‘Shame on them’: How police fumbled the case of gymnastics coach accused of sex abuse
In March 2012, a mother came to the Key Biscayne Police Department with her 14-year-old daughter, who had been sent steamy love letters from a grown man — Oscar Olea, her 26-year-old gymnastics coach.
Shortly after, a second mother independently came forward, telling the then-chief of police that the same coach, Oscar Olea, had raped her 17year-old daughter. Both moms were reluctant to get their daughters involved. And the 14-yearold denied anything sexual was going on.
Various law enforcement experts told the Miami Herald that, willing victims or not, that’s the kind of information police departments should do something about: sternly warn the coach, survey parents and students, conduct surveillance. Investigate. Key Biscayne police did none of that. Then-Chief Charles Press, upon hearing the rape allegation, didn’t even put a memo in the file.
Olea continued to coach — and push boundaries.
Students described him as flirty, making sexualized comments, supplying back rubs, handling girls in ways that made them uncomfortable, asking whether students were virgins or whether they’d had their periods, even hanging out at the beach or cruising to the mall with the students. A Facebook video shows a car stopping at an intersection while giggling girls jump out, circle the car and jump back in — a “Chinese fire drill.” Olea was driving, former students said.
Parents and supervisors at the venues where he coached took little note, although some have since said they had to warn him at times about being alone with students.
Olea’s world crashed after the Miami Herald published a story in January called “Key Biscayne’s Dark Secret,” which quoted the 14-yearold, now a married mother of three, saying she’d been serially sexually abused by the coach. She said Olea