Charlotte school counselor crucial to charging man with indecent liberties

CHARLOTTE — A man is facing several felony charges after police say he sexually assaulted two young girls.

The investigation started in September, but Channel 9’s Hunter Sáenz found out the suspect was arrested this weekend for the crimes.

According to an arrest warrant, a 10-year-old girl told her school counselor that she was being sexually abused at home. Then, the counselor did something about it.

Forty-year-old Obner Itain Rosales-Romero is accused of sexually assaulting two girls just 9 and 10 years old. Investigators said the assaults started at an apartment complex in south Charlotte a few months ago.

According to the warrant, in September, the 10-year-old victim told “...a school counselor that she had been sexually assaulted.” The counselor alerted the Department of Social Services, who contacted the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Crimes Against Children task force. They turned to Pat’s Place Child Advocacy Center.

Andrew Oliver is the CEO at Pat’s Place and showed Sáenz the room where young victims undergo a forensic interview.

“This is where a lot of hard work happens for kids,” he said.

He couldn’t discuss this specific case -- it is an open investigation -- but he shared how the process works.

“They speak to a specially trained, forensic interviewer and that interview is observed by our partners in child protection so they understand what they need for the case,” Oliver said.

Detectives sit in an observation room down the hall. They listening in during the interview via cameras to gather crucial testimony.

In this case, according to a warrant, it was during two forensic interviews that the 10-year-old and her cousin both described the graphic details of being sexually assaulted by Rosales-Romero at multiple locations, including an “old house, new house, a river... and at a pool.”

“In spite of all the hurt that we’re taking in on a daily basis, we’re sending out far more hope into the world,” Oliver said.

Those interviews in that room were critical for detectives to bring four felony charges of indecent liberties with a child. Rosales-Romero was arrested but bonded out of jail over the weekend.

Pat’s Place said they help roughly a thousand kids a year, saying half of those cases involve sexual abuse.

It’s not clear which school the children attend.

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