Call admissible against teacher accused of sex with student

TAMPA - The secretly recorded phone conversation with a male student is damning for former teacher Stephanie Ragusa, and her attorney knows it.

Attorney Robert Herce tried to block its contents from being publicly released after his client was charged with having sex with two male students. Didn't work. So today, he asked a judge to suppress the conversation before trial, arguing that detectives messed up by leaving the recording equipment with the student and not supervising the call.

That didn't work either.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett denied the motion after an hourlong hearing. He didn't agree with the contention that sheriff's detectives erred by not being present during the recorded call. The law says someone can intercept such a call "under the direction of law enforcement."

The former Davidsen Middle School teacher chatted on March 12 with the boy, who was one of her seventh-grade students. The next day, she was charged with having sex with him three times during the 2006-07 school year. During the conversation, she said their interaction had been "fun" but "illegal." He was 14 when they met. She was 27. 

"It's kind of like one of those things you have to take to the grave," she told him.

Ragusa remains jailed. She sat quietly throughout the hearing today, dressed in a jail-issued orange uniform.

Colleen Jenkins, Times staff writer

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Comments

[CLB]

Let her live her life in jail with the orange uniform.