Guilty plea to sex with a 13-year-old female student. Sentenced to 22 years.
Jan 8, 2008 - Minutes before a jury was to be selected, Michael Black, 28, a music teacher and band director at Pasco Middle School, pleaded guilty to three counts of lewd and lascivious battery, a second-degree felony. The girl was 13 when the relationship began.
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 in the school's band room. His final sexual encounter with the girl happened on the day of his arrest, according to court records.
Full Name: Michael Aaron Black
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.
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.
Still, his teaching career is finished, regardless of his prison sentence. His guilty plea ensures he will be designated as a sexual offender, meaning he cannot work or live in areas where children normally congregate.Black is also was in the process of being divorced from the mother of his two young children. He will be sentenced on March 11.
SENTENCED March 12 - Black was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison, followed by 10 years of strict sexual offender probation. His name will be on the state's sex offenders for the rest of his life.
[Circuit Judge Pat] Siracusa could have sentenced Black to as many as 45 years but opted for the low end of the state's sentencing guidelines.
Still, he was clear that he didn't intend the sentence length to be viewed as a break, saying he hoped any teacher considering a sexual relationship with a student would hear about Black's sentence and think twice.
Black acknowledged he knew he was doing something wrong when he began having sex with the girl but said he wasn't aware of the severity of the punishment he could face. Investigators said he and the victim had sex 10 times between March and September 2006. He was married with two children.
