A 72-year-old Florida man was arrested this week for allegedly touch a young girl swiming at an Orange County resort.
William Chatel was charged with lewd or lascivious molestation of a victim under 12 and booked into the Orange County jail, WESH reported.
According to an arrest report, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office was contacted by the mother of a girl who alleged that a man named Chatel had touched her daughter while they were at Club Wyndham Bonnet Creek Resort. The incidents reportedly occurred on Sunday and then again on Monday at the resort’s lazy river.
The 12-year-old girl recounted that the man, described as elderly, had touched her while she was swimming on Sunday. She attempted to avoid him for the remainder of her time there. However, on the following day, she encountered him again. Despite trying to keep her distance by swimming to the opposite side of the pool, the man managed to approach her. The girl eventually left the pool in distress and confided in an adult that the man had touched and tickled her buttocks underwater.
Deputies found Chatel in the hot tub at the resort and asked him about the incident in the lazy river, but he said “he didn’t remember anything.”
Deputies also said that when they contacted the sex crimes unit, they were told there was a possible second victim.
Chatel was arrested in 2017 when he was working at an Orange County Goodwill store on similar charges.
