ST. CLAIR, Mo. — A Missouri high school teacher who was placed on leave after district officials discovered she was producing sexually explicit content on a website has resigned.
Brianna Coppage, 28, who taught English at St. Clair High School southwest of St. Louis, announced her resignation, St. Clair R-XIII School District Superintendent Kyle Kruse said in a statement. The resignation was “voluntary,” and “she has decided to move in a different direction,” Kruse said.
Coppage was placed on administrative leave after being interviewed by two school officials on Sept. 27, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Administrators learned that Coppage had a page on OnlyFans, a subscription site that contains pornographic and other content, CBS News reported. She joined the website to supplement her salary as a second-year teacher, according to the news outlet.
Missouri teacher with OnlyFans porn site resigns, takes career in 'different direction' https://t.co/srERwzxsuQ
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch (@stltoday) October 10, 2023
Coppage taught English to freshmen and sophomores at the high school and made about $42,000 last year, according to the Post-Dispatch’s public pay database. She said she has earned an additional $8,000 to $10,000 per month performing on OnlyFans, according to the newspaper.
Attempts to reach Coppage by the newspaper were not immediately successful.
“It was kind of always like this cloud hanging over my head, like I never knew when I would be discovered,” Coppage told the Post-Dispatch earlier this month. “Then, about two weeks ago, my husband and I were told that people were finding out about it. So I knew this day was coming.”
OnlyFans, which launched in 2016, has more than 210 million paid subscribers worldwide and more than 2.1 million content creators, the Post-Dispatch reported.
Creators charge anywhere from $3 to $75 for a monthly subscription, with some users paying more for custom and pay-per-view content. According to her page on OnlyFans, Coppage was charging $20 per month.
Kruse told the Post-Dispatch that school officials did not independently discover Coppage’s material on OnlyFans, but learned it from a person who is not affiliated with the school district and does not live in St. Clair.
“We were deeply disappointed that this negative attention was brought to our community, but we were also limited to how we could respond,” Kruse said. “The district immediately retained legal counsel for assistance, due to the sensitivity of the matter and to protect the integrity of the investigation. The district was advised to, and did, take all possible steps to ensure confidentiality.
“Nevertheless, the situation became known to the media through third parties and was discussed in the community and elsewhere.”
Coppage is using the teacher angle to promote her OnlyFans page, writing, “Yes ... I’m THAT teacher. Subscribe & let’s have some fun!!”
“I really had two choices. One was to delete everything and hide from it, and my name was still going to be out there anyway,” Coppage told the Riverfront Times earlier this month. “I knew that I wasn’t going to go back into education. So it was either run and hide, or lean into it. And at the end of the day, I still have bills to pay and I still have like a family to provide for. So it was not really a difficult choice to just lean in.”
