MIAMI – A 19-year-old after-school camp coach at a Miami park molested a 9-year-old boy twice, leading to his arrest Monday on two felony charges, according to police.
Police said their investigation into Julio Isidro — who lives near Royal Green Elementary School in southwest Miami-Dade’s Kendale Lakes area — came about after the boy replicated what happened to him on another boy at school.
According to an arrest report, a counselor was speaking to the victim on Nov. 6 about an incident where he touched another boy’s “private area” and the boy disclosed that his camp counselor had done that to him and he “wanted to do it to his friend.”
The boy attends camp at Robert King High Park, located at 7025 W. Flagler St. in the city’s Flagami neighborhood, police said.
On Monday, the boy told a child advocate during a forensic interview Monday that Isidro first touched his genitals over his clothing after he asked to use the bathroom, the report states.
Police said the boy asked Isidro why he did that, to which he replied “don’t tell anyone.”
Two days later, after asking for permission to get water, the boy said Isidro did the same thing again, telling him “sorry, I did it by accident again,” the report states.
“The victim would approach (Isidro) as he sat in a chair outside of the ‘big room’ where the other children were unable to view the incidents,” an investigator wrote.
Following the interview, Miami police went to the park and took Isidro into custody. Police said he invoked his rights to an attorney.
Isidro, who lives in the Kendale Lakes area, was being held without bond on two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation as of Tuesday morning, jail records show.
In court Tuesday, Isidro’s attorney pushed back on the charges, calling it a “purely testimonial case.”
“It is the state’s position that if the child says this to enough people that it must be true,” the attorney said. “There is no corroboration of this charge. My client has no priors. He is a United States citizen.”
A city spokesperson said Isidro passed a background check and said camp employees are “required to go through and pass a level II background check.”
Police said they are asking anyone who thinks they may have been a victim to come forward and call them.
“We don’t know if there are other victims and that is why we need the public to talk to their children,” Officer Michael Vega, a Miami police spokesperson, said. “We rather than a parent comes to us and says ‘my child was inappropriately touched’ and let us make the determination if it rises to the level of a crime than not reporting it because they think it doesn’t.”