Law&Crime Sidebar - Teacher Had Students Wear 'Scream' Masks and 'Rotate' During Group Sex: Docs

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Brittany Fortinberry now faces twenty-nine charges in Morgan County, Indiana, after more teen boys came forward to report that she allegedly abused them. The alleged victims claim that Fortinberry gave them drugs like marijuana and mushrooms and had them engage in group sex. Court documents indicate that one of Fortinberry’s alleged victims may have been as young as thirteen. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the latest with Indiana trial attorney Ashley Hadler.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If your child, under 21, has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or fatty liver disease, visit https://forthepeople.com/food to start a claim now! HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wonderry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Indiana teacher Brittany Fortinberry is looking at decades behind bars as she now faces over two dozen horrific allegations that she drug teens with mushrooms, paid them for explicit photos, and forced them into wildly disturbing sex acts. This really sinister case just continues to get darker. I'm going to break down the latest charges, newest details from a recent court hearing. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber.

We are back once again with even more updates in the escalating case against Brittany Fortenberry, an Indiana teacher accused of molesting children and participating in horrifying and heinous sexual misconduct. We cover a lot of these cases involving teachers accused of sexually abusing minors or engaging in. inappropriate conversations or communications with them. But this case, honestly, there is, wow, nothing quite like it. And I got to warn you that some of what we're about to hear, if you haven't heard it before, very, very difficult to listen to. So you have this former substitute teacher in Indiana's Morgan County now facing a staggering 29 felony charges. And this after five new alleged victims came forward with harrowing accounts of abuse, according to court

documents that were obtained by law and crime. Now, Fortenberry appeared in court last week for an arraignment on these additional charges. And we're going to get to what came out of that in a moment. But if you haven't been following this case, I'll update you. So in a nutshell, Brittany Fortenberry is accused of molesting 10 minor boys, some as young as 13 years old, when they were students at the schools that she worked at before resigning. The 29 felony charges stem from allegations that, one, Fortenberry drugged teenage boys with mushrooms, marijuana, and alcohol before assaulting them. Two, that she paid minors between $100 and $800 for explicit photos of their genitals. Three, that she forced group sex sessions where victims were made to

wear scream masks from the horror movie franchise. And four, that she even threatened to harm herself if victims reported her, saying, just let it happen. These are the allegations. Now, Fortenberry was charged back in November of 2024, then again in February, 2025, and again, with these most recent charges. And these come from allegations from five additional alleged victims who came forward recently. And following those claims, prosecutors filed a motion to tack on 24 felony counts. And what are the changes? What are we talking about? Oh, only 10 counts of sexual misconduct with a minor, including one count committed by a person at least 21 years old, and another committed with a minor under 16 by a person at least 21 years old,

six counts of dissemination of harmful manner to minors, five counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, one count of performing sexual conduct in the presence of a minor, five counts of child molestation where defendant is at least 21 years old, one count of child molestation, fondling or touching with a child under 14. Everybody, this is a law and crime legal alert. Did you know that children are being diagnosed with serious conditions like type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? And the research is potentially linking ultra-processed foods to all this?

Yeah. Well, Morgan and Morgan is stepping in to fight to hold these food companies accountable. With decades of experience fighting large corporations, they are ready to stand up for the families who deserve justice. So if your child, under 21, has been diagnosed with type 2, diabetes or fatty liver disease, then visit www.4thepeople.com slash food or scan the QR code on screen to learn more. Now, the five counts of child molestation, a first-degree felony, each one, to give you a sense

of this, carries a 20 to 40-year prison sentence if she's convicted. So think about what this 31-year-old woman could be facing if convicted across the board, and the judge decides to run the sentences consecutively, one after the other, or even if she gets the max. Now, we'll talk about that a little bit later, but going back to this hearing, Fortinberry, as I mentioned, appeared in court last week. And while there were no cameras that were allowed in the courtroom, we do have a bit of information from the docket as to what came out of this. So according to the clerk's notes, Fortenberry waived the formal reading of the new charges and entered a not guilty plea. A new bond was set for her at $150,000 in property surety.

This means that the court is going to use Fortenberry's property as collateral and securing her release. An additional cash bond amount of $10,000 was also implemented. And lastly, and this is kind of interesting, both sides seem to agree to dismiss the case. Now, I don't mean to have the case thrown out, to have the charges just completely thrown out and that's it. No, rather to refile this as a level one felony case. And this means the prosecutors wish to take the existing charges and recharges. them seemingly at the highest severity level under Indiana law. And we're going to talk more about what this means a little bit later on,

because we're going to bring on Indiana trial attorney Ashley Hadler, who's been on with us as we talk about this case at every stage of development. By the way, speaking of developments, we've got a few more that we want to talk about. So on March 26th, the Wagner-Reece law firm filed a tort claim, essentially a precursor to an official lawsuit against the Metropolitan School District in Martinsville, that that district failed to protect its students from Fortenberry's alleged abuse. The claim filed on behalf of David Doe, a minor victim, seeks $700,000 per sexual assault and accuses the district of a number of things, including ignoring red flags about Fortenberry's

behavior, failing to conduct the proper investigation background checks, though the school district does claim they did do it, and also delaying reporting abuse to authorities. And one of the partners in this firm, Attorney Jason Rees stated, like all parents in the community, the boys' family entrusted the school district to protect their son. The family is shocked that something like this could happen. Our preliminary investigation suggests that the school district's administrators knew about inappropriate behavior by Ms. Fortenberry, but still chose to hire her. When her abuse became known to the district, school officials neglected to timely report the abuse to proper authorities,

terminate her employment, and alert parents. Now, the school district responded to this and refuted these claims, saying the district is fully cooperating with law enforcement and remains committed to a safe learning environment for students. The individual in question was hired by the MSD of Martinsville on October 24, 2023 and resigned on January 9th, 2024. The resignation was not related to allegations of sexual misconduct. The MSD of Martinsville conducts a full criminal background check as part of the standard hiring process for all. employees. The background check for this former employee reported no criminal activity. The safety of students is the number one priority. The MSD of Martinsville encourages students and families to report concerns through the district's stop-it anonymous reporting system. The

district has no further comments. And by the way, speaking of people who allegedly knew what was going on, we have more information about Brittany's husband, Nicholas Fortinbury. And if you recall, he was also arrested in charge with intimidation and failure to report a crime. So prosecutors are essentially alleging that not only did he basically know what was happening, but he decided to not do anything about it and even allegedly threatened an alleged victim for coming forward. We talked a bit about Nicholas Fortenberry in a previous episode of Sidebar, but a newly released transcript from a probable cause hearing is giving us a frightening perspective into his alleged involvement in all of this. So on March 6, an investigating officer testified in court on the allegations, and the claims he brought forth are quite egregious.

He testified that Nicholas came up in his investigation because one of these alleged victims mentioned a horrifying encounter that he allegedly had with him regarding what was supposedly going on between this minor child and his wife, Brittany. The officer's testimony reads, Nick came up because victim number two disclosed that he was with Brittany and another unknown child. they had went to do some grocery shopping. When they returned to the residence, victim two and another unknown child, and then Brittany, Nick, had arrived home from work. When he arrived home from work,

he had a side conversation with Brittany, and then Nick confronted victim number two and told victim number two that if you don't stop what you're doing with my wife, then I'm going to kill you in front of your family. He then went on to say that, do not continue to do what you're doing with my wife until you turn 16.

And mind you, this child was 13 at the time this supposedly happened. Now, as for Nicholas, he posted a $600 bond. There's a jury trial in the books for him in July. We'll get a little bit more into the details on Nicholas Fortinbury in a minute. But just for some context around this alleged victim, this is a child who reportedly told police that Britney spent hundreds of dollars on him in a mall, that she sent him nudes in videos of herself having sex with other men, and probably the most horrifying, he claimed that, she coerced him and his friends into all engaging in sex and sex acts with her at the same time, group sex, where they had to wear scream masks. Yes, from the horror movie. You heard that

correctly. Now, by the way, this investigation into all this alleged disgusting conduct began back in August when two students reported that their former teacher, Brittany Fortenberry, had sent them inappropriate videos of sex toys, a stripper pole, and even nude pictures. This all happened, according to the students over the messaging app Snapchat or through Instagram. So then you go to August 23rd, and Fortenberry reportedly resigned from her position from the MSD, the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville, though again, as we mentioned earlier, the district claims her resignation was unrelated to these allegations. But then just three months later in November, she was charged with two counts of dissemination

of harmful manner to minors and two counts of harassment using a computer network or electronic of communication. And to kind of give you a snippet of what we're dealing with here, the investigating officer Patrick Williams interviewed two alleged minor victims back in September. And one of them told the officer, reportedly, that Fortenberry began following him on Instagram and sending him normal messages, but then things became highly disturbing. Here's what that minor had to say about the alleged communications with Fortinberry, and this apparently happened inside a classroom. Quote, alleged minor victim said that she was showing him a picture of something and thought it was her home gym. Alleged minor victim said that she then

sits her phone down, making it a point so he could see it, and her photo gallery was open with photos of her completely naked. And on a different occasion, quote, alleged minor victim said that she sent him a picture of her room, and in the picture was a stripper pole. A alleged minor victim talked about her telling him that after she left Martinsville, that she was a stripper, how she had an only fan's page, and she did exclusive stuff on her snap. Snapchat stories. Yeah, and that's not even the worst of this. And it kind of gives you an idea of how inappropriate this is, if true. And then you fast forward to December now where a woman actually walked into the Morgan County Prosecutor's Office and said her grandson told her that he was involved in an inappropriate sexual relationship with Brittany Fortenberry. The officer spoke to this child and asked him about why he was coming forward. And this is what that child had to say. Quote, alleged victim said, he's there. because he doesn't want Brittany Fortenberry to molest more kids.

Alleged victims said that some of the victims are considering talking about what happened and there's others that don't want to talk about it. And this child was right. More alleged victims apparently came forward, many more. And before they did, Fortenberry was charged with three counts of sexual

misconduct with a minor, another count of disseminating harmful matter to minors and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. And remember, this is before five additional minors came forward dozens of new charges were filed. So regarding those five alleged victims, they came forward recently,

and what they told the investigating officer was horrifying. We did a deep dive into those claims in a separate episode if you want to check it out, but here's the gist of how truly disgusting these allegations are. One alleged victim claim that Fort Berry sent him nude photos of herself using sex toys, another claim that she pleasureed herself

to his school photos and sent him videos of herself performing sex acts with his boxers, and another even claim that he was drugged by Fortenberry before she engaged in sexual misconduct with him. But maybe by far the most disturbing claim that was made in the affidavit comes from the boy that we mentioned earlier,

who described essentially that he was first groomed by Fortinberry, who says that she purchased hundreds of dollars worth of clothing and shoes for him when they were at a mall together, only to take him back to her house along with friends and seemingly pressure him into doing something that's incomprehensible. According to the affidavit, alleged victim said that Brittany gave them shrooms.

Alleged victim said that Brittany turned on a movie. In about 30 minutes into the movie, Brittany asked one of his friends if they wanted to gangbang her. Alleged victim continued, saying his friends said, sure. Alleged victim said that Brittany had one condition for them to have the gang bang with her, and that was that they had to wear a scream mask. Yeah, the scream mask. Insane. Now, while we're mentioning the allegations against Fortinbury, I do want to circle back to Nicholas.

again, the husband. Because as we mentioned earlier, rather than separating immediately upon finding out what was going on or maybe turning her in, Nicholas Fortenberry instead allegedly not only knew about this behavior, but he also even allegedly threatened some of the minors. According to the affidavit filed last month, alleged victim also mentioned that Brittany had shared that if any of this came out, that she would kill herself. Alleged victim said Britney told him that if anyone found out that Nick would slaughter him in front of his family. Alleged victim said about a couple weeks after Brittany told him this that Nick made the threat to him. And of course, that alleged threat from Nicholas is the one that we documented in the transcript.

And there's even another claim in that affidavit that Nicholas knew what was going on. Another alleged victim told the investigating officer, quote, alleged victim said he was pretty certain that Britney's husband Nick knew what was going on. Alleged victim said that they weren't able to come over to the house for a while because they think Nick found out what was going on. By the way, that's kind of an interesting detail because in the end, Nicholas actually filed for divorce from Brittany on February 25th, though it's unclear if that had anything to do with the allegations. But according to the divorce filing, the two were married back in 2020, separated on February 21st, and then Nicholas served Britney the divorce papers four days after that separation. Okay, so now I want to bring on Ashley Hadler, trial attorney focuses on specifically survivors of sexual abuse in these kinds of cases. Ashley, thanks so much for taking the time to talk about this. So what?

We have with 29 felony charges spanning multiple victims, how do prosecutors even approach a case like this strategically? You know, there's one hand you might be saying it's a strength for prosecutors to have so many different charges and multiple allegations. But I actually was talking about this the other day that if you have a weakness, you know, so many charges, they have a weakness in one of those claims or one of those alleged victims could it taint the whole case so do you how do prosecutors approach this do you sense this as just a a fully strong case or could there be problems with it that's a great question i think that

you're absolutely right that one piece of evidence that is missing or if one of the witnesses does not have a clean story that could inject any doubt into the question that the jury will ultimately face it could be a problem so i think that the prosecutors here are probably focused on what is the strongest, cleanest evidence that they have and really vetting that evidence to decide which charges they will ultimately continue with or which witnesses or charges may ultimately be dropped. Do you think that it's the digital evidence, right? The Snapchat, the Instagram messages, that that is going to be the hardest. Maybe let me put it this way, the strongest evidence

for the prosecution. You know, there's one thing to have the accounts of these minors, right? But the other ideas of the documentary evidence, the digital evidence, that becomes, in my opinion, quite hard to argue against, no? Absolutely. I think that the digital evidence, if available, is going to be huge. If not, I think that they do have other options here. We have multiple people whose stories are consistent with one another, and we have other evidence that could put Brittany at certain locations at certain times, whether that be receipts or neighborhood cameras or ring doorbell cameras, any footage that may have been taken in the home, any evidence that could be gathered from any personal devices

in the home that we haven't learned about yet. So I think there are a number of options for other pieces of evidence that we haven't learned about at this time. How does the defense, I mean, imagine they have to challenge the credibility of these minor alleged victims, right? And how do you do that? That seems like a very, very tricky line of questioning because you don't want to look like you're beating them up. You don't want to come off overly aggressive, but you do have to challenge their credibility, right? And how do you do that? I talk about this a lot in cases where you have adult survivors of sexual abuse and rape who go forward and then ultimately at a trial or being questioned by defense attorneys.

This is a whole other element. How do defense attorneys question the credibility of these minor alleged victims? Yeah, I think it is something that typically they approach very delicately. Personally, I can't put myself in that position. I represent survivors, so it's not something that I could ever personally do. But the attorneys that I have seen do it will take a number of tactics and style depending on the age of the witness, what the witness's story is. And here, when you're dealing with children, it is always very delicate. They will try to warm up to them and just inject the doubt that the child's memory may be lacking in some way or that they have some incentive to testify the way that they're testifying,

just calling it into question a bit, but not just outright attacking it like they may do with an older witness or victim. That's tricky. I wanted to ask you about this. The prosecution's intent to refile charges in this case as a level one felony. Can you explain to us the process for this and why this happened? What does it mean? I think that at the time the charges were initially filed, they did not have full information.

And since those charges, they have received more evidence and testimony that could convert those to a higher level. And so that's what we're seeing now that they are continuously amending, adding counts. And that's something that we will see until the time that the case is either resolved through a plea agreement or it goes to trial. And talk about the counts. I mean, if she goes to trial and she's convicted of all the counts, I mentioned this before, before, couldn't she realistically face consecutive sentences? You know, you're talking about somebody 31. Even if you think about the maximum there and it's not consecutive and it's all concurrent, you could be looking at potentially her not getting out until what, her 70s, but do you think there's a strong likelihood that

she could get consecutive sentences for this and theoretically spend the rest of her life in prison? How does it work? I do. I think that this is something that's so egregious that the judge will consider all of that at the time of sentencing. He is going to hear a lot of information from victims and parents and others in the community who have been affected by this. And I think it's something that looking at the full circumstances and considering any mitigating facts that she may seek to have considered, this is something that they will be looking to extend for as long as possible, just for the protection of any potential future victims, as well as a very low likelihood potentially of rehabilitation here.

We talk about the graphic nature of these allegations. We talk about what it would be like for these minor victims or alleged victims to come forward and testify about what happened to them. It feels to me there might be an incentive on the part of the prosecutors to work out a deal here with Brittany Fortenberry. So this doesn't go to trial. So you don't have to expose a jury to all of this. So you don't have to have these alleged minor victims take the stand and recount these experiences. Do you think a deal could be worked out? What would a deal look like?

Because I can't imagine that it wouldn't include significant prison time, no? I think that there is definitely the potential of that here. Certainly, Ms. Vordenberry has a lot to gain from a plea deal if the prosecutor would accept one. And I think that any deal is absolutely going to include an agreement to register as a lifetime sex offender. I think that is a no-brainer in this situation. That's something that should continue to follow her, especially given her history of seeking to work with kids, work in the school system. That's something that should remain a flag on her history moving forward. and a significant amount of jail time,

whether that means until she's age 70 or later. I'm not sure, but I do think that we will see a sentence of at least 10 years, if not more. And would that, do you know if that might include parole or is that something that's not worked out in that kind of deal? With that deal, that would be included. It would be contemplated that for an amount of time after, She is incarcerated, that she would continue to follow with probation and meet certain parameters to show that she's staying in line with the guidelines that the court set for her. And now let's also talk about Nicholas, right? So, you know, I got to tell you, I cover a lot of these kinds of cases, unfortunately.

And you don't see the significant other, the spouse, being any way connected to the charges. But you got Nicholas here, who's being charged with essentially intimidating and threatening one of the alleged minor victims, were you surprised at what he's being charged with? And if this is true, how come not charged with something more serious in the sense of, you know, an accomplice liability, something like he was more connected to the allegations here? Or is it – I'm not sure. I believe it to you about what do you make of the charges he's facing? And could he face an additional charge that he was more connected or connected?

complicit with what was going, the allegations are here. Definitely. I would not be surprised to see additional charges. I think from my reading of the transcript where the prosecutor was seeking probable cause to file the charges is that they wanted to have the charges filed as soon as possible. They wanted to get Nicholas involved, to make sure that he was not going to try to flee or try to not be a part of this proceeding. And at that point, based on the testimony of the witness, intimidation, and the failure to report child abuse were the most logical and available charges to press. But certainly, I would not be surprised if we learn additional details about the extent of his knowledge and involvement. And if so, then that could lead to additional charges.

Or is he being charged with this right now because they may want to work out a deal with him to testify against, I mean, Brittany, I reported earlier, he filed for divorce. Is that, and by the way, how would that work? Because he could testify against her, but their conversations would be privileged, right? The spousal privilege. How should I be thinking about this? How should we be thinking about this? Yeah, I think that even though the divorce has been filed, the important thing to remember is that the spousal privilege does cover all of the communications that occurred during the marriage. So I am not sure that he would have incentive to do that.

It's not a typical situation where if you have a conspiring person that they are going to have that incentive to do that, to throw the other person under the bus to save themselves. I don't think that we see that as much here. And we have to remember that we are dealing with two people who are still presumably planning to co-parent small child or children together. And so he has kind of competing interests in that regard related to the mother of his child.

Ashley, I want to also ask you about this tort claim. tort claim against the school district, you know, you didn't do enough to report, you didn't do the proper investigation into Brittany Fortenberry. Are there legs to this? Talk to us, talk to me about what you think about that. Absolutely. I think that that is something, one of the first things that came to mind for me is what were the school systems thinking and doing at the time of hire of this woman as well as continuing to supervise her during her employment. From what we know now, there was a lot of information that was available to them and probably known to them that should have raised some major red flags that if the school district had acted

differently, could have prevented some of these victims, at least from suffering the abuse that they did. But the background check part, right? You didn't do enough to properly. look into her before you hired her. I'm always, I'm always struggling with that because hindsight's 2020, how could a proper, let's assume they did a full background check, how could they have, you know, predicted anything like this? Yeah, that's what you said is something that, you know, we hear in every case, we usually hear it from the defense perspective, but with a background check, even if, even if a person does not have a criminal history, In Indiana, part of the background check that they're doing is searching for any history of

Department of Child Services complaints that were made against this person and looking to see if any of those had been substantiated. And we know at least with Brittany that there had been prior DCS involvement. I don't believe it is a matter of public knowledge whether or not that was substantiated, but if it were, that would have precluded her from being hired. Interesting. Ashley Hadler, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. It's quite the story to say the least, and we're going to continue to follow it here on

Sidebar. Absolutely. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.

You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.