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Teacher In Sex Case Posts Bail

Stephanie Ragusa leaves Orient Road Jail.

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By THOMAS W. KRAUSE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 19, 2008

Updated: 03/18/2008 11:46 pm

TAMPA - The 28-year-old middle school teacher charged with having sex with a 14-year-old student was released from jail Tuesday after a judge set bail at $12,500.

On Friday, Judge Walter Heinrich held Stephanie Ragusa without bail and set a more formal bail hearing for today, but the hearing was moved to Tuesday.

Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said a prosecutor Tuesday morning asked Judge Paul Huey to set the standard bail for a second-degree felony: $7,500 for each of five lewd and lascivious battery charges. Instead, Huey set bail at $2,500 a charge.

William "Ty" Tison, Ragusa's attorney, told the judge that $2,500 a charge is comparable to other cases in which female teachers were accused of having sex with students, such as the case of former Greco Middle School teacher Debra Lafave.

Ragusa is not a flight risk because she was born and raised in Tampa and her immediate family lives here, Tison said.

Prosecutors sought electronic monitoring for Ragusa, but her attorney said he would rather have bail set higher than have the monitoring device.

Ragusa posted bail at 5:21 p.m. Tuesday, jail records show, and she walked out of Orient Road Jail about 10 minutes later. She declined comment and ran toward a vehicle waiting to pick her up.

Hillsborough County's School Board voted Tuesday to suspend Ragusa without pay, effective today. Officials did not comment on Ragusa's posting bail.

"She's not coming back to school," school district spokesman Steve Hegarty said. "We don't have anything else to add."

Also Tuesday, Heinrich said he wanted to hear a report about the case's investigation. Hillsborough County sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter confirmed that detectives were investigating the possibility that Ragusa victimized more underage students.

No information about the investigation was mentioned at Tuesday's hearing, Bondi said.

Last week, Hillsborough sheriff's investigators monitored a phone call between a Davidsen Middle School student and Ragusa in which she acknowledged having sex with the boy, the sheriff's office said.

The victim told investigators about an incident on March 4, 2007, in which he saw two tattoos on Ragusa that usually were covered by her clothing, the sheriff's office said.

The boy, now 15, is not being identified because he is considered a victim of a sex crime.

Ragusa is accused of having sex at least three times with the teen from January to May 2007, the sheriff's office said. One of the encounters took place while the teen should have been in an after-school class, and others occurred in Ragusa's Lexus and her former apartment in the Hunter's Run complex, Carter said.

Ragusa was hired in 2006 to work at South Tampa's Madison Middle School and voluntarily transferred midyear to Davidsen Middle School in Westchase.

She was most recently a math teacher at Lutz's Martinez Middle School.

Reporters Mike Wells and Ray Reyes and News Channel 8 reporter Samara Sodos contributed to this report. Reporter Thomas W. Krause can be reached at (813) 259-7698 or tkrause@tampatrib.com.

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