Groped by school guard, 2 say

LR jury hears teens tell how horseplay led to sex assault

Two former Horace Mann Middle School students told a Pulaski County jury on Tuesday that a security guard groped them on separate occasions during horseplay in his office.

The boys, now 16, were eighth-graders in November 2012 when they told police that 41-year-old Robert Lee Myles Jr. of Little Rock had put his hand in their pants and fondled their genitals over their underclothes under the pretense of joking around while talking to them about the importance of working hard in school and staying out of trouble.

Myles, on trial on three counts of second-degree sexual assault, was arrested two months after the first boy complained. The second child went forward soon after that complaint. He faces a maximum of 60 years in prison. Proceedings resume at 9:30 a.m. today before Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.

Myles’ attorney, Darrell Brown, questioned whether the teens might have misinterpreted a good-natured gesture by a man trying to encourage academically troubled students.

Brown also raised the possibility that the first boy to contact police might have had a grudge against Myles because the man backed out of a promise to give the boy a ride to the Arkansas State Fair in October 2012.

Myles’ efforts to inject some positivity into the teen’s life weren’t always appreciated by the boy, he also acknowledged on the witness stand.

The teen, now a tenth-grader, told jurors he liked Myles, describing the now-former school guard as “cool” and “chill.” The boy said he saw Myles two or three times a day between classes when the man would regularly greet him with playful punches and exhortations to study hard and keep his grades up.

Myles once approached his mother about mentoring the boy through his nonprofit operation, Myles Boys Recovery Inc., although she did not take him up on it, the boy testified.

Questioned by deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill, the boy told the seven men and five women of the jury that the first time Myles touched him, two days before Thanksgiving 2012, the groping took him completely by surprise.

He was in the school hallway finishing an errand for a teacher in his last class of the day when Myles asked him to step into a room known as the school’s parent center.

“He just stuck his hand down there,” the boy said. “I didn’t see it coming.”

The boy said he backed away and left. He walked away from Myles, but the man insisted on escorting him back to class, the boy said. But when they got on the school’s escalator, Myles did it again, the boy said.

“He did the same thing, under my jeans and over my [gym] shorts,” he testified during his 70 minutes on the witness stand. “This time I moved his hand.”

He told his mother that night, the boy said, but nothing came of it. He said Myles touched him again the week after the holiday after he had been running errands for assistant principal Samuel Loya. He said Myles, in a joking manner, took him by the ear and pulled him into the security office next door to Loya’s office.

“He grabbed me by the ear and told [another student] this isn’t going to be pretty,” the boy said.

The door was closed, the boy said, and Myles put his hand in his pants. This time, the boy said, he pulled away from Myles and “squared off” to fight the man.

“I pushed him off. I was ready to fight,” the boy said. “He was like, do you really want to do this?”

But as he was considering swinging at Myles, another student knocked on the door looking for the boy, and he took the opportunity to go back to class, the boy said. He persuaded his teacher to let him call his family, which led to police being notified.

Most of the day’s proceedings were focused on the accusations of the first boy, but prosecutors closed out the day with the testimony from the second boy, who is now in the tenth grade.

He testified that Myles twice groped him in the security office, which houses the school’s surveillance equipment. The teen said Myles had taken him into the office to show him video footage of him wandering the halls and talk to him about not being in class.

“We were wrestling around as we were walking out the door,” the teen said. “He would reach around my shoulder and grab my privates.”

The first time, he thought the touch was an accident, the teen said. But he realized it was deliberate when Myles did it again, he told jurors.