Elementary Teacher Who Allegedly Had Sex With 13-Year-Old Male Student Is a 'Monster,' Parents Say
The parents of a 13-year-old male student at Las Brisas Academy Elementary School said his former teacher, Brittany Zamora, was a "monster." She allegedly sexually abused their son.
Goodyear, Arizona, police said the boy's father discovered naked pictures in text messages exchanged between Zamora, 27, and the teen, The Arizona Republic first reported March 23. Zamora was charged with several counts of sexual misconduct after allegedly performing oral sex on the teen boy in the classroom and in her vehicle. The parents said that the abuse of male students versus female students didn't diminish the crime in any scenario.
The unidentified family spoke out for the first time about the sixth-grade teacher's arrest to KTVK-TV Friday.
"You teach your kids there's no such thing as monsters at all, there's none. But in the real world there are monsters. Brittany Zamora is a monster," said the boy's stepmother, whose name wasn't revealed in order to protect the student's identity. "He was taken advantage of; she was just using him for her own grotesque benefits.
"He said that it started in a classroom chat group where she would talk to him, and then flirted with him, and it just progressed from there," the boy's stepmom continued. "He told us they kissed and had sex."
Prior to Zamora's March 21 arrest, police found text messages from Zamora to the boy allegedly reading, "If I could quit my job and [have sex with] you all day long, I would," along with naked photos. The parents said they used an unidentified app that detected the lewd messages on the boy's phone.
Zamora was booked into Maricopa County's 4th Avenue Jail March 21 on one count of obscene material transmission to a minor, for allegedly sending the boy naked photos of herself. But a court commissioner has since found probable cause to hold Zamora in custody on suspicion of eight counts of sexual conduct with a minor, and two counts of child molestation.
The boy's parents also criticized the Las Brisas Academy administration for ignoring warning signs of the alleged sexual abuse. They also said the fact he's a male and not a female did not take away from the severity of the crime.
"A big thing for us is that we want people to understand: Just because it's a boy makes no difference," the boy's father said. "It's the same. It's a 13-year-old child who got taken advantage by a monster … He's started to express different emotions. He's sad and slept all day. It's starting to hit him, the reality of what actually happened."
Zamora remains in Maricopa County jail as of Friday on $250,000 bond. Court documents do not show whether she has pleaded guilty or not guilty to the nine counts of sexual conduct with a minor, two counts of molestation of a child and one count of furnishing harmful material to a minor.
"I want her to spend the rest of her life in prison," said the boy's father. "I want the school to be held accountable for what they've done and change rules and make it to where this can never happen to parents, another parent's child."
