Teacher told student to keep relationship a secret

TAMPA -- Former teacher Stephanie Ragusa, accused of having sex with two middle school boys, told one of them that their relationship was "kind of like one of those things you have to take to the grave."

Prosecutors released today a transcript of a March 12 phone call Ragusa had with one of her alleged victims, who was 14 and in the 7th grade when their relationship began. She didn't realize it was being recorded for detectives to hear. Click here to download the complete transcript (PDF).

During the 17-minute call, the boy pressed Ragusa, 29, to talk about what had gone on between them. She was reluctant to do so on the phone.

"I get paranoid about it," she said. "People look to take you down. People like drama, you know? Look at freaking tabloids, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and all that stupid s----."

She said their interaction had been "fun," but she acknowledged that it was illegal because of their age difference.

If word got out, she said, "it would be all over the news and everything."

"Oh, like that one Debra Lafave thing?" the boy asked.

"Yeah," Ragusa said.

She added: "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."

Ragusa remains in jail -- wearing orange -- after three arrests in the past two months. She is accused of having sex with two students who attended Davidsen Middle School, where she taught.

A judge denied her attorney's request on Wednesday to keep the transcript of the phone off-limits to the media until her trial.

Ragusa said she didn't agree with society's view of the relationship.

But she worried that her friends would consider it to be perverted, and she was concerned about who would take care of her disabled brother if Ragusa had to go to jail. If her live-in boyfriend found out, she said, he would call the police.

"It's like a real old guy going after really young girls, you know?" she said. "It's creepy. That's what they would see it as."

The boy asked if she had had sex with any other students.

"No," Ragusa said.

Ragusa was arrested March 13. In an interview with detectives, she denied any sexual activity with her students. She said she had developed close relationships with a few students and said their parents knew she would take them places in her SUV to help them with school.

She said that her boyfriend had warned her not to go into teaching because of the potential for allegations like these.

Keep checking tampabay.com for updates.

Complete coverage: Wrong choices: An outbreak of teacher sex scandals

Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer