Bail set for stepmother of Florida cyber bullying suspect

A Florida judge on Saturday morning set the bond at $300,000 for the stepmother of one of the girls charged in the case of online bullying, according to officials at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.

Vivian Vosburg appeared in court at the central county jail in Bartow in Polk County, where a judge set $50,000 bail for each of the six felony charges against her, according to court documents released to The Times.

Vosburg, 30, was arrested Friday on two counts of child abuse and four counts of child neglect, Sheriff Grady Judd said at a televised news conference. She is the stepmother of the older of two girls charged in a cyber bullying case that has drawn national attention.

The abuse charges are unrelated to the case of the online bullying that authorities say led Rebecca Sedwick, 12, to jump off a silo at an abandoned cement plant Sept. 9 after being harassed by two girls. The two suspects, ages 12 and 14, were charged this week with felony aggravated stalking.

Vosburg this week insisted that she monitored her stepdaughter’s social media account.

Friday’s arrest came after investigators found a video posted online that shows Vosburg punching two underage boys who were fighting. Four other children under her care are shown looking on, laughing and cursing. Judd said the video was posted in July on the Facebook page of one of the children in the clip.

Though Judd emphasized that the charges against Vosburg are separate from the bullying case, he cited both cases as the byproduct of routine behavior in a dysfunctional household.

“I would suggest to you that this violence always occurred,” Judd said. “But there was not a mechanism to record it and post it for the whole world to see.”

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