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Ex-Teacher Pleads Guilty To Sex With Student

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By TODD LESKANIC The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 10, 2008

DADE CITY - The former music teacher and band director at Pasco Middle School faces between 22 and 45 years in prison after admitting Monday to carrying on a sexual relationship with a former student.
Michael Aaron Black, 28, of Lakeland, pleaded guilty to three counts of lewd and lascivious battery, a second-degree felony. His decision to plead guilty came minutes before attorneys were to select a jury to hear his trial.
Circuit Judge Pat Siracusa will sentence Black at a hearing March 11.

The girl's mother addressed Siracusa on Monday and asked that he sentence Black to the maximum. She castigated Black for using his position to take advantage of her daughter.

"As a mother having to (go) through this, it's been difficult, to say the least," she said. "I'm accepting of this plea of guilty based on the fact that my daughter will not have to take the stand."
Assistant State Attorney Michelle Lavender said Black and the student, who turned 14 during the relationship, had sex as many as 10 times between March and September 2006. The encounters took place in the school's band room.

The Tampa Tribune does not identify victims of sexual crimes.

Lavender said prosecutors had taped and written statements from Black admitting to the relationship. Investigators also tested a semen stain on the girl's clothes and found DNA that matched Black's, she said.

The relationship came to light when the girl's parents discovered numerous calls to her cell phone - at all hours - from a single phone number. The number belonged to Black.

The girl's parents took their concerns to school administrators on Sept. 1, 2006.

When confronted by a detective on the same day, the girl admitted to having a relationship with Black. He then was questioned and admitted the affair.

Black immediately resigned and was taken into custody. His final sexual encounter with the girl happened on the day of his arrest, according to court records.

Black, who was married at the time and has two children, started working at the school in August 2004.

In court Monday, he told Siracusa he had more than five years of college education.

Black, a soft-spoken, shy man, has never been charged with a crime before.

Still, his teaching career is finished, regardless of the length of his prison sentence.

His guilty plea ensures he'll will be designated as a sexual offender, meaning he cannot work or live in areas where children normally congregate.

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at tleskanic@tampatrib. com or 352-521-3156.

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