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Transcript Of Teacher-Student Conversation Released In Sex Case

News Channel 8 Photo by PETER MASA

Stephanie Ragusa at a hearing Tuesday where her attorney tried to stop a release of court documents.

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By JOSH POLTILOVE, SHERRI ACKERMAN and ELAINE SILVESTRINI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 8, 2008

Updated: 05/08/2008 04:15 pm

TAMPA - Before being charged with having sex with two underage students, teacher Stephanie Ragusa told one of the boys during a 17-minute phone conversation that she knew what they had done was illegal.

Ragusa said nobody would understand the relationship she had with the boy. During the March 12 conversation, she also expressed concern about what would happen if what they had done became known.

"It would be all over the news and everything," she told the student, according to a transcript of the recorded phone conversation received today by The Tampa Tribune.

"Oh, like that one Debra Lafave thing?" the student said.

"Yeah. … It's no joke, I'm telling you, either end. It wouldn't be from, because I don't want to wear an orange jumpsuit, and it wouldn't be from you because you couldn't leave your house without someone trying to shove a camera in your face wanting you to talk about it."

"Oh my God," the boy said.

Hillsborough County deputies left recording equipment with the boy so he could record any conversations with Ragusa. The next day, an investigator picked up the equipment and listened to the recording.

Ragusa then was arrested.

A circuit judge on Wednesday ordered the public release of court documents regarding Ragusa.

Ragusa's attorney, Robert Herce, had filed court papers asking that Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett withhold the recording of a conversation she had with the 14-year-old boy as well as the transcript of that recording.

Herce could not immediately be reached for comment today.

Ragusa declined to comment today, Falkenburg Road Jail officials say.

She Says She Was Warned Not To Teach

The day Ragusa was arrested, she was questioned by investigators, according to an investigation report contained in the documents released today.

Ragusa denied any sexual activity and told deputies she would go beyond the average teacher to help her students, the report states. She said the parents knew she would take the students places in her sport utility vehicle to help them with school.

She said her boyfriend, Tony Irvin, warned her not to become a teacher because of the possibility of allegations such as this. He could not immediately be reached for comment today.

When investigators directly asked whether she had sex with one of the boys, she said she did not want to discuss it further without a lawyer or school union representative present, according to the report.

A parent told sheriff's investigators that Ragusa arrived at a party with teenagers and was dressed inappropriately, another report states. Other parents commented on her clothing.

When contacted at their home today, Maribel DeLeon and Luis Rodriguez said they remembered Ragusa showing up at their house on May 4, 2007 wearing a mini-skirt and tiny tank top. She was holding a raspberry wine cooler.

"My husband took the wine cooler and dumped it," said DeLeon, who was hosting a party for her daughter and about 60 children following the eighth-grade dance at Davidsen.

Ragusa told them she was a teacher and that the students had invited her.

"Well, we were surprised," DeLeon said. "She didn't look like a teacher."

Throughout the night, the couple kept a close eye on Ragusa. Students were treating her like their best friend.

"She went to the bathroom a lot of times," said DeLeon, who remembered talking with other parents about the possibility that Ragusa had "something going on" with one of the students.

But they didn't have any proof, DeLeon said.

At one point, the popular middle school teacher left the party with a male student, DeLeon said. When they returned, the teen was driving Ragusa's car.

Ragusa stayed until the end of the evening. The next time DeLeon and Rodriquez saw her, "she was on the news."

"And I said, Wow! What a surprise," Rodriguez recalled sarcastically.

When DeLeon asked her daughter about Ragusa's allegations, "she said she knew about it," DeLeon said. "Everybody knew about it."

Another student told sheriff's investigators that Ragusa rented him a black Ford Mustang to go to the eighth-grade dance, according to documents released today. He met her at the Tree Tops Subdivision on Montague Street and told her about the party at DeLeon's house. The teen left the school dance in the middle of the evening and went to the party. Later, Ragusa arrived with a former Davidsen student and her brother. That night, when the teen returned home, he found Ragusa sleeping alone in his older brother's room.

The documents also state that a teacher caught students passing a note about Ragusa a week after Ragusa's arrest.

The note stated that Ragusa may have been sexually involved with other current or former Davidsen Middle School students.

The note read, in part, "Ms. Ragusa got arrested cuz some knucklehead got caught talking about it."

The principal gave the note to deputies.

A boy who wrote part of the note told deputies that several students thought Ragusa may have been sexually involved with other male students because of her close relationships with them. The note writer told deputies he wasn't sure.

Deputies interviewed two or three of the students named in the note, but they denied having sex with Ragusa, the documents state.

'We Believe That There Are Other Victims'

An investigation into Ragusa is ongoing, and the sheriff's office is asking for any other victims to come forward, sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said today.

"We've always said that we believe that there are other victims out there," she said.

The investigation into Ragusa's activities started when a girl at Davidsen told a school resource officer she had heard that Ragusa had sex with a student, according to reports. The resource officer told the principal, who told deputies.

When deputies first interviewed a victim, they said, he denied having sex with Ragusa. Asked to complete a written statement to that effect, he recanted and said he could not lie.

The boy began cooperating and allowed deputies to record a telephone conversation with the teacher.

During the conversation, the boy asked Ragusa whether she had had sex with other students. "No," she said.

Ragusa told the boy she would be concerned about her own family were she arrested. She said she wasn't sure who would take care of her handicapped brother if something happened to her father and she was in jail.

The boy asked what was so wrong with what they had done.

"You're under 18; I'm over 18, and, I don't know. Whatever," she said.

She told the boy she didn't like talking about it on the phone because people listen to cell phones all the time.

She said she was concerned that what they had done would become a big news story.

"Those, you know, people – people look to take you down," she said. "People like drama, you know? Look at freaking tabloids, Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton and all that stupid" stuff.

Ragusa told the boy she was looking into going to law school and was worried there would be no statute of limitations on what they had done.

She said she wouldn't tell anybody about their relationship.

"Who am I gonna tell, my dad?" she said. "He'd look at me different. If I told anybody I knew, even my friends or anything, they'd all look at me different. They would look at it as like a pervert or perversion, you know? They wouldn't understand. Like, you know, it's not like they're – it's not like they're going to meet you and be like, 'Oh, okay. Now that I met him he's nice. He's cool,' " you know? ..... It's like a real old guy going after really young girls, you know? It's creepy. That's what they would see it as."

The grandfather of the boy who made the telephone call described his grandson today to The Tampa Tribune as a good boy who loves sports.

"He wants to be a basketball player when he grows up," said the grandfather, who is not being identified because of the nature of the allegations against Ragusa. "But you know how that goes. When they get older, they get into something else."

The boy calls often but does not discuss the incident, his grandfather said.

He wonders what motivates teachers like Ragusa.

"I don't know what is wrong with these women," he said. "I don't like it at all, but there is nothing I can do about it."

The grandfather said he hopes his grandson will not suffer because of this.

"I hope he will be OK. His parents tried their best."

They are divorced, he said.

Ragusa, 29, was arrested March 13 on five counts of lewd and lascivious battery. Investigators accused her of having sex at least three times with a then 14-year-old boy from January 2007 to May 2007.

She was arrested again April 15, accused of having a sexual relationship with a Davidsen student when the boy was 15. She was charged with two counts of having sex with a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious battery.

She was arrested for the third time April 28. This time, a sheriff's detective spotted her coming out of a student's house and learned they had just had sex again, according to an arrest report.

Ragusa and the second teen's relationship started Feb. 15, 2007, when they had sex at Ragusa's former home on Fox Terrier Court in Tampa, investigators said. From then until March 10, three days before Ragusa's first arrest, she and the teen had sex more than 20 times, sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

Ragusa is in Falkenburg Road Jail and is being held without bail.

Editor Howard Altman, reporter Elaine Silvestrini and researcher Diane Grey contributed to this report. Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at jpoltilove@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7691.

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