‘She’s a scumbag’: Detective caught on tape trashing mother of alleged sex abuse victim

A detective investigating child molestation allegations against a Key Biscayne gym coach disparaged one girl’s mother as “a scumbag” — a comment captured by his still-recording cell phone and now the focus of an internal probe.

Det. Fernando Carvajal had been taping his formal interview with another woman who said coach Oscar Olea had molested her when she was a child. Carvajal apparently forgot to stop his phone from recording when he finished the interview, and his phone captured a series of off-color comments to fellow officers and others.

Adriana Alcalde, a former sex crimes prosecutor for the Broward State Attorney’s Office, called the comment “disgusting.”

“Then people wonder why women don’t come forward,” she said. “They fear they won’t be taken seriously.”

Carvajal did not reply to messages from the Miami Herald seeking comment. Key Biscayne Chief Francis Sousa said the department has launched an internal investigation.

“The comments made do not reflect the values and hard work of the Key Biscayne Police Department,” the chief said in a written statement. “We hold our officers accountable. The review will determine the disciplinary action.”

Read the Investigation: Key Biscayne’s Dark Secret

Olea, 38, was arrested late last month following an investigation by the Miami Herald. Two women who told their stories to the Herald then made formal complaints to police alleging that Olea had sex with them when they were children. Prosecutors charged Olea with six counts of sex crimes against minors by a person with custodial care.

The detective’s comments were made about a month ago, as the department began to dig back into long-dormant allegations against Olea following the Herald’s reporting. The cellphone recording, lasting a little over two hours, was submitted by the Key Biscayne Police Department to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office as evidence in the case against Olea and was released to the Herald in response to a public records request. The official recording of the interview with the victim, captured by another officer’s body camera and provided at a later date to the state attorney, has not yet been released.

The cell phone recording includes multiple officers on a range of topics from their take on the victim’s testimony, asking others for advice on the case, and jokes about their genitals.

The interactions give an inside look at how the previous investigation into Olea was handled by the department. That investigation began in September and focused on the allegations of families who said Olea had molested their daughters, ages 4 and 7. Prosecutors declined to pursue charges, citing contradictory statements by the victims as one of the reasons.

“She’s a scumbag,” Carvajal said of the mother of the 4-year-old on the recording. “She actually screwed up the first case.”

Carvajal goes on to say that the 4-year-old and 7-year-old said different things to investigators at Kristi House, where child abuse victims are interviewed by experts in collaboration with the state attorney’s office, than they did to officers at the Key Biscayne Police Department. He said that after people were talking about the investigation on WhatsApp chats, that the children’s “accusations started mirroring each other.”

Carvajal also said that with information from new victims coming forward, he thought he had enough evidence to make an arrest.

“It seems like he’s upset that he got called out on a bad investigation, instead of looking internally,” Alcalde said. “That’s what his real problem is, and he shouldn’t be taking it out on these children who maybe gave different stories. Because they’re children.”

The mother of the 4-year-old told the Herald Carvajal must have confused her with the mother of the 7-year-old. She had spoken to him on the phone with him once or twice, but had never met him in person, she said.

“He must’ve been washing his hands of it, I think,” she told the Herald in Spanish. “It must be something like that so he doesn’t take responsibility.”

In a phone conversation with someone else later on, Carvajal goes on to say that he didn’t feel he had enough proof in the previous investigation. “I wasn’t defending this guy but, my mindset was, I’m not going to nail this guy if I don’t have proof of anything.”

With the new victims coming forward, Carvajal said he felt he had what he needed for a case against Olea. “I think he’s arroz frito, brother.”

In one conversation with fellow officer Jose Rodriguez, the two talk about continuing to dig. Carvajal says the work is “addicting” and gives “pleasure, purpose and satisfaction.”

“I wanna be the one to handcuff him,” Carvajal said.

Francey Hakes, a former federal prosecutor and the first national coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, said there was no circumstance under which the conversation was “in any way professional or ethical, especially within the context of a sexual abuse investigation.”

“My biggest concern is this detective has put this entire case in jeopardy, because he has made his credibility a serious issue. I’m just floored at his stupidity and lack of professional conduct,” Hakes said, adding that it makes her question the training program and supervision at the Key Biscayne Police Department.

Though Det. Carvajal places blame on the 4 and 7-year-old and their families for “changing their stories,” someone Carvajal speaks to on the phone later can be heard telling him that they don’t recommend police interview young victims, and that should be handled by a forensic interviewer only: at Kristi House.

“Children don’t lie,” says the person on the phone, who Carvajal had previously referred to as an “expert” on the subject. “That’s why I always recommend, especially when it comes to interviewing children, not to interview them. Let the forensic [do the] interview.”

Carvajal also mentions another victim, who came forward to police in January about having had a sexual relationship with Olea that started when she was 16. That woman, now in her early thirties, had a report written by Key Biscayne Police after she was drunk on Crandon Boulevard and Olea, who was with her, called the police for help.

“Her story just doesn’t jive on what she’s telling us, you know?” Carvajal says, calling her “a 43,” meaning she had been Baker Acted or committed for mental health treatment. “She’s stating that she was drunk. She doesn’t remember anything but she remembers specifically to the detail everything with him. I know that the media had got ahold of her.”

“There are some established basic practices in law enforcement investigations which we would hope all police officers would follow, including … refraining from using language that may be considered offensive or inappropriate in the work environment,” said Wendy Regoeczi, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina.

That woman spoke to reporters in January after giving her testimony to police. She told reporters she felt frustrated and said their questions seemed focused on the one time that she was drunk, rather than the fact that he repeatedly had sex with her while she was underage and and eight years younger than Olea.

At another point in the recording, they begin to discuss how it took 14 years for the victim to come forward, and how the department reacted after the Herald investigation into Olea came out in January.

“Everybody at the department acted very defensively when that came out because it’s like, ah, well [we] can’t wait till that guy files a defamation suit,” said Rodriguez. “But the thing is, man, you really have to look at these cases from a different lens.”

A new investigation into Olea was opened after three alleged victims contacted Key Biscayne police to report Olea’s abuse just days after the Miami Herald published its investigation. He was arrested on Feb. 28.