Miami

Woman in Miami Foreign Exchange Student Sex Case Formally Charged

What to Know

  • Prosecutors had offered the 21-year-old foreign exchange student from Spain a special program for first time offenders instead of jail time
  • San Jose and her late husband, Dale Leary, were arrested in June after the alleged sexual assault of the then 14-year-old girl

A former foreign exchange student accused of molesting a teenage girl with her late husband was formally charged with lewd and lascivious behavior Friday after rejecting a deal with Miami-Dade prosecutors.

Prosecutors announced they were formally charging Marta San Jose, who was placed on house arrest in August amid allegations of lewd and lascivious behavior with a 14-year-old girl. The house arrested was later lifted.

Prosecutors had offered the 21-year-old foreign exchange student from Spain a special program for first time offenders instead of jail time and other similar offers, but San Jose rejected all of them. So now the case will go to trial.

San Jose and her late husband, Dale Leary, were arrested in June after the alleged sexual assault of the then 14-year-old girl, who was also a foreign exchange student from Spain. The victim had come to the United States from Spain in 2014.

San Jose herself had come to America as an exchange student two years before and married Leary – who hosted San Jose and other teens in a foreign exchange program with his ex-wife – shortly before the alleged attacks.

In July, police found Leary and his ex-wife, Claudia, in a car behind his Cutler Bay home. The pair were trying to poison themselves with carbon monoxide, police said. Leary died, but Claudia was hospitalized and later recovered.

San Jose's defense attorney said he filed a written plea of not guilty and said she's a victim of Leary's. After Friday's hearing, San Jose quickly left the courtroom, swatting at a photographer in the hallway and yelling an obscenity, while her private attorney briefly stopped but had no comment.

"The formal arraignment will happen next Friday and a date will be set aside for the trial.

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