Judge to decide whether to accept or toss plea deal of Key Biscayne gymnastics coach

On Thursday in the Miami-Dade criminal courtroom of Judge Alberto Milian, the fate of the Key Biscayne gymnastics coach accused of assaulting two of his students when they were children will be decided.

Last week, Oscar Olea, now 40, and the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office signed a plea deal — which stipulated that Olea would spend 12 years in prison, followed by a decade of probation. The deal also listed him as a sexual predator for the rest of his life.

The deal was reached days before the case was to go to trial.

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But after one of his victims called the plea deal a “direct insult,” prosecutors are expected to ask Judge Milian to approve their request to pull his plea and seek a trial instead, a rare move after a plea deal has been signed, lawyers say.

“I am firmly and unequivocally opposed to any plea deal in this case,” the woman, now in her late 20s, wrote in an email shared with the Miami Herald on Monday. The email was addressed to Arvind Singh, one of the prosecutors in the state case against Olea.

READ MORE: ‘Direct insult’: Victim in Key Biscayne gymnastics coach case demands trial

The judge will decide whether the plea deal between Olea’s lawyers and prosecutors will stand or whether it will be tossed out in favor of a trial, which is expected to be lengthy and gut-wrenching with victims’ testimony.

Olea, 40, has been charged with sexually assaulting girls a decade ago. He was facing six charges of sex crimes against a minor by a person with custodial authority against two of his former students, though two of those charges were dropped by the state attorney’s office.

His trial had been scheduled to start Monday, but with the plea agreement introduced last week, the trial was canceled.

The two former students are now 28 and 31 years old and previously told the Herald and police they started being abused by their then-coach when they were 12 and 16.

Allegations of sexual abuse followed Olea for over a decade. Then last fall, the coach was accused by two mothers of inappropriately touching a 4-year-old girl and a 7-year-old girl. The case landed on a state prosecutor’s desk in January and was closed the same day — despite the fact that he’d been mentioned in prior Key Biscayne police reports.

This story will be updated.