CHICAGO _ Calling it a "hospital of horrors," Cook County's public guardian sued an embattled Uptown psychiatric facility on Wednesday on behalf of seven children and teens who said they were abused while receiving mental health services there while in state protective custody.
The federal lawsuit alleges the children, as young as 7 and 8, were beaten and molested by staff and peers or improperly medicated at Aurora Chicago Lakeshore Hospital. The hospital has since dropped Aurora from its name.
The complaint also names several current and former employees of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, including former acting director Beverly "B.J." Walker, who resigned in February.
Walker faced criticism last year for her lack of urgency in responding to an increased number of complaints to the state's child abuse hotline about unsafe conditions at the privately run hospital.
The department acted after weeks of pressure from child advocacy watchdogs and state lawmakers in response to separate investigations by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica, both of which cited a warning from the agency's DCFS inspector general that children hospitalized at Lakeshore were at risk of harm.
DCFS stopped admitting children in its care to Lakeshore in November 2018, and stationed staff at the facility for around-the-clock monitoring until the last foster child was released.
In the lawsuit, Public Guardian Charles Golbert alleges that state child welfare officials knew the hospital had a history of problems but turned a blind eye because of a shortage of other available facilities willing to accept DCFS children and teens. Besides the state's slow payments to providers, DCFS has struggled to find suitable placement of children in less restrictive settings even after they are cleared for discharge.
"When youth enter the DCFS system they frequently have already experienced severe trauma and are among our area's most vulnerable residents," Golbert said in a statement. "But rather than providing these young children the focused care they deserved, DCFS sent them to Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, knowing they would not be safe.
"It shocks the conscience that Illinois officials would treat our youth this way," he said.
The Tribune has previously reported many of the lawsuit's allegations in reports that exposed shortcomings in the hospital's supervision of staff and patients and DCFS' ability to investigate allegations of mistreatment.
Wednesday's lawsuit involves former patients who ranged from 7 to 16 at the time of their hospitalization in 2017 and 2018. The complaint identifies them by partial names only.
In the lawsuit, a 14-year-old girl said a female nurse showed her pornographic videos and had inappropriate sexual contact with her and other young patients in 2017. The nurse also is accused of allowing minors to fill out their own medical paperwork and view other patients' confidential records.
The complaint states the teen escaped the hospital and was missing for several months due to a lack of adequate supervision.
Another girl, 12, complained that a male staff member in 2018 "forced her hand on his genitals and grabbed her breasts," according to the lawsuit. The worker had made sexually inappropriate comments to the girl and a 16-year-old patient who said hospital staff retaliated against her when she reported the man's comments.
The lawsuit names both staff members, neither of whom has faced criminal charges. They no longer work at Lakeshore, officials told the Tribune last year.
The female nurse named in the lawsuit had her professional license revoked in April due to unrelated crimes, according to state records. Besides earlier arrests for retail theft and drugs, the woman has also been charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery of a roommate in Cicero. The case is pending, court records show.
The youngest children in the lawsuit, a 7-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl, were harmed at the hands of other patients, the filing states. Both were sexually assaulted by roommates in separate incidents, but the hospital failed to schedule timely medical exams for the children, hampering investigations into the allegations.
In most of the incidents _ including a 12-year-old boy who said he was molested by an older peer while hospitalized _ the lawsuit says staff knew of the alleged attackers' history of violence but failed to take proper safety precautions.
The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge for the hospital, which has been in court for a year to try to stop the government's attempt to cut off federal funding. The move came in response to media coverage and several state health inspections in 2018 and 2019 that found the hospital lacked adequate policies and procedures to investigate abuse allegations and keep patients safe.
Without the ability to bill Medicare and Medicaid, hospital officials have said they will be forced to close and the state will lose a unique facility that takes on the most difficult medical cases.
Hospital officials say they have put in place a corrective action plan and made substantial changes to the way Lakeshore staff handles allegations of abuse.
For example, a new security camera system was installed late last year, replacing one whose cameras were sometimes inoperable, crippling investigations.
In Wednesday's lawsuit, Golbert alleges that reports were fabricated and video evidence was destroyed to derail investigations and protect staff.
The complaint, filed by the civil rights law firm Loevy & Loevy, seeks unspecified monetary damages and also names the hospital's parent company, Signature Healthcare Services. Nearly one dozen Lakeshore employees, including its former CEO, are being sued.
