“She said if anyone found out, she had her defense planned out and she was going to say she was insane,” Degrazia said Tuesday during the second day of the trial in Warren County Common Pleas Court.
Schuler, 33, is accused of supplying students with alcohol and having sex with five students, mostly football players.
Brittany Doria, 18, testified that Schuler told her that her memory was hazy due to a severe hangover the day after an encounter, but she remembered having to help a football player with his condom.
Doria said Schuler allegedly planned to say that the football player was obsessed with her.
Doria testified that Schuler told her she would plead insanity caused by an abusive husband and bitter divorce.
Defense attorney Charlie M. Rittgers hammered both women with transcripts of interviews they had with Mason Police Detective Toni Hoelke, noting they never told the detective about the insanity plea story.
Both women said early on they were trying to protect Schuler.
Three young men took the stand Tuesday before the state rested its case. Their stories were nearly identical, all of them testifying to having group sex in Schuler’s Springboro home in the fall of 2010.
One of her accusers said he passed up an opportunity to have sex with Schuler a second time in one night. “Honestly, I was a bit grossed out about us all having sex with her and how easily it came,” he said. “It just didn’t feel right.”
Schuler is charged with 16 felony counts of sexual battery and three misdemeanor counts of offenses involving underage persons.
Schuler’s attorneys, Charlie H. Rittgers and his son, Charlie M. Rittgers, said Schuler has a bipolar disorder and doesn’t recall the incidents.
She switched her plea from not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity in July.
One of the young men testified that Schuler allegedly expressed remorse on one occasion. He said he assumed she was remorseful about the sex, but he added that after she brought out liquor, her demeanor changed, and they allegedly had group sex.
“It was kind of a surprise,” he said. “It all happened after she brought out the alcohol and things got a little different.”
One former football player said he had sexual intercourse with his former teacher seven times during five visits to her home. He is the only student who was at her house during all five alleged interludes with the teacher.
He told Judge Robert Peeler that he and one or two friends went to Schuler’s house and had sex, sometimes altogether, on five occasions.
He said that on one of the visits, two of the young men talked about taking a bubble bath with Schuler to get oil from her massages off them and then all three had sex in the shower.
The Mason police were tipped off to the accusations against Schuler by an anonymous caller in January.
One of the players allegedly told several people about the exploits.
The Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab was only able to link one of Schuler’s accusers through DNA to the incidents.
The Rittgers team will start their defense today. They plan to call 12 witnesses, and they will put on experts, as will prosecutors, on Thursday to address the insanity issue.
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.
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