Ex-Peoria HS basketball coach found not guilty of having sex with underage girls

PHOENIX - A former high school basketball coach accused of sex crimes on a minor testified in his trial, and was ultimately found not guilty.

FOX 10 Investigates learned that he was the predecessor of a recently fired Peoria High School coach who was known to Phoenix Suns fans as "Mr. ORNG."

Mr. ORNG, whose real name is Patrick Battillo, was recently indicted by a grand jury on multiple charges. His predecessor, 46-year-old William Roberts, was accused of six counts of sexual conduct with a minor. A grand jury indicted Roberts in July 2022, but the allegations stem back to incidents that allegedly happened from 2006 to 2007, and from 2011 to 2013.

"Did you lead her to the couch in the living room when [redacted] was asleep on the bed?:" Roberts was asked by his attorney, Kristen Curry.

"That did not happen," Roberts replied.

On April 25, he was found not guilty of six counts of sexual misconduct with a minor.

According to the probable cause statement, both female victims were minors when Roberts allegedly had sex with them. The alleged sexual encounters happened before Roberts became head basketball coach at Peoria High School.

In 2011, Roberts founded "Team M’phasis," a nonprofit organization of three basketball teams in Peoria intended to coach and mentor youth.

During the trial, a relative of an alleged victim took the stand.

"She would spend the night there," the relative said.

"What was your understanding as to why she was spending the night at [Williams’] apartment?" prosecutors asked the relative.

"She mentioned that she was cleaning his apartment," the relative replied.

According to MaxPreps, Roberts became head basketball coach at Peoria High for the 2015-16 season. He was placed on administrative leave in December 2019 due to an internal investigation, and resigned in May 2020.

Battillo was an assistant coach on Roberts’ staff, and applied for the interim head coaching job. Battillo, who built a reputation as superfan ‘Mr. ORNG’ at Phoenix Suns games, eventually took over the program for five seasons.

Now, Battillo has been indicted on four counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor.

Earlier in April, Peoria Police officials said Battillo tried to convince a 15-year-old boy that he could make money by sending videos of him doing sex acts. Court documents reveal messages over Snapchat, showing the alleged instructions given by Battillo. Two other juvenile students told investigators that Battillo made sexually inappropriate comments to them via Snapchat.

As for Roberts, we reached out to Peoria Unified School District, who replied with a statement that reads, in part:

"Will Roberts has held various classified and certified positions as far as our records go back, which is 2002. He has been a substitute teacher, instructional assistant, coach and teacher. At the time he was hired, he received a background check and was issued an IVP fingerprint clearance card that was regularly renewed during his employment. If there had been additional flags to his fingerprint clearance, we would have received those updates from ADE or DPS."