States Attorney
WHEATON - DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett announced today that former Hinsdale Central High School science teacher and boys varsity basketball coach Robert J. Mueller, 45 (d.o.b. 3/23/61) of 1271 Harley Ford Road in Woodridge, was found guilty of eight counts of Criminal Sexual Assault after it was discovered that he was involved in two improper relationships with female students at the high school who were under the age of 18.
In February, 2004, school officials and the school resource officer received an anonymous letter regarding the sexual relationship between Mueller and one of his victims. An investigation into the alleged relationship conducted by the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the DuPage County Children’s Advocacy Center and the Hinsdale Police Department resulted in the filing of two counts of Criminal Sexual Assault against Mueller. In November, 2004, the investigation led to an additional charge of Criminal Sexual Assault against Mueller involving a different victim through the 1999, 2000 and 2001 school years. Criminal investigators learned that four years earlier, in 2000, an adult female called school officials and complained that she had seen Mueller and the named female victim having sex in a forest preserve area. This incident was investigated internally by the school and never reported to law enforcement authorities. Despite the fact that no one, except one of the parents, ever interviewed the victim, the school closed the investigation. The internal mis-management of this incident led to an intergovernmental agreement between DCFS, the State’s Attorneys Office and local law enforcement, which will require cooperation, planning, policy reform and system-wide education of all school personnel regarding their duties and responsibilities under the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act (ANCRA).
“School teachers and coaches are role models who students look up to and in whom parents place a tremendous amount of trust,” commented Birkett. “Robert Mueller betrayed that trust by preying on his young victims to satisfy his own desires. He took advantage of his position of trust and authority in the worst possible way leaving his victims to suffer for years to come. Hopefully they will be able to take solace in the fact that with today’s verdict, their attacker, Robert Mueller, will spend a significant part of the rest of his life behind bars, unable to victimize trusting young women and their families again.”
State’s Attorney Birkett praised the Detectives of the Hinsdale Police Department, Assistant State’s Attorneys Alex McGimpsey and Timothy Diamond, school officials and the DuPage County Children’s Center Investigators for their outstanding job in this very disturbing case.
Mueller is scheduled for sentencing on January 30, 2007, in front of Judge Kathryn Creswell. He faces a minimum of 32 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
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