A former volunteer church mentor from Round Lake has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of a child.
Under a plea deal, Roberto Almeida, 42, entered an open guilty plea earlier this year to criminal sexual assault involving a victim between the ages of 13 and 17, and faced a sentence of between four and 15 years.
After hearing prosecution and defense arguments, Judge Victoria Rossetti sentenced him to 10 years in prison during a hearing on April 27.
Almeida used at least two area churches to “build trust with the family and kids,” Round Lake Police Chief Michael Gillette said after Almeida was arrested in January 2015.
According to Assistant State’s Attorney Jason Grindel, under the plea deal, other charges were dropped, including predatory criminal sexual assault and criminal sexual abuse.
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The sentence specifies that Almeida must also pay court costs and fees and register as a sexual predator for life. Almeida must serve at least 85 percent of the 10-year term, Grindel said.
Almeida, who has been held in Lake County Jail on $1 million bail, will receive credit toward his sentence for the more than 460 days he has spent in jail since his arrest.
Gillette had stressed that the abuse did not take place in a church, and according to police and prosecutors, the charges against Almeida stemmed from an assault that occurred at Almeida’s home.
“Right now we are pretty confident he used churches to vet out possible victims. He’d build trust with the family and kids,” Gillette said following the arrest. “He wasn’t a group leader or anything. He made himself a mentor on his own. He would befriend families and kids.”
Almeida allegedly volunteered to watch children and offered to take them camping, Gillette said. According to Gillette, Almeida was targeting boys between 10 and 13 years old.
Grindel said there is only one known victim in the case.
At least one of the churches took note of suspicious behavior, Gillette said last year.
“They started getting suspicious and then he moved on to a different church,” the chief said.
The Round Lake Police investigation began in December 2014, after the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services contacted the investigators with information about a young man who said he was sexually abused several years earlier by a church volunteer.
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