CHICAGO — Last May, Chicago police asked the public to help them identify a man who attacked a woman on a downtown CTA platform.
Within days, they charged Robert L. Cook, a man with a history of attacking women on the city’s transit system, with the crime. But, as CWBChicago reported at the time, prosecutors didn’t ask a judge to keep Cook in jail and the judge didn’t even put him on an ankle monitor.
Now, Cook is accused of sexually abusing and fondling several more females, including a teenager on the city’s train system. And he did it all while still awaiting trial on the charges filed against him last year.
This time, however, prosecutors asked a judge to keep Cook behind bars, and the judge agreed.
A long history
Back in November 2017, prosecutors charged Cook with attacking a 15-year-old girl and a 23-year-old woman on the Red Line in the Loop. CTA video showed he used his large body to confine the victims to their train seats, then he pressed against them, wrapping his legs around theirs and grinding his genitals on their legs and buttocks, a Chicago police report said.
Breathing heavily and moaning, Cook allegedly asked the victims if they liked it. The younger victim was a student at Whitney Young Magnet School, and Cook knew she was under 17, prosecutors claimed. He eventually received a six-year sentence after pleading guilty to two counts of kidnapping.
Pending case
Last May, Chicago police issued a public bulletin after a man attacked a woman who refused to give him change on the State-Lake Red Line platform in the Loop. Two days later, cops arrested Cook, 27, on the Jackson Red Line platform to face charges in the case.
According to his arrest report, Cook asked a Streeterville woman for money and kicked her when she ignored his request. Cook returned moments later and punched the woman in the face, the report said, causing her to suffer a bloody lip and bruised face.
During a court hearing days later, prosecutors did not ask Judge David Kelly to keep Cook in custody, records show. Kelly, the most lenient judge in the court’s pretrial division, cut Cook loose without even requiring him to wear an ankle monitor.
Now, with last year’s case still pending, Cook is accused of physically assaulting even more women on the city’s train lines.
New allegations
On March 18, he allegedly sat next to a woman on a Brown Line train in the Loop, put his legs atop hers, and asked if she enjoyed sitting next to him. The woman captured part of the incident on video (strong language):
A man threatened to physically harm a woman after she told him to stop touching her at the Brown Line stop of Washington and Wabash. pic.twitter.com/PQQE0QWZXa
— Goofies Of Chicago (@Chicago_Goofies) March 21, 2025
In another recent case, he sexually abused a teenage girl, prosecutors said.
Judge John Hock ordered Cook detained during a hearing on the new allegations this week. Hock said Cook “preyed on random victims” and “continues to display this extremely dangerous and violent sexual behavior” that he is “unable or unwilling to stop committing.”
In the latest round of allegations, prosecutors charged Cook with two counts of criminal sexual abuse by force, criminal sexual abuse of a child 13 to 17 years old, and four counts of aggravated battery of transit passengers.
