Secret Lessons Author:Don W. Weber and Charles Bosworth Jr. True Crime Account: The "Perfect Teacher" and the young girls he selected for his personal attention. Shattering serial sex crimes that a community refused to believe. Richard Van Hook was the star teacher of the Caseyville, Illinois, Elementary School. Handsome, energetic, happily married with two children, he was not only a teacher but a s... more »ports coach and school librarian, hugely popular with his 6th grade students, their parents, his fellow teachers, and the administration. It seemed incredible when ten little girls, ages 10 through 13, told of his "secret lessons" to them. Even their graphic testimony of repeated, relentless sexual abuse failed to convince a grand jury of Van Hook's horrifying guilt. But the dedicated social worker who first heard the terrifying tales, the state police detective assigned to investigate, and the prosecutor to whom the desperately turned, pursued the search for the "perfect teacher's" little girl victims far into the past. And in the electrifying trial and riveting courtroom revelations that followed, the prosecution brought to light the darkest story of serial sex abuse ever told.« less