Man sues after reporting child sex abuse at previous Universal Health Services center in Chicago

CHICAGO (WLS) — A man who says he was sexually assaulted as a child at a Chicago behavioral health center is speaking out.

John Doe, who is 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 those claims.

Attorneys state that Doe is just one of about 100 individuals who were once patients at Universal Health Services institutions throughout the state. These individuals are now adults and claim that when they were children, they experienced sexual abuse perpetrated by the staff members at these institutions.

Now, the building that sits at 520 N. Ridgeway Ave. is called Garfield Park Hospital. It is one of more than 300 in-patient psychiatric care facilities for children, teenagers and adults run by the Pennsylvania-based Universal Health Services company.

In 2001, it went by the name Hartgrove Hospital.

“My mother felt that I needed to get some help for my behaviors,” Doe said.

At the age of 11, Doe said he was sexually abused just two days into his months-long stay.

“It was almost an every other day occurrence while I was there. If they took more than one of us, then they said they were going to have a group session. They would force us to do things to each other,” Doe said.

Doe says he felt powerless. He said he was threatened with a lengthier stay if he reported the abuse, which he said was at times witnessed by other staff.

“They walked in, and they laughed. It was a joke or a game. They would walk back out,” Doe said.

In filing the lawsuit on behalf of Doe this week, his attorneys say Hartgrove Hospital, which is now at a new location, also on the city’s West Side, has a long history of child abuse, which they claim goes on until this day.

“We’re seeing a lot of the same names come up. That tells us there were serial predators that were there. These people were apex predators preying on the most vulnerable kids,” said Martin Gould, founding partner of Stinar Gould Grieco & Hensley.

Over the years, Hartgrove and UHS in general have been the subject of various investigations, including one conducted in 2010 by the University of Illinois Chicago and another, just two years ago, by the United States Senate.

And while UHS has been forced to pay out several multi-million dollar settlements related to sexual abuse over the years, counsel for Hartgrove Hospital Thursday disputed the allegations contained in the lawsuit.

“The safety of all patients is of paramount importance to Hartgrove Hospital and we take these allegations seriously. Based upon preliminary review of the lawsuit, Hartgrove denies the allegations against them and intend to defend this case vigorously,” Counsel Joseph McHale said in a statement.

Attorneys said that while their client remembers faces and a couple of first names, they hope that, through the discovery process, they will be able to fully identify those who abused him all those years ago.