Sex abuse claims have trailed coach in luxe Miami area town. Why’s he still training kids?

In the span of just over a decade, Key Biscayne police received a series of complaints about a gymnastic coach’s allegedly abusive behavior with young girls, police reports and interviews with the Herald reveal.

The coach’s name: Oscar Nicolas Olea. He is 38. He has not been charged with any crimes and continues to teach gymnastics to girls, teenage and younger. He and his lawyer deny he has done anything wrong and several parents reached out to Herald reporters to offer their praise for the coach.

But a Miami Herald investigation has uncovered at least five alleged victims, all of whose stories were brought to the attention of the Key Biscayne Police Department.

Three of the five are now adults. Two of those adults were students: one who alleges she was sexually assaulted on at least 10 occasions when she was 13 during private lessons and the other whose mother went to police to say her daughter had been violently raped when she was 17. Another alleged victim worked with Olea at the Key Biscayne Community Center, known as “The Rec”, and says she was underage when she had a sexual relationship with Olea, who supplied her with liquor.

“We knew we had a bad seed,” said Charles Press, the police chief then, who learned about the 17-year-old’s alleged rape from the girl’s mother. But, he added, “there was no victim, no crime, no proof,” because of the refusal of the accusers to make their complaints official.

All of this would be ancient history — forgotten, except by the alleged victims and their families — if not for a disturbing post on the social media app Nextdoor.

Social media post stirs ghosts

One day last September, a mother had a complaint about her 7-year-old’s gymnastics coach. Expressing herself on Nextdoor, she said the coach had touched her child inappropriately and made sexual comments during practice.

Olea whispered to the 7-year-old in Spanish: “look at that big ass, I’m hungry,” the family complained, according to a police report.

“We have already filed a report with the police and they suggested that we raise our voices and invite any mother or father who has gone through this situation here in Key Biscayme[sic] and REPORT,” the Nextdoor post read.

The post was soon taken down but not before other Key Biscayne parents began questioning their kids about how Olea treated them.

The Key Biscayne Police Department, with the help of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, began an investigation.

A second current student — a 4-year-old — showed her mother, using a doll, where he had touched her. The mother contacted police, telling a Key Biscayne investigator that Olea, while playing “Oscar Games,” lifted her daughter off the ground by her ankles and licked her buttocks, according to a police report. She also said Olea told them in Spanish, “Run or I will bite your ass,” the report says.

When messages started circulating in WhatsApp chats about Olea’s language, Olea sent a message to at least one group including parents of students:

“I would never speak to a student or anyone in this manner,” he wrote. “The only thing I have ever said is squeeze your butt or I will bite it and what I do is tickle them on the stomach or rib cage,” Olea wrote.

This month the investigation was closed with no charges. The state attorney’s office cited four reasons: Olea denied the allegation, inconsistent statements made by the victims, contradicting and or no corroborating witnesses, and insufficient evidence.

Beatriz Llorente, Olea’s lawyer, said in a statement that her client “vehemently denies any sexual remarks to any student or touching them in any inappropriate way in connection with the recent anonymous social media post or otherwise. He further denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct contained in your list.”

She added: “My client’s innocence is confirmed by the conclusion of this investigation without charges.”

Adriana Alcalde, a former prosecutor for the Broward County State Attorney’s Office who had no involvement in the case, said Olea wouldn’t have had “unfettered access to children,” resulting in the recent complaints, if police had acted correctly years earlier.

A 13-year-old’s private lessons

One of the women who spoke to the Herald says now that back in 2011 she saw Olea, who is 12 years older, as an older brother. That ended when Olea began molesting her, she told the Herald.

She’d started taking gymnastics classes at around age 12 at American Gymsters, which had a gym in Key Biscayne and also held classes at The Rec. The village contracts American Gymsters to run the gymnastics program at The Rec.

She told the Herald after a year of taking classes with Olea, she started taking private lessons with Olea and the two became close. She said Olea knew her daily routine and would pick her up from school before her lessons and take her to his mother’s apartment, where he lived. Sometimes, the former student told the Herald, they watched movies and cuddled on his bed, often while Olea’s mother was home in their small, one-bedroom apartment.

One time, the former student told reporters, while she was taking a shower at his house after school, Olea walked in. He opened the shower curtain and looked at her bare body. She froze, but after a few moments told him to get out. She said he would often change his clothes in front of her, showing his naked body.

One evening, when one of the private lessons was ending at the American Gymsters gym, Olea started putting some of the gymnastics equipment up against the glass windows, so people couldn’t see in, she said.

Olea turned off the lights and forced himself on her, she told the Herald. He kissed her neck and lips and pushed her leotard to the side and inserted his fingers inside her.

“I was in shock. I just froze until I reacted and asked him to stop, but I was scared,” she said.

He told her that there was nothing wrong with what they did, but that she couldn’t tell anybody. He told her he loved her and when she was older they would be together and get married, the former student told reporters.

She said roughly the same thing happened at least 10 times within a span of three months.

One day, the young teen’s mother found three love letters in her backpack— two from Olea and one written by her daughter. She took her daughter and the letters to the Key Biscayne Police Department to report it, according to a Key Biscayne incident report obtained by the Herald from late March 2012. Neither the mom nor her daughter were named in the report.

From the police report narrative describing the letters: “In the notes from Olea he mentions kissing her lips. In the 2 paged letter from her daughter to Olea she states how she is so in love with him, and how she wants to please him the way he pleases her. She goes on to say that they will be together forever even though she is still a little girl.”

The police asked the girl whether Olea had a sexual relationship with her, had kissed her, or had touched her in her “private areas.” She replied no in each instance, according to the report. She told police he was “just friendly.”

Eleven years after the visit to police, the former student told the Herald she lied to protect Olea — and because she was scared.

“I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he made it seem as though if I said something, he was going to do something to me,” the woman said.

When asked by the Herald about the letters referenced in the report, the department said it did not have them. .

“The fact that he’s continuing to teach little girls and do this, I think, is really concerning,” the former student told the Herald.

The mother decided to not move forward with making a formal report, but told police then that she wanted to “shed light on the situation and prevent this from happening to other girls,” according to the report.

There’s no indication that police ever questioned Olea about the love letters or anything else.

Following a father’s footsteps

Oscar Olea may have inherited his affinity for coaching from his father, also named Oscar, a man who was barely in his life. The elder Oscar was a well-known tennis coach who was found dead in his Honda Civic in Key Biscayne. He’d been shot in the head through the window of his car. His son was 3. The murder remains unsolved 35 years later.

Over the years, the son has coached gymnastics at six different venues on the iconic island of Key Biscayne, including at two church schools, and, most recently, at his own studio, Flipout Workout.

Complaints followed him. Geysa Guarconi, a former manager of American Gymsters, one of Olea’s early employers, told the Herald Olea was suspected of giving alcohol to young girls and that parents felt he was “too affectionate” with students.

Multiple moms told the Herald — and one told police — of feeling uncomfortable that he allowed little girls to sit on his lap after class.

In November, the father of the 7-year-old who went to police also made a complaint to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit organization created in the wake of the investigation of Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of criminal sexual misconduct.

In that report to Safesport, the father noted that Olea followed his underage students on social media. Safesport told that father that his case would be assigned to an investigator.

His oddly close relationships with students was not a new feature. While in his mid-twenties, Olea would tool around the Key — or take a jaunt to Coconut Grove — with a carload of teenage girls. On Facebook is a video of three teenage girls doing a “Chinese fire drill” where passengers pile out of a car and run around it before getting back in, all while the car is stopped at a red light. Music blasts in the background. Olea was in the driver’s seat, said a woman involved in the stunt.

She said no

Olea also allegedly had a close relationship with one 17-year-old student, who had been taking lessons with him for a few years.

The mother of the now 30-year-old spoke to the Herald and said her daughter was brutally raped by Olea in 2011. He was eight years older than her daughter.

When her daughter was old enough to get a cell phone, the mother spotted messages from Olea and thought they were “really inappropriate,” the mom told the Herald.

“He was likely doing some grooming there,” she added.

One day, she found a suicide note in her daughter’s possession.

The daughter started therapy. Her mother told the Herald she was invited to one session in which her daughter shared that she and Olea had been growing closer and that one day she had gone over to Olea’s mother’s house under the presumption that they would have sex. But when the moment came, she said “no,” the girl’s mom told the Herald.

The way her daughter described it, Olea wasn’t deterred — raping her, including forcing her to have anal sex, the mother told the Herald. When she screamed, he covered her mouth.

The therapist advised the two not to go to the police, according to the mom, warning that it would retraumatize her daughter since it would be a lengthy process in which she would have to relive her pain. In recent years, police and prosecutors have tried to make it less traumatic for victims of sex crimes to navigate the criminal justice system. But victims say it remains dehumanizing.

Nonetheless, Florida’s mandated reporting law would’ve required the therapist to report, without revealing the patient’s identity.

Accompanied by a friend who urged her to take action, she met with then-Chief Press in his office. She and the friend described the alleged incident but told the chief she didn’t want to file a report.

Key Biscayne police have no record of the meeting. But the chief remembers it. He recalled how “anxious and scared” the two visitors were “because of [Olea’s] stature in the community as a gymnastics coach.” He said he believed them.

But he did not bring in Olea for questioning even though Olea worked right across the street at the Village Green Park. He didn’t search police files for any other complaints.

He did, however, talk to Parks and Rec Director Todd Hofferberth, whose department had responsibility for goings-on in the park.

“It was hearsay,” Hofferberth says now. “There was no charge.”

Hofferberth was so unmoved that when the village began requiring permits to conduct business at the park, his department issued one to Olea.

The Herald spoke to Press on three separate occasions. The first two times, Press said there was nothing he could do because the mother did not want to file a report. The third time, he told a different reporter a different story. Upon reflection, he said, he may have sent undercover detectives to watch Olea’s practices at the park, but could not say for sure since it all happened over 10 years ago. “It would’ve made sense,” he said.

Current Chief Francis Sousa, who’s been on the job two years, said he wouldn’t comment on how things were handled in the past.

The Herald asked the police department for e-mails or “watch orders” — any evidence that would confirm that surveillance was requested or occurred. Nothing was provided.

‘I didn’t want to be shamed’

On June 24, 2011, at 2:56 a.m., Key Biscayne police were dispatched to Galen Drive in response to a call about an intoxicated teen stumbling down the sidewalk. The caller: Oscar Olea.

Upon arrival, police found an 18-year-old slurring her words, wearing her pants inside out. She ran away from the responding officers, waving her arms wildly, and threw herself on the ground, according to reports. Olea, who was with her, told police he was walking her home from the Grand Bay Beach Club when he became concerned about her well-being. Apparently traumatized, she spoke of being raped in the past, according to first responders.

Officers subdued her, handcuffed her and called fire rescue.

According to police reports and the woman herself, who talked to the Herald, she had been drinking with friends in the Jacuzzi in the Grand Bay when she Snapchatted Olea, inviting him to join them. He showed up with a bottle of liquor, she told the Herald.

Olea told police she’d drunk a Four Loko alcoholic beverage before he arrived. He said she asked him to have sex with her. She told the Herald that’s not true. She said he leaned over and fingered her while she was in the hot tub, which disturbed her. A friend who was sitting across from them in the hot tub told the Herald she saw that happen and remembers her friend being distraught.

The woman who got so publicly drunk that night with Olea is now 30. She told the Herald she and Olea had been having sex on and off since she was 16. She related one particularly traumatic incident in which Olea put a glass bottle up her vagina and “it hurt.”

They had met when she was around 15 and working at The Rec at the same time as he worked there. He was fired from that job when someone complained that he was walking around carrying a young student whose legs were wrapped around his waist.

Today she says she feels “grossed out, resentful and angry that he took advantage of my young mind and took advantage of my vulnerability.”

There is nothing in the police report to indicate that anyone asked the adult Olea about the booze that sent a drunk, wobbly and disheveled 18-year-old wandering down a dark road in the wee hours.

“Honestly, it’s just baffling to me. If you see an underage girl and you see that she’s intoxicated…the first question you should ask is where did you get the alcohol from?” the woman told the Herald.

“He knew how old I was,” the woman said. “And obviously he would be like, ‘you can’t tell anybody about this.’ He made it seem like he cared about me. And I never told anybody because I thought that I was going to get in trouble… I didn’t want to be shamed.”

Epilogue

When the latest complaints about Olea emerged, he stopped coaching at Flipout Workout, leaving those duties to others, but continued to coach a small group of competitive female gymnasts at a facility in Kendall. In a brief encounter with a Miami Herald reporter, he said he would like to talk but his attorney advised him not to do so.

By Wednesday afternoon of this past week, some of the signage on the Flipout Workout gym windows had been removed.

“He’s been the best coach that my daughter’s had in any sport,” said Sofia Jacobs, a mother of a current competitive gymnastics student.

Chief Sousa said if there are women or girls who have abuse to report — even involving older allegations — he stands ready to listen and will take what they say seriously.

The woman who says she was repeatedly molested when she was 13 said she’d be willing to help if the police reach out to her.

Anyone wishing to speak to a reporter about this matter can email csdaly@MiamiHerald.com or achacin@MiamiHerald.com

Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown contributed to this report.