New federal lawsuit alleges sexual abuse in Illinois psych institutions

PRESS RELEASE

The Law Offices of Kretchmar and Cecala, P.C., has filed a new lawsuit in the United Stares District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, seeking compensatory and punitive damages from individual defendants accused of sexually abusing a patient who was involuntarily committed in state forensic psychiatric institutions. 

The plaintiff, Mickey Russell, is currently confined at Chester Mental Health Center, and scheduled for release in early January, 2024. Russell alleges that in 2015 he was seduced by Michelle Bogle, a Security Therapy Aide (STA) on Clinical Unit K at Elgin Mental Health Center (EMHC), who used him for revenge against her husband Kris Bogle, also an STA at EMHC. 

In 2021, while Mr. Russell was on conditional release in the community but still in the legal custody of the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), he and Michelle Bogle had numerous sexual liaisons at Chicago area hotels, including one overnight drug party at the Hyatt Rosemont with other EMHC employees present.

Defendants along with Michelle and Kris Bogle include ten current or former employees and officials  in the IDHS variously accused of being complicit in the Bogles’ sexual abuse of the Plaintiff and/or a cover-up which continued for seven years. Among the officials named is Grace B. Hou, the current Secretary of Human Services, who reports directly to Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker.

The Complaint in the case demands a jury trial and details the evolution of the romantic and sexual “affair” between the Plaintiff and Michelle Bogle, who allegedly committed a chargeable felony by having sex with a patient who was legally incapable of consent while hospitalized under court order for treatment of his mental illness. 

This is the sixth federal lawsuit brought by Kretchmar & Cecala on behalf of individuals confined in the Illinois forensic mental health system alleging sexual abuse. All but one of those six cases involve female staff accused of sexually abusing male patients in their custody. Plaintiff Mickey Russell is African-American, along with four other victims/plaintiffs (and the vast majority of involuntary patients in the Illinois system).

S. Randolph Kretchmar, one of the attorneys for Plaintiff Russell, commented that, “Unfortunately, Illinois citizens who believe their taxes go toward paying mental health professionals to effectively treat the dangerously mentally ill, are instead finding that they fund an operation which resembles plantation slavery. Sexual abuse is absolutely endemic in state psychiatric hospitals, and nobody cares about the damage being done.”

A copy of the full Complaint in the case is available on request, and the attorneys for the Plaintiff Mickey Russell may be contacted at 847-370-5410.

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