When a Central Florida cheerleading coach was arrested earlier this year on charges that he sexually molested at least three young girls who trained at his gym, he insisted that the accusations were patently false.
“He did not do what he’s accused of,” attorney Mark Longwell said a week or so after Vigiland D'Haiti was led from his Clermont home in handcuffs. “He flatly denies it. He is horrified by the allegations. He’s in a line of work where he works with minors and his livelihood and his reputation are being destroyed by these allegations, which maybe that was the point of all of this.”
Cheerleading is a physical sport, but any touching that occurred was not at all sexual, according to Longwell, who said D’Haiti, 39, and his wife Kelly have owned the World Cheer Center for more than 20 years. Besides, Longwell told Fox 35, D’Haiti’s gym had an open floor plan, where everyone could see everyone else at all times.
On Friday, federal prosecutors unsealed their own complaint against D’Haiti, revealing previously unreported allegations that he demanded nude photos from a girl who considered the coach a “second father,” sent her “dick pics” via Snapchat, and maintained a trove of sexually explicit photos and videos of “young girls [in] varying states of undress,” according to the complaint, which was first obtained by The Daily Beast.
The federal child pornography possession charge D’Haiti faces stems from the immediate aftermath of his March 27 arrest by officers from the Winter Garden and Clermont police departments on state charges of lascivious molestation, the complaint says.
At that time, cops seized D’Haiti’s cellphone, after which Clermont detectives got a search warrant to forensically analyze the device. On it, investigators discovered an app, Private Photo Vault, that protects chosen files in a password-protected folder—in this instance, D’Haiti’s date of birth.
Once inside, investigators found “multiple nude photographs of a female subject who appeared to be a juvenile,” according to the complaint. In a screenshot of a video chat with one of the girls, D’Haiti can be seen shirtless in the top corner, it says. Although investigators said all seven pictures were sexual in nature, investigators said only one—an explicit video apparently recorded on a bathroom floor—met the legal definition of child pornography.
On the other hand, all seven of the videos found in D’Haiti’s hidden stash constituted child porn, states the complaint. (The Daily Beast redacted the complaint before publication to obscure the most explicit and disturbing passages.)
When police looked through the contacts on D’Haiti’s device, they say they matched the alleged victim in the offending pictures and videos with the phone number of a 16-year-old girl.
The girl’s father confirmed her identity to investigators, and an emergency forensic interview was conducted with the girl herself. She first met D’Haiti when she accompanied her father to install new flooring at the World Cheer Center. The girl’s parents then signed her up for lessons with D’Haiti, the filing states.
During the meeting, the teen told the interviewer that she didn’t remember taking any nude photos “at any point in time,” and said she was “unsure” how D’Haiti could have obtained them.
“She denied [ever] being along with D’Haiti… at the cheerleading gym or elsewhere, and spoke as if she didn’t care that he had the photos on his phone,” according to the complaint. “The Minor Victim described D’Haiti as a ‘second father’ figure in her life. Later in the interview, she stated she was angry about the photos.”
As an affidavit written by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Ryan G. Eggland and attached to the complaint explains, “[I]t is common for minor victims of sexual exploitation to avoid discussing the details… through several defense mechanisms,” such as “general topic avoidance,” “initial denial of events,” and “quickly passing through a topic with a short, canned answer the minor thinks the interviewer wants to hear.”
On May 9, the teenage girl sat for another interview with detectives from the Clermont PD and admitted she “had sent D’Haiti nude videos and photographs of herself, at D’Haiti’s demand, using Snapchat,” the complaint states, adding that the teen said D’Haiti sent “what she described as ‘dick pics’” on “at least 3 or 4” occasions.
According to a report by local ABC affiliate WFTV a few days after D’Haiti was arrested, police first received information in January alleging inappropriate contact by D’Haiti at his gym. He has also coached at various high schools in the area, the outlet reported.
D’Haiti does not have a lawyer listed in court records and could not be reached for comment. Longwell, the attorney who represented him on the state charges filed earlier this year, was out of the office and unavailable on Friday.
Local cops have urged any other potential victims to come forward. If convicted, D’Haiti faces up to 10 years in federal prison.