A Palm Beach County judge has set the trial date for a Wilton Manors man and former television weather announcer arrested last year on charges of sexual activity with minors, lewd and lascivious battery, computer pornography, and child exploitation.

Former WPTV Channel 5 weatherman Robert J. Lopicola, 42, is scheduled to return to court for a June 14 appearance, with his trial set to begin the week of June 24. Lopicola was arrested last July after two teenage boys told authorities that, sometime between August 2010 and January 2011, they had engaged in sexual activity with Lopicola, whom they met through Craigslist ads.

As we first reported last year (Florida Agenda, July 11, 2012, COVER, “Wilton Manors Man Arrested for Sex with Minors: Former TV Weatherman Rob Lopicola Taken by U.S. Marshals”), one of the boys allegedly victimized by Lopicola, a Boca Raton resident, was 15 years old while the other, from West Palm Beach, was 17 at the time.

According to prosecutors, the first boy, now 16, reported the battery after he moved to live with his uncle in Michigan. Arrest documents say that he was initially reluctant to report the alleged sex, but told Michigan authorities he believed Lopicola would hurt others if he didn’t come forward.

As we reported in 2012, Lopicola was employed at West Palm Beach television station WPBT Channel 5 for eight years, but abruptly resigned from his job in 2006 without explanation. According to a 2009 Palm Beach Post blog post concerning “his mysterious departure,” from the station, “there was no cake, no two weeks’ notice” to commemorate his leaving after almost a decade on the air.

Lopicola, who was employed as a supervisor of the dancers at the Boardwalk Bar in Fort Lauderdale, moved to Wilton Manors in 2011, and was regularly seen on Wilton Drive, power-walking and performing push-ups on the corner near his house on Northeast 7th Avenue.

Court documents indicate that the first teen who met Lopicola online had lied about his age, claiming at first to be 18 years old, but that he later admitted to Lopicola that he was 15. The arrest report alleges that the two had a physical sexual encounter in Lopicola’s car near the teen’s home, and that say that after he moved to Farmington Hills, Michigan, the boy complied with requests from Lopicola to text nude pictures of himself. The teen told investigators, “Robert probably likes real young boys, and would hurt others if [the alleged victim] didn’t’ tell.”

The arrest report graphically describes the alleged encounters with both boys (who were born in 1993 and 1995, respectively), and says that Lopicola’s other victim was a then-17-year-old high school junior living in West Palm Beach. Prosecutors say that when the mother of the second teen,