A Warren County jury has convicted a 36-year-old man of sexually abusing a girl for approximately six years, starting when she was just 11 years old, after the child finally disclosed the abuse to her school principal. Judge Donald Oda II sentenced Antonio Del Cid Villatoro to seven years in prison immediately following the verdict, and prosecutors say an ICE detainer is expected once he completes his sentence.
According to WKEF, Del Cid Villatoro was found guilty following a trial of three counts of Gross Sexual Imposition, along with one count of domestic violence. The Warren County Prosecutor's Office says the abuse occurred at three different locations and that he was also accused of physically abusing the child by striking her with flooring materials. Warren County Prosecutor David P. Fornshell announced the guilty verdict, saying Del Cid Villatoro “preyed on this child over a period of several years.”
The station's report notes the case turned on the child's decision to tell her school principal what had been happening to her — a disclosure that, under Ohio law, set a mandatory chain of reporting into motion. Ohio Revised Code § 2151.421 designates school principals, teachers, and administrators as mandatory reporters, legally requiring them to immediately notify children's services or law enforcement upon learning of suspected child abuse, according to Ohio law.
Years of Silence Before a Breakthrough
Experts in Ohio child welfare law note that abuse victims frequently delay disclosure for years out of fear, shame, or coercion from their abuser, which makes moments like school disclosures a critical point of intervention, according to guidance from Bricker Graydon. School staff often become the first adults outside a child's family that a victim confides in, a pattern that matches the roughly six-year gap between when the abuse reportedly began and when it was reported here.
Fornshell credited the victim directly, saying her courage helped prosecutors “achieve some measure of justice,” per the same account. Warren County runs a coordinated response system for exactly these kinds of cases through the Child Advocacy Center of Warren County and its CARE (Child Abuse Response and Evaluation) project, which links law enforcement, prosecutors, and child protective services, according to an Urban Institute assessment. That framework, established in 2019, is designed to streamline exactly the kind of joint intervention this case required.
Sentencing and What Comes Next
Judge Oda, who has served on the Warren County Common Pleas Court General Division since 2012 after earning his law degree from Northern Kentucky University's Salmon P. Chase College of Law, per Ballotpedia, handed down the seven-year sentence right after the verdict came in. Under Ohio Revised Code § 2907.05, Gross Sexual Imposition is a fourth-degree felony carrying 6 to 18 months, but the charge escalates to a third-degree felony with up to five years when the victim is under 13, according to Ohio law. A conviction also mandates registration on Ohio's sex offender registry, requiring periodic in-person address verification for 15 to 25 years depending on the victim's age, per the Botnick Law Firm.
The Warren County Prosecutor's Office identified Del Cid Villatoro as an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador and says it has been in communication with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Prosecutors expect an ICE detainer to be placed on him, which could lead to deportation proceedings after he finishes his prison term. ICE detainers are formal requests asking correctional facilities to notify federal immigration authorities before an inmate's release and to hold that person for up to 48 hours so ICE can take custody for removal proceedings, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A Recurring Pattern in Warren County Courts
Fornshell, who has served as Warren County's prosecuting attorney since 2011, has overseen several high-profile child sexual abuse prosecutions in recent years. Hoodline previously reported on another Warren County case involving child sex and bestiality charges, and a Waynesville man was sentenced to 8 to 12 years in a separate child sex image case earlier this year. In 2020, the office also prosecuted Juan Villatoro on three counts of Gross Sexual Imposition for abusing three children in his home, a case that ended in a 10-year sentence, according to a statement from the Warren County Prosecutor's Office.
Statewide, sexual abuse allegations made up roughly 9 percent, or about 8,446 reports, of the 93,844 child abuse and neglect cases Ohio's public children services agencies screened in during 2021, according to data from the Ohio Children's Trust Fund. Cases like this one, prosecutors say, underscore why early disclosure to a trusted adult — even years after abuse begins — remains one of the few paths to holding offenders accountable.
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