Federal court awards damages, fees to plaintiff who was sexually abused in Illinois forensic psychiatric custody

On March 31, 2026, Judge Sara Ellis of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago awarded Plaintiff Michael Dopson $150,000 for pain and suffering, plus $25,500 for therapy expenses, and legal fees, after Dopson was sexually abused by a female mental health technician at Chicago Read Mental Health Center while he was an involuntary psychiatric patient in that facility.

The case is 19-cv-0577, Dopson v. Corcoran, et al., one of a series of civil lawsuits brought for plaintiffs since 2017 against mental health professionals in the employ of the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), by the law firm Kretchmar and Cecala. 

Sexual abuse of mental patients is absolutely endemic on the psychiatric plantations run by IDHS. It is very difficult for victims to obtain justice for this crime, especially when the perpetrator is female and the patient is male. Almost no one wants to admit it's happening, even when rumors about "inappropriate relationships" are constant, and strict protocol in which all staff are trained annually requires prompt reporting of the slightest suspicions. An obvious question arises from the contradiction: Why would this department of the executive branch of state government go to the trouble and expense of such elaborate training, protocol, meticulous definitions of (e.g.) what an "allegation" is and exactly how and when mere suspicion must be reported by anyone (even the guy who refills the vending machine) who ever comes within eyesight of a "patient" in a state psychiatric institution if this proscribed behavior were not a real problem?

I recall being informed by Rodney Yoder in about 2001, that a certain minority of women are inexplicably attracted to men in criminal or involuntary mental health custody. (Rodney knew, because he married one such woman.) He explained it as sort of a sexual fetish which is more common than most people know. Sexual abuse of a psychiatric patient is a sex crime in fact. A Defendant in the first case brought by our law firm, apparently a boring suburban mom and housewife, was convicted and sentenced to prison. That civil case was litigated for seven years before the state finally settled. The victim had to wait long after the perpetrator had been released, for his compensation.

But the real problem is not that people have "fetishes" or that men naturally want sex while females are naturally intimidated by males. Most women want sex, too; and men can very easily be intimidated by anyone who has legal authority to forcibly control their bodies and their minds. Recall the terrifying arrogance of Nurse Ratchet, and the violent demise of Randall McMurphey that she was still able to confidently orchestrate, despite his powerful spirit and his ironic moral superiority. People think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is anachronistic, but in fact psychiatry is an uglier totalitarian threat now than it was when that movie was made.

The real problem is that some people think they are innately superior to others as humans. They think the world should be better organized by themselves being in charge, able to compel lesser humans' proper thinking and behaviors. That point of view has always enabled slavery.

But people with that point of view are fools. Today is Passover.

Nurse Cecily! Nurse Anita! (at Kiley snake pit)

Nurses are "helping professionals"--right? But are they supposed to help patients, or just their institutions?

These two supposed "nurses" (Cecily and Anita) recently violated a long-prescribed, critical treatment protocol for a developmentally disabled resident. They substituted a cup with some Dr. Pepper poured into it, for a freshly opened can of Dr. Pepper, to facilitate the resident's taking his anti-seizure medication.

Nurse Anita offered an excuse for this: she had been told that, "They (perhaps meaning the evil psychiatrist Dr. Cosgrove, or Tanika Hankerson who runs the Kiley snake pit, or some other perpetrator) want the amount of Dr. Pepper given to this resident to be reduced." In other words state bureaucrats are second guessing the doctor in charge, based on some agenda of their own. 

Patients and their doctors and guardians are never told who the particular state bureaucrats are. (Sincere apologies to the evil Dr. Cosgrove and Tanika Hankerson, in case they were not involved this time!) The bureaucrats always remain nameless for their protection, no matter what harm they cause to unprotected patients in the shameful pursuit of immunity, convenience, or profit. Nobody ever knows who said what on what authority... bad things just happen all by themselves!

Nurse Anita might know who told her to give this particular patient Dr. Pepper poured into a cup instead of following the prescribed protocol. But under deposition, she'll likely answer with a standard, "I do not recall at this time." She'll certainly deny any bad intent. 

But if the patient has a seizure and dies because he was unable to take his medication, somebody will eventually pay. 

The state snake pit, as irreconcilable with reality as it may seem, is supposed to help people, not kill them.

Kiley Developmental Center in Waukegan, IL

These pictures were taken in a patient's room at Kiley snake pit within the last few days. Illinois taxpayers, in full and perhaps willful ignorance, fund these horrible places, where developmentally disabled adults are warehoused, neglected and abused with absolutely no provision of effective treatment or habilitation, whatsoever. Where the money really goes is anybody's guess, but reportedly there are justice investigations in progress, so maybe we'll find out soon. Maybe some of the heads heads that ought to roll, finally will.

Kiley is run by the Illinois Department of Human Services ("IDHS"--which could more appropriately stand for the Inhuman Department of Horrific Slavery). Key names of perpetrators of this disaster at Kiley snake pit include Tanisha Hankerson, Tanya Piephoff, ("The Evil") John Cosgrove, and Kinga Mucha.

"Experts" on the mind (optimism)

Recent events seem to validate what is a reality for me, but a reality that has not been shared by most people or the society around me, maybe until recently. This would be a victory. (I am proven right, and "they" are all wrong.) But there is also sadness and a strange fear. 

My sadness recalls a scene from the end of the movie Schindler's List, when Oscar Schindler (played so brilliantly by Liam Neeson), was surrounded by a crowd of liberated Jews whose lives he had saved from the Nazis. The war was over, Schindler was a saint to these people. He had once been very rich but he was broken now, he and his wife wore the poorest clothes as disguise to escape from advancing Russians, and he broke down, sobbing uncontrollably when he looked at the car he was about to leave in, mumbling, "I could have got more out, I should have sold this car. One more, one more...."

Since 1945 there has been an ongoing holocaust of souls perpetrated by the Gruppenführers and Oberführers of psychiatry. I weep for every individual who has succumbed. So many people I should have rescued but didn't or couldn't, even some people I loved!

The fear I harbor recalls plots from the Robert Redford-Brad Pitt movie Spy Game or various, far darker versions of case officer-agent relationships. These remind me of Richard Helm's understanding of trust (there's never sufficient reason for it, ever: it is always an arbitrary decision taken purely as a luxury that can be afforded), or the tragic conclusion of Smiley's People by John le Carré: "I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred and they are his. We have crossed each other's frontiers. We are the no-men of this no-man's land." I've had nightmares where I become a psychiatrist, psychiatrists and their slaves are my only friends, and no one else understands me.

I have adopted (and adapted) an old habit from Cato the Elder, adding "Psychiatria delenda est!" to almost any conversation or statement, however non-sequitur. The Roman was right about Carthage, and I believe I am right about psychiatry, it must be destroyed.

A Congressional roundtable hearing on mental health was held yesterday morning in the U.S. House, by the Oversight Committee. I was thrilled to discover that Laura Delano was one of three guests invited to testify. When I first met Laura more than a decade ago, she was a nobody (but for her family name), who was still trying to recover from psychiatry, and my sense was, still afraid. Now she is a thought leader, an expert. She is as effectively anti-psychiatry as anyone I know, although she goes to pains to disavow that label. (I wish she wouldn't!) I hope she is completely secure, because people will surely try to ruin her.

The Chairman of the hearing (Congressman Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin) opened with a statement that included, "I think the mental health establishment in this country is such a total scandal... We have so many people entering the mental health establishment thinking they will solve their problems, and in so many cases instead of solving their problems, they made their problems so much worse." He added at one point that he believes many people who seek help from psychiatrists would be much better off never having anything to do with them at all. He is 100% right about that!

Meanwhile, Bob Whitaker and Mad In America just put out a compelling article exposing the apparent trend toward re-institutionalization (under a guise of protecting the public from all the dangerous crazy people) as leading to policies that violate basic human rights. I know from my own legal work in Illinois that the morale of institutional mental health workers continues to tank. United Nations authorities have weighed in for a couple years now to say involuntary psychiatric "treatment" should be abolished. Even Federal Reserve banks are weighing in against involuntary "hospitalization" and "treatment". It is worth recalling Thomas Szasz's prediction that psychiatry will wither away if it loses its legal authority to coerce people and force drugs or shock on them in the name of "medicine". That is exactly what I understand various obvious social trends, and many political conversations and events, to portend.

Another very encouraging development is the unexpected difficulty and increasing complexity of getting psychedelic drugs approved for treatment of psychiatric conditions. The so-called "renaissance" of psychedelic research thankfully did not bring these psychosis-inducing poisons out of the anti-drug "dark ages" after all. Hopefully this impossible so-called "science" will be remembered as a brief, quirky chimera or simply forgotten by history.

More and more people, if cautiously, seem to accept my admonishment that the study of the mind, as distinct from the body or the brain, and the healing, as distinct from mere profitable servicing, of mentally-caused ills... should not be alienated from religion or condoned in non-religious fields. Mental health is NOT naturally a medical issue. The mind is not understandable as a bio-mechanical machine, and a person is absolutely NOT a mere animal to be controlled.

In any event, I sure hope my grieving for souls lost to the psychiatric holocaust can soon be over and my nightmares will not come true!

You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free

This title is well known from 8:32 of The Gospel According to John, and as the official motto of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The coincidence is interesting and perhaps darkly ironic.

The truth will set people free from having to cover up and constantly service their own lies, that's for sure.

In civil litigation, lawyers are cynical. "The Truth" is reduced to whatever portion all the ornate rules and complex tactics will permit each side to tell. I am a mediocre lawyer at best: I certainly do not have the ornate rules and complex tactics at my fingertips the way some attorneys do. I came to this professional practice for the sole purpose of eliminating psychiatric coercion and harm from mental health. My purpose contains enough truth to feel like it sets me free, or should. Most of the time I hate servicing lies.

I've been a lawyer for 25 years now, so my truth is not entirely impractical. At the moment I represent the Plaintiff in a civil rights case in the middle of discovery, and the Illinois Attorney General's office lawyers who represent the (state-employed) Defendants seem to be mis-estimating my client in a major way. Basically, they think he's a crazy liar when he's not. They will be happy to short-cut the Plaintiff's deposition, by keeping it remote, not investing in the necessary logistics to do it in person.

Ultimately, the Defendants' mis-estimation would be to my advantage. In theory, I should let them make their mistake. That's how a corrupt, secret intelligence operation or a proper Sun Tzu strategy could work (as beautifully depicted for example, in my latest favorite TV series, "Berlin Station").

People think John 8:32 and the CIA motto is about God and spies. In fact, it's only about an individual spirit with a purpose that may be worthwhile or true. The error is seeking the living in a place of the dead. (Luke 24:5-6, just to stay a bit biblical.)

Truth is not there in ornate rules, complex tactics, the tomb. It is risen.

Tanisha Hankerson: WHY does criminal abuse & neglect continue at your institution?!

... and just incidentally, how in hell did you ever get appointed to the Governor's Office Academy of Leadership? That's pretty embarrassing when your institution is a DISASTER. You are only an "emerging leader" in snakepit bureaucracy and corrupt waste!

Division of Developmental Disabilities, Illinois Department of Human Services

This is what they do with our tax money: here are just a couple of many ugly pictures documenting criminal abuse and neglect, showing the supposed "professional expertise" of these corrupt bureaucrats: