Despite both sides urging jail time under a plea deal, 4th District Judge Tony Graf said prison was needed to recognize the harm done.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former Utah therapist Robert Dindinger is sentenced in Provo after he admitted to secretly recording patients underdressing and to possessing child sex abuse materials, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026.
When a former therapist who admitted to secretly recording his patients undressing was sentenced on Monday, none of his victims were there to speak out against him.
But their silence didn’t spare Robert Dindinger from prison, despite both a prosecutor and a defense attorney urging a Utah judge to send him to jail under a plea deal.
In a surprising decision, 4th District Court Judge Tony Graf instead sentenced Dindinger to years in prison — saying that he needed to recognize the harm he caused.
Graf said he was compelled to order prison after reading an anonymous letter sent by a victim’s family member, which he read aloud Monday: “There is no greater sorrow than to hold a loved one who does not believe she has any worth or reason to live.”
“This is a case where the victims trusted you, came to you for help,” Graf said. “In turn, you exploited that, capturing them in their most vulnerable moments.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) “You exploited people who came to you for help,” 4th District Court Judge Tony Graf told former therapist Robert Dindinger before sending him to prison.
Dindinger hung his head and closed his eyes momentarily as Graf handed down the prison sentence. The former psychiatrist had pleaded guilty to two second-degree felonies, admitting that he had child sex abuse materials. He also entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of voyeurism. Nine other charges were dismissed as part of the plea deal.
Graf handed down the maximum penalty he could for what Dindinger had pleaded guilty to: Two terms of one-to-15 years in prison, and a year in jail. The judge ordered the sentences to run consecutively, saying the back-to-back sentences represented the harm to each individual victim.
The judge said he worried Dindinger’s former patients would question whether they can trust other therapists should they need support after he betrayed them. “Will they turn away the very help they need because of you?” he wondered.
Dindinger was the owner of Utah Valley Psychology in Orem. Prosecutors accused him of secretly video recording patients whom he instructed to undress in his office and weigh themselves as part of therapy addressing an eating disorder.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former Utah therapist Robert Dindinger did not speak besides saying, “I am sorry,” during his Monday sentencing.
Dindinger wasn’t physically in the room while they undressed, but investigators later found video of the girls undressing and stepping on a scale, including one video where a patient mumbled, “This is so weird, this is so weird,” before undressing. Investigators say they also found other child sex abuse material on Dindinger’s electronic devices.
Graf read a statement in court in which Dindinger told Adult Probation and Parole that he “failed to turn off recordings in weight checks” three times.
“The reason why this happened was my unreasonable need to record all my sessions,” Dindinger said in the statement, conceding that recording sessions is not what most therapists do. He had too many patients, Dindinger reasoned, which is why he had become overly reliant on recording.
Graf said he worried that Dindinger was not taking responsibility for what happened, saying, “You knew what you were doing and you did it anyway. And you caused harm.”
While the judge’s sentence was heavier than what the prosecutor and defense attorney asked for, Graf noted that Adult Probation and Parole also recommended prison.
In court on Monday, Dindinger said only: “I am sorry.” He didn’t speak more at the advice of his attorney, Gregory Smith, who told the judge that he advised his client that he should not say more because of the “political and volatile nature” of the case.
Smith emphasized in his statements to the judge that his client was not accused of fondling patients or trying to chat with children online and urged Graf to carefully consider the crimes that Dindinger did admit to.
“Mr. Dindinger comes before you a repentant man,” the attorney said. “Mr. Dindinger regrets what’s happened here. He has lost his professional license. He has paid a very, very heavy penalty that most people don’t pay.”
Dindinger surrendered his psychologist license last October and pleaded guilty to charges in December.
The therapist has been on Utah licensers’ radar for nearly a decade, after his license was put on probation in 2017. He admitted then that he inappropriately touched a 17-year-old patient’s leg and torso in an attempt to engage the patient in “masturbation satiation therapy.”
He told a licensing investigator that he was attempting to “sexually stimulate” the patient as part of the therapy, and he had instructed her to masturbate in his office while he left the room. Licensers found this was a “misappropriation” of a therapy technique typically only used for male sex offenders.
Eventually, Dindinger lost his license when he didn’t follow the probation guidelines set out for him, and he transitioned into “life coaching.” He was allowed a probationary license in 2023, but less than a year later, he agreed to not practice psychology or life coaching as Orem police investigated him for the crimes he eventually pleaded guilty to.