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Cops tell of sex tapes at home of teacher
By Brett McNeil Tribune staff reporter
Published February 4, 2005
Berwyn police on Thursday said they seized Polaroid photographs of bound female students and adult bondage videos from the home of a longtime band teacher accused of sexually abusing 16 pupils.
Police theorize Robert Sperlik Jr. was acting out scenes from the bondage videos when he is alleged to have taped and tied girls to chairs, gagged and touched them inappropriately inside six different school buildings between 1998 and 2003.
A more detailed picture of the allegations against Sperlik, an 18-year teacher in South Berwyn School District 100, began to emerge as police and prosecutors explained additional criminal charges filed against him on Wednesday.
Sperlik, 45, has been in custody since he was arrested in mid-January and later charged with multiple counts of criminal sexual abuse and kidnapping involving five pupils. Prosecutors on Wednesday charged Sperlik with abusing 11 additional students.
All of the pupils were between 9 and 14 years old at the time of the alleged abuse, authorities said.
At a Thursday morning news conference, Berwyn Public Safety Director Frank Marzullo said investigators recovered 30 to 40 bondage videotapes during a search of Sperlik's North Riverside home.
"It appears that all of these acts that Mr. Sperlik is alleged to have done with the students were things he had seen in these videotapes," Marzullo said, adding that police also found bondage images on Sperlik's home computer.
The videos were store-bought and did not include footage of any Berwyn band students, Marzullo said. The computer images appeared to be of adult actors, he said.
Marzullo said police also recovered two or three Polaroid photos of unidentified students who were bound, apparently inside District 100 schools. Marzullo said investigators have not yet located any of the students in the photos.
Sperlik, a districtwide band instructor, allegedly abused pupils inside Pershing, Irving, Emerson, Piper, Komensky and Hiawatha Schools, Marzullo said.
At a Thursday afternoon bond hearing on the new charges, prosecutors said Sperlik repeatedly taped an unidentified female pupil's arms, legs and abdomen to a chair between 1999 and 2001, and in at least one instance stuffed a rag into her mouth and covered it with tape.
Cook County Assistant State's Atty. Sandra Blake said Sperlik also bound the girl's arms behind her back and touched her breasts, thigh and shoulder. She declined to say how many times the girl was allegedly abused or her age.
Judge Judy Mitchell-Davis ordered Sperlik held without bail after hearing details of just one of 11 new cases. Sperlik is next scheduled to appear in court Wednesday. Afterward, Sperlik's attorney challenged earlier comments made to the media by Marzullo that his client has provided a written confession to the initial charges.
"[Sperlik] has denied any wrongdoing," said William Hedrick.
Hedrick criticized Marzullo for potentially tainting possible jurors with his statements to the media. Marzullo on Thursday said officials from the Cook County state's attorney's office have subpoenaed records from District 100 as part of a probe into whether criminal charges should be filed against school administrators for not reporting earlier allegations against Sperlik to police or the Illinois Department of Children Services.
A spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office and District 100 attorney Thomas Melody declined to comment.
Marzullo last week said police found two reprimands from 2001 in Sperlik's personnel file directing him against any future "inappropriate touching," and that school officials should have notified authorities of the allegations.
On Thursday, District 100 officials in a written statement said they intend to hire former U.S. Atty. Scott Lassar, now in private practice, to head an internal investigation of the allegations against Sperlik and the district's handling of the earlier incidents.
The district is being sued separately by two former pupils, now 14 and 15, who say school officials failed to act on their earlier claims of abuse by Sperlik.
Also on Thursday, former District 100 Supt. William Jordan sent a letter to parents and staff in the district where he now works--Bensenville Elementary School District 2--acknowledging that Berwyn police have questioned him about Sperlik.
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