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Teacher In Sex Case Posts Bail
Stephanie Ragusa leaves Orient Road Jail.
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Published: March 19, 2008
Updated: 03/18/2008 11:46 pm
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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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Reader Comments
Posted by ( spihana ) on March 19, 2008 at 6:08 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Why is a man who has sex with a minor labeled a sex offender but a woman is not? I am a mother of two and I think the law for males or females that violate an under age child should be labeled and punished the same.
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Posted by ( robertj1954 ) on March 19, 2008 at 7:05 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
She has to be convicted before she is categorized as a sex offender/predator. We are still living in USA.
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Posted by ( motorist ) on March 19, 2008 at 7:15 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
99 and 99/100 % of fourteen Year old boys dream of having a teacher like her.
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Posted by ( ohboy ) on March 19, 2008 at 8:21 a.m.
(This comment was removed by the site staff.)
Posted by ( taipan ) on March 19, 2008 at 8:44 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
LOL@ Runvapid.....post of the year!!!!
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Posted by ( pland ) on March 19, 2008 at 8:49 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Woohoo! She's out. Time for my tutoring session!
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Posted by ( jj63 ) on March 19, 2008 at 9:09 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
She seems to smile a lot and it's a snidy smile. Must enjoy the publicity or must have enjoyed the sex....
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Posted by ( demum ) on March 19, 2008 at 9:11 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Great picture with the story...so nice to see a happy, smiling face. She looks like she's well rested and ready to go again. Bring 'em on!
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Posted by ( franco73 ) on March 19, 2008 at 9:23 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Stephanie, I'm so glad you're out. I've been having a hard time keeping my grades up. I know you will help me keep it up.......for a long time. I'm talking about my grades, of course.
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Posted by ( redman ) on March 19, 2008 at 9:32 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
i know its a double standard but remembering my self at 14 i just cant call having sex with a hot teacher sexual abuse.
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Posted by ( GONASA ) on March 19, 2008 at 9:41 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
I know alot of you are joking, (and the posts are funny). But her smile ticks me off, if she were a man, there would be NO jokes, only death threats.
She should get death threats just like the male perverts.
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Posted by ( TampaSlim ) on March 19, 2008 at 10:14 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Is there any truth to the rumor her bail was put up by a group of about 100 middle school boys who pooled their lunch money?
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Posted by ( StormVet90 ) on March 19, 2008 at 10:43 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
I agree that she still has to be convicted before she gets the label of sex offender but the fact that they have her on tape talking about it means that at this point it's just a formality. She did it and she got caught and she admitted to doing it. Case closed! There, that didn't cost us taxpayers anything...
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Posted by ( motorist ) on March 19, 2008 at 10:58 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
(GONASA) I bet the guys are not joking
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Posted by ( franco73 ) on March 19, 2008 at 11:10 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
GONASA, I am joking, this woman should go jail.
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Posted by ( demum ) on March 19, 2008 at 12:09 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Give her a break. Remember, she's a science teacher. It's Spring. She's just acting on her natural instincts. That's an anticipatory smile if I ever saw one.
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Posted by ( ALLENALBY ) on March 25, 2008 at 11:55 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
It's just wrong. These kids have to live with this the rest of their lives. It's terrible, you never know how it's going to effect these young children. Let's not forget they're children and it will have a negative effect in their lives. They may become infected with the same perverse illness, it may effect them long after they're married, it could effect them with their own children. Anyone who takes this lighly is oh so wrong. I can tell you from personal experience, when you are molested your life changes for the worse no matter what. In so many ways and it doesn't matter if it was by a man or a women. Your marked for life. There's nothing funny about it.
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Posted by ( zuar4312 ) on March 26, 2008 at 6:07 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
I had sex at 14 with a 26 year old. It didn't destroy me. I chose to not let it affect me. I now lead a very normal life with a wife and four children. These boys are not "ruined for life", however, this act is an act of child abuse and they should be dealt with as any sex offender.
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Posted by ( lwolfaje51 ) on March 26, 2008 at 7:34 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
The teachers like them young,they are like the Energizer Bunny they keep going and going and going.
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Posted by ( FyreFox ) on March 27, 2008 at 9:01 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
While I agree that these boys in these cases are probably not particularly traumatized, however, the adults who are taking part in these cases need to be locked up! How can a 28 year old or any adult for that matter, feel ANY sexual attraction to a child!? That is purely SICK.
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