A former Arizona teacher who pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old boy has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Brittany Zamora, 28, from Goodyear, will receive credit for the nearly 500 days she has already served.
‘I am a good and genuine person who made a mistake and regret it deeply,’ Zamora said during a hearing on Friday morning, according to the Arizona Republic.
‘I lived my life respecting and trying to obey every law. I’m not a threat to society by any means.’
After apologizing to the victims and her family, she told Judge Sherry Stephens that she plans to earn a new degree in prison so she can start a new life when she gets out, reported the newspaper.
Per the conditions of her sentencing, she cannot be released on good behavior. This means that when Zarmora is done serving her sentence, she will be 48 or 49 years old.
After she is released, she will need to register as a sex offender and then begin serving two lifetime terms of probation.
Former Arizona teacher Brittany Zamora, 28, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old boy. Pictured: Zamora wipes away tears after being sentenced to orison
After Zamora, is released, she will need to register as a sex offender and begin serving two lifetime sentences of probation. She pleaded guilty last year after she was caught sending him messages. Pictured: Zamora in court yesterday, left, and in her mugshot, right
Zamora, who taught sixth-grade at Las Brisas Academy, was arrested in March 2018.
She was accused of having sex with the 13-year-old multiple times in a classroom, and, on one occasion, in front of another student while he served as a lookout.
Zamora was caught when the victim’s parents noticed he was acting strange, leading them to install an app on his phone called Sentry Parental Control, which monitors messaging apps for ‘suspicious content or behavior’.
The Sentry app sends parents alerts when it detects suspicious images and messages on a child’s device.
It also detects whether or not a child is exposed to inappropriate online content through its web monitoring feature.
When the teen’s parents started getting the alerts about inappropriate text messages, they confronted him.
That’s when the teen admitted to having sex with Zamora.
Zamora was caught when the victim’s parents noticed he was acting strange and installed an app that monitors messaging apps. Pictured: Zamora wipes away a tear as her attorney, Belen Olmedo Guerra, pats her shoulder on Friday
She was arrested in March 2018 and accused of having sex with the teen multiple times in a classroom (pictured), and on one occasion in front of another student while he served as a lookout
The boys parents were devastated by the affair.
He was not in court on Friday, but an attorney read a victim impact statement written by the mother.
‘Brittany Zamora betrayed our trust and changed Victim A forever,’ the statement read, according to the Arizona Republic.
‘Before, he was an innocent child, and now she stole his innocence from him. I hate Brittany Zamora for what she did to my son and family.’
Both the mother and father, who are divorced, asked that Zamora received the maximum sentence.
She received the minimum sentence for her crimes, according to the Arizona Republic.
‘To Brittany Zamora, I hope you spend every waking moment in your prison cell thinking about the horrendous crime you committed that got you behind bars,’ a statement from the boy’s father, and read by an attorney, said.
‘Now you’ll spend the rest of your youth and most of your adulthood in jail…I will not allow you to interfere in my son’s life further. Good triumphs over evil and you’re just a dark shadow and our family will defeat you.’
Pictured above are some of the text messages exchanged between the teenage boy and Zamora
The teen sent her love notes on bright post-its including one which read ‘U R SEXY!’ which he passed her in class
Their affair began after Zamora told students she would be out of school the following day and that they could contact her using an app called Class Craft because would be bored, according to records.
Her messages with the boy soon turned romantic and the pair started having sex, prosecutors allege.
District attorneys said the pair once even touched each other sexually while other students in the class watched a video.
In one X-rated back-and-forth, Zamora told the boy she wanted to have sex with him ‘every day with no time limit’.
‘Wyd?’ she started one conversation with him, using the slang-abbreviation for ‘what are you doing?’
He replied: ‘Thinking about your sexy self’ and added two pink heart emojis.
‘Aww baby (love heart eyes emoji) I wish you were with me,’ she responded.
The boy replied: ‘I want u bby. (sic).. when can we f**k again?’, this time adding two red heart emojis to his message.
Zamora is married. According to police, she had sex with the 13-year-old boy twice in her car outside his grandparents’ house while her husband, Daniel (pictured together), was fishing
Zamora hit back: ‘I want you too baby so bad! Whenever we can you know I’m down,’ with a red heart emoji.
She went on: ‘Like you for real get sexier to me every day lol.’
‘I want to f**k you so bad baby those times weren’t enough,’ the boy replied to her. She responded: ‘Me neither baby! I want you every day with no time limit.’
In another message, she told him she would quit her job in order for them to be together.
Zamora is shown after being booked into jail in March when she told police she was worried she would be picked on because she is ‘little’
On two occasions, she drove to his grandparents’ home to have sex with him in her car while her husband was fishing.
She and the boy performed oral sex on each other before her husband phoned to tell her he would be home soon, according to the records.
They exchanged explicit photographs including images of Zamora in lingerie and naked and the boy gave her love notes on brightly colored post-its which contained messages including ‘you are sexy’, according to police.
Zamora told police when she was arrested that she was nervous she would not survive behind bars.
‘I’m little. They’re gonna tear me apart.’
She then asked ‘Can I have an attorney?’ when the interviewer declared: ‘I’m going to give you an opportunity to explain what happened.’
Before being helped into a police car by an officer who warned her the step was large, she asked cops to help her move her hair in front of her face to avoid the glare of waiting media.
Zamora even appears to be smiling at one point.
All smiles: This is the moment Zamora was arrested in March 2018
Zamora’s husband, Daniel, remained supportive of his wife despite the accusations.
‘Not gonna discuss it with you,’ her husband tells police at one point. ‘Brittany is an adult. She’s the best, the best person I’ve ever known,’ he said.
It’s unclear if they are still together or not.
The boy’s parents previously claimed Daniel called them and begged them not to report his wife to police after they saw her sexual texts, saying she had made a mistake.
The parents told police that Daniel ‘harassed’ the father over the phone, begging him not to go to the authorities and insisting that his wife had ‘made a big mistake, but that she loved the kids,’ according to the documents.
Daniel also allegedly suggested that he and the boy’s dad ‘meet up’ and ‘settle this,’ but the parent turned down his offer and hung up on him.
The victim’s family filed a lawsuit against Daniel for failing to alert authorities when he learned of the affair.
The Arizona Republic reports that he settled recently for an undisclosed amount.
Zamora and her husband, whom she has known since she was 16 years old, married in 2015. They do not have any children.
Zamora’s husband defended her to detectives, saying: ‘Brittany is an adult. She’s the best, the best person I’ve ever known’
The teacher married Daniel Zamora, who she knew since she was 16, in 2015 (wedding photo)
The first-year teacher was charged with 10 counts of sexual conduct with a minor, two counts of molestation, two counts of furnishing sexually explicit material to a minor and one count public sexual indecency.
She initially pleaded not guilty.
Zamora (staff photo) surrendered her state teaching certificate last December
It was previously reported that on February 8, three students at the school complained to administrators about Zamora favoring the 13-year-old.
Some of the students went so far as to say that she was ‘dating’ or ‘in a relationship’ with the teen.
‘Everyone talks about them having an inappropriate relationship outside of class and at recess,’ one of the students said, according to notes taken by Principal Tom Dickey in an interview.
‘I’ve heard other kids in my class say that they think they are dating,’ another note reads.
The school district interim superintendent, Richard Rundhaug, said that they investigated the allegations at the time, but found no evidence of a romantic relationship.