ST. CLAIR, Mo. (WTVO) — Another teacher, working at the same Missouri high school as Brianna Coppage, has been discovered to have a page on the adult website OnlyFans.
According to KMOV, St. Clair High School English teacher Megan Gaither has been placed on leave and she believes the punishment is related to an OnlyFans account she started this year.
Gaither said she started the page in May and started posting in June, and then later deleted it once Coppage’s activities were exposed.
“I know what it looks like,” Gaither said. “I know it doesn’t look good. But, I truly did not want this. In a heartbeat, I would give it all up. I would give every penny back. I would go back to the beginning of summer and I wouldn’t have joined OnlyFans because I love my job and I love teaching so much.”
Both Gaither and Coppage said they turned to the pornography site when their teaching salaries, in Gaither’s case around $47,000 a year, couldn’t cover their student loans and household expenses.
Gaither said when Coppage’s OnlyFans went public, she deleted her account and chose to pursue teaching. She said she had used a different name and never showed her face, but in October, she was discovered by a Twitter/X user.
“They blurred my face, but I didn’t realize that was going to be posted on Twitter. As soon as that picture was posted, almost immediately, I started getting messages and letters from students tacked on my door saying that they know my secret and that I was caught,” she told KMOV.
Since being placed on leave, Gaither said she started a new OnlyFans using her real name and has made $65,000 in two weeks.
Coppage says she made nearly $1 million from the OnlyFans account that got her in trouble with her school system.
Many school districts and educational institutions often have codes of conduct on what kind of activities are and aren’t allowed. Even if not specifically within the bylaws, experts say “having an OnlyFans account may create specific risk in regulated professions,” per The Educator Online.
Even if the account wasn’t accessed by a student, parent, or school official, it could present safeguarding risks for anyone linked to the educational institution, experts argued.