Crime & Safety

Ex-Soccer Coach Extradited from Peru To Face Charges in 2006 Sexual Assault

Facing a felony warrant four years ago, Claudio Caffelli fled to Peru. He was arraigned Friday in the sexual assault of a 7-year-old boy.

For more than four years and across a distance spanning a dozen countries, the sought former youth soccer coach Claudio Caffelli – the man suspected of sexually assaulting a 7-year-old Birmingham boy in 2006.

Last week, that search came to an end.

Birmingham police confirmed Wednesday that Caffelli, 29, was successfully extradited from Peru to the United States on Friday and has been charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree.

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Caffelli was arraigned in 48th District Court in Bloomfield Hills on Friday before Judge Marc Baron on a 2006 three-count felony warrant, Birmingham Police Cmdr. Terry Kiernan said. Each count carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Caffelli was remanded to the Oakland County Jail in Pontiac without bond and a preliminary examination is scheduled for March 10 at the 48th District Court.

Kiernan said the investigation and extradition process was tiring for everyone involved over the years. Dozens of complications arose after Caffelli fled for Peru — where his mother lived — soon after the warrant was issued in 2006. During the ensuing years, numerous law enforcement agencies became involved, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. State Department.

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Birmingham police began looking into the charges in October 2006 after the boy’s mother told police she believed her son had been sexually assaulted, Deputy Chief Mark Clemence said.

At the time, Caffelli was a coach at the Soccer School for Little Folks in Bloomfield Hills and the Wizards Indoor Soccer League for the Bloomfield Hills Recreation and Community Services Department. Caffelli was introduced to the boy through a family friend, Clemence said.

The detective assigned to the case at the time, Detective Pete Ruby, said he spoke with the boy who named specific sexual acts that he said had been done to him, naming the person who did them as Caffelli. The boy was later taken to a doctor specializing in sexual abuse as well as a child forensic interviewer at Care House. Both experts said a sexual assault had taken place, the Birmingham Bloomfield Eagle reported.

Police interviewed Caffelli, at the time a resident alien from Italy who had been living in the United States at his Lincoln Street home for six years, Clemence said. At the time, Caffelli denied the charges.

After the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office issued the arrest warrant, however, Caffelli fled to Lima, Peru. It took Peruvian officials almost two years to locate Caffelli, who was arrested April 22, 2008, as he was leaving his apartment in Lima. At his extradition hearing then, Caffelli chose to fight the order, eventually appealing to Peru's highest courts, Kiernan said.

When Peruvian officials upheld the extradition order, Caffelli was quickly returned to the United States in the company of U.S. Marshals, arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Thursday.

Resuming the Caffelli case may reopen some old wounds, Clemence said, but he hopes the boy and his family can achieve closure as Caffelli's court date approaches. "When the whole thing is said and done, I just hope justice will be served," Clemence said.

There have been no other reports of sexual assault involving Caffelli. 


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