student is 18, it`s OK.

GRACE: You mean a 29-year-old married teacher, mother of three, Brittni Colleps? You mean that teacher?

OSHINS: What Penny is talking about is if the age gap between them is three years, then it`s OK. It is a strange law in Texas. Not the first one that`s strange.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLLEPS: In no way, shape, or form was I ever preying on anybody. I never coerced anybody to do anything. I never bribed anybody to do anything. I didn`t offer grades in exchange for anything.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are they victims?

COLLEPS: Not in my opinion. They didn`t feel like I victimized them. They didn`t feel like victims last year. They don`t feel like victims now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Yes, that`s what she said on the camera, but Matt Zarrell, we know different.

ZARRELL: Yes, Nancy. Two witnesses, two of the students say that Colleps warned them don`t tell anyone about what`s going on, or else I could get in major trouble, I could go to jail. One specific student testified that after an initial text exchange, the student wanted her to send a picture of her in lingerie. She wouldn`t, because she was quote, not trying to go to jail.

GRACE: OK. She`s not trying to go to jail, Travis Hudson, Travis court reporter with "Dallas Morning News." Quote, "not trying to go to jail," by sending sexy lingerie pictures, but she has an orgy with her students?

TRAVIS HUDSON, DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Yes. I mean, it seems from her quote that she wasn`t really sure what she was doing at the time, and I don`t even think she understood the law.

GRACE: You know, Brittni Colleps` relationship with students started with a very innocent text message, did it not, Matt Zarrell?

ZARRELL: Yes, Nancy. Apparently the teacher had messaged the student asking what time the baseball game was. But they said within hours, within 24 hours, the text messages had gotten very racy and resulted in a sexual encounter with the student.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: We remember American hero Army Sergeant First Class Glenn Jake Whitten (ph), 31, Phoenix. Two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts. Six Army Commendation Medals. Served Iraq and Afghanistan. Mother Amy, brother Jed, sisters Melinda and Julia, fiancee Megan, daughter Julia. Glenn Jake Whitten, American hero.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER COLLEPS, HUSBAND: Ephesians 5.25 says husbands love their wives as though Christ loved the church, and gave his life up for it. And to me that verse means unconditionally, because Jesus Christ will never turn his back on the church. So I will never turn my back on my wife.

COLLEPS: All I`m going to do from this point forward is continue to better myself in any way that I possibly can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: And we all hope that that`s true. That`s Warner Brothers TV Anderson Live. Matt Zarrell, what more do we know along those lines?

ZARRELL: OK, so going back to her saying that she didn`t know what she was thinking, there are two points I wanted to make. One was, she had the presence of mind to make sure the kids were not home during any of these sexual encounters. She actually had the kids stay with someone else. And also, one of the students pointed out that she couldn`t go to jail because he was 19, Colleps mentioned that she knew the law in Texas saying that even if she didn`t go to jail, you`re still my student, and I could get in trouble because you`re my student.

GRACE: So statements like that are some of the statements, in addition to a cell phone video of a teacher/student sex orgy, landed her behind bars. Elizabeth Beach, the prosecutor in that case. Elizabeth, can she ever teach again when she gets out of jail?

BEACH: No, she cannot. After the trial, because she was convicted, her teaching certificate was taken away from her. And I wanted to point out one other thing. Our very first exhibit that we offered in the trial was a document that she signed at the beginning of the school year, acknowledging that she had been informed of what Texas law was with respect to not having sex with students. And she signed a document saying she agreed to abide by the school policies and by state law. So there was direct evidence that she knew what the law was, and that she knew she was violating that law.

GRACE: You know, Owen LaFave, what Elizabeth Beach and I are trying to do is apply logic to an illogical situation, to an illogical, wild and crazy and saddening set of facts. That`s what you tried to do after your wife was accused of molesting her boy student. How long did it take you to come to grips with what had happened in your life?

LAFAVE: Nancy, to be honest with you, it takes a while. Because going back to what I said before, you want to blame yourself. You look for reasons, you look for excuses. And then you realize that, you know, logic can`t apply here. There wasn`t anything that I did personally, it`s just something that happened, no matter how, you know, egregious and outrageous it was.

GRACE: Coming up next, "What Would You Do?" ABC`s hit hidden camera show. I`ll see you tomorrow night, 8:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, good night, friend.

END