An accuser of former gymnastic coach Oscar Olea, in an audio statement played in court Tuesday, told Key Biscayne police through tears how she feared for her own safety more than a decade after her coach raped her.
“I was always terrified of him,” the accuser, identified only by initials, said on the audio played in Olea’s detention hearing. “’I’m scared that he’s going to hurt me and said he’s going to hurt my mom. He knows where my mom lives.”
The alleged victim, now 30, also spoke about how Olea texted her that he heard her mother went to the police to make an anonymous complaint. “He just was very, very adamant. He was like, ‘If I hear that coming out, I’m gonna hurt someone,” she told Key Biscayne Det. Carlo Ugalde.
Olea, sitting at the defense table, had no discernable reaction.
The audio track from a Jan. 31 video recording played in court was the first time that an Olea accuser had been heard in her own voice. Previously, only a synopsis was available on an arrest warrant application.
The dramatic audio was not the only development in the Olea case on Tuesday.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office filed four additional charges against Olea – all sexual activity with a child by a person in familial or custodial authority. There were four charges involving and two charges involving the second alleged victim.
There were also more prosecutorial missteps annoying Judge Alberto Milian. He halted court temporarily because of the government’s failure to properly redact Olea’s conversation with a detective last fall.
The detention hearing will assume Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Prosecutors have asked Miami-Dade Circuit Alberto Milian to keep Olea detained, saying he is a danger to the community.
Olea was investigated last fall when parents of two different students in his class went to police and complained of inappropriate behavior towards girls, ages 4 and 7. No charges were filed.
Two women went to police in January to file formal complaints against Olea, saying they were sexually assaulted by him as teen students.
The victim, on the recording played Tuesday, told the detective how how Olea took her virginity, tried to turn her against her mother and led to her writing suicide notes.
“I did want to kill myself at one point, because I felt like he kind of took everything from me,” she said.
The woman said she didn’t come forward for financial reasons but only to tell her story of what happened when she was 16 and Olea was 22.
“I want this man arrested and in jail. I cannot stand that this has happened for so many years,” she said. “And it kills me. That’s why I’m here. I can’t let that happen to anybody else.”
Olea allegedly manipulated her for years, she said, telling her “you’re my best friend” or “you’re my sister.” He told her he was also adopted and would play on her teenage jealousy, saying he was also in a relationship with another student of his and showing her a photo.
“He groomed me to really be attached to him,” she said.
Olea eventually started playing a game with her legs while driving her to a lesson in Coral Gables, touching her through her leotard.
Then at one private lesson on Key Biscayne, Olea produced a condom and penetrated her, she said. “I had zero control of any of it,” the alleged victim told detectives. “Just in a blink of an eye it happened.”
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JOHN PACENTI is the executive editor of the Key Biscayne Independent. John has worked for The Associated Press, the Palm Beach Post, Daily Business Review, and WPTV-TV.