Teacher offered to "break" student of shyness before sex act, detectives say

TAMPA -- Before a Davidsen Middle School teacher started a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student, she told the boy she could help him overcome his shyness, according to a new court filing.

When teacher Stephanie Ragusa, 28, left, broke her foot and was confined to a wheel chair, the boy was assigned to escort her around the school, detectives wrote in their request for a search warrant filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court.

Ragusa told the boy when they got into the elevator that she noticed he was "shy and she could break him of that," the warrant states. Then, it says, she invited him to go to her apartment after school instead of attending an after-school program.

At her apartment, they had what the boy described to police as "consensual" sex. Ragusa then took him back to school in time to be picked up by his step-mother.

Over the next several weeks, detectives wrote, Ragusa and the boy spoke over the phone. One night, while the boy's parents were sleeping, the teacher picked him up around the corner from his house and they had sex in the back seat of her silver Lexus SUV, the report states.

Their sexual relationship lasted from October, 2006 to May 2007, detectives said.

The last reported sexual incident between the two took place the night of the boy's eighth grade dance. The boy said he skipped the dance, got a ride from Ragusa to an after-hours party, then got a ride with her to Gant Road, where they had sex again, detectives say.

The boy described to detectives two tattoos -- a flower and possibly a butterfly -- in Ragusa's groin area that they said would be visible only without clothes, as well as a gecko on her back. Hillsborough Sheriff's detectives requested the search warrant to obtain pictures of Ragusa's body as well as DNA samples and fingerprints from her Lexus.

Ragusa, who was hired by the school district in 2006, faces five felony charges of lewd and lascivious battery, one for each sexual act involving the 14-year-old, who deputies say turned 15 over the course of their relationship. Ragusa, of Lake Bella Vista Drive in Tampa, was working at Martinez Middle as a math teacher when the charges against her were filed. She has been suspended from her teaching job.

- Rebecca Catalanello, Times staff writer