CHICAGO (WLS) — A man who says he was sexually abused as a child at a behavioral health center in Chicago is speaking out.
John Doe, now 35, said he was assaulted at Hartgrove Hospital on the West Side when he was a young boy.
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His lawyers say he's not the only one.
But the hospital denies these allegations.
Doe, according to attorneys, is one of about 100 former patients at Comprehensive Health Services facilities across the state they represent. They are adults and say they were sexually abused as children by staff working in those facilities.
Now, the building at 520 N. Ridgeway Ave. It's called Garfield Park Hospital. It is one of more than 300 inpatient psychiatric facilities for children, teens and adults operated by Pennsylvania-based Universal Health Services.
In 2001, it was named Hartgrove Hospital.
“My mother felt like I needed to get some help with my behaviors,” Doe said.
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At age 11, Doe said he was sexually assaulted just two days into his months-long stay.
“It happened almost every other day while I was there. If they took more than one of us, they said they would have a group session. They would force us to do things to each other,” Doe said.
Doe says he felt helpless. He said he was threatened with a longer stay if he reported the abuse, which he said he sometimes witnessed by other employees.
“They came in and laughed. It was a joke or a game. They were going to get out,” Doe said.
In filing the suit on Doe's behalf this week, his lawyers say Hartgrove Hospital, now in a new location, also on the city's west side, has a long history of child abuse, which they claim continues to this day.
“We're seeing a lot of the same names coming up. This tells us that there were serial predators. These people were top predators preying on the most vulnerable children,” said Martin Gould, co-founder of Stinar Gould Grieco & Hensley. .
Over the years, Hartgrove and Hartgrove University Hospital in general have been the subject of various investigations, including one by the University of Illinois Chicago in 2010 and another, just two years ago, by the U.S. Senate.
While UHS has had to pay several multi-million dollar settlements related to sexual assault over the years, an attorney for Hartgrove Hospital on Thursday disputed the allegations in the lawsuit.
“The safety of all patients is of the utmost importance to Hartgrove Hospital and we take these allegations very seriously,” attorney Joseph McHale said in a statement. “Based on an initial review of the lawsuit, Hartgrove denies the allegations against them and intends to defend this case vigorously.” .
The attorneys said that while their client remembers faces and some first names, they hope that through the discovery process, they will be able to fully identify those who abused him all those years ago.
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