Peter B. Neumer and Michelle Bogle

I don't know Peter Neumer, so I hesitate to blame him for anything or say he's not doing his job....

But he heads up the Illinois Department of Human Services' Office of Inspector General (OIG). His organization is supposed to protect people like Mickey, an involuntarily committed "patient" (more accurately called a psychiatric slave) at Elgin Mental Health Center (EMHC). 

If I find out that anything I write here is untrue, I will apologize. But it seems to me that Peter Neumer's office does not protect the people it is supposed to protect. Hence, as a taxpayer I resent him for his salary of well over $100,000, which comes in part out of my pocket. He's a relatively worthless bureaucrat, in a state that cannot afford relatively worthless bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, my friend Mickey is getting his butt kicked every day at EMHC, in retribution for reporting to Peter Neumer's office that a female Security Therapy Aide named Michelle Bogle carried on a sexual relationship with him. Michelle apparently committed the felony of custodial sexual misconduct, which might be thought of as a type of statutory rape. If Michelle is convicted of this, she'll have to register as a sex offender every year for the rest of her life.

Staff at EMHC are not supposed to have sex with patients, because they wield extraordinary power over them. Patients cannot legally consent to sex. Staff can deny patients their liberty. They can forcibly restrain patients and torture them. They can ruin patients' lives, and never be blamed because after all it's supposedly done in the name of "treating mental illness" and these guys are the experts.

American chattel slavery was much the same in the 19th Century. The plantation masters insisted that they were doing what really helped their negroes, who were best fit for hard labor and hard discipline. It was consistent with God's plan for the different races of man and the different beasts of creation. I don't think Peter Neumer would have been an abolitionist. I think he would have prospered as a high-level plantation overseer, dutifully producing the world's cotton, at least until Sherman arrived to burn it all down.

It has been several weeks since Mickey came clean to OIG about the relationship with Michelle. OIG turned the investigation over to the Illinois State Police Department of Internal Investigations. According to a phone conversation today, "It's a police matter now, OIG doesn't touch it while the police investigation is in progress." Well, OK.

But here's the thing.... The state police do not accept cases for investigation when there is no credible evidence. They are investigating this one, and that means there is credible evidence. When there is credible evidence of staff sexually abusing a patient, that staff is supposed to be removed from all contact with patients (not just the victim) until the matter is resolved. That's the law, intended to protect vulnerable people whose liberty has been restricted by the state "for their own good" and to protect the community.

Michelle Bogle may have been removed from patient contact briefly, but she is reportedly back now, on the M & N clinical unit every day, with lots of new opportunities to sexually abuse more patients. Somebody is violating the law, and Peter Neumer's office is failing to protect people. I tried to ask the EMHC administration about this today, but nobody returned my call. 

They're too busy driving the slaves to get the cotton picked.