Barry Smoot on Peter Neumer and Kwame Raoul

Illinois' Attorney General and the Inspector General for the Illinois Department of Human Services recently announced a triumphant victory against sexual abuse of disabled people. Barry Smoot sent me the January 30, 2023, article from RiverBender.com, perhaps with the idea that I could find a good civil lawsuit in the story.

People reasonably believe that I am interested in bringing lawsuits because, like other attorneys, I want to make money. Well I do, and I really should, but... many people would also say that I am insufficiently motivated by financial gain for my own good. I am motivated most of all to "burn Atlanta and march to the sea." It's a long, total war of attrition against coercive psychiatry. I want to win it before I die, as the single most necessary effort to preserve human dignity and freedom.

The thing about litigating against a state bureaucracy is, the defendants never know they have lost unless somebody has to write a check big enough to require a special act of the Legislature to cover it. If that means millions to me, fine. I'll put it all back into the war effort anyway. I don't even worry that by revealing myself about this here, I might inspire fiercer defense against my clients' civil claims. That's because no individual in any position of authority faces any apparent existential threat: they are all complicit in criminal abuse, but only as little, tiny cogs in the wheels of a large machine which they believe is a perfect hiding place against responsibility. Regular prosecutors are rarely very interested in going after them. They're much like the Nuremberg defendants who only obeyed orders.

They don't even worry about anything happening to them if the machine is finally made to stop: their pensions are protected by the Illinois Constitution, so it's all on the taxpayers.

Barry says the reason the AG and the IDHS Inspector General don't protect "patients" at EMHC from abuse is, they consider that their jobs are really about protecting unionized state employees from lawsuits. The case which the article details is about a prosecution of a non-union, outside agency-contracted guy. That prosecution was a show. It was, "Hey, look over there, it's the Goodyear blimp! We'll show you some bad guys, but don't look at our people, they're mental health professionals."

As far as OIG is concerned, the only kind of employee who ever deserves to be punished for, or deterred from, sexually abusing involuntary mental patients is a non-union employee. If you're a member of AFSCME Council 31, then you're one of the owners of the slaves and you can do whatever you like with your property. 

Peter Neumer and his predecessors did precisely nothing to protect Ben Hurt, Mark Owens, Mansoor Abdul-Hameed, Angelo Rotunno, Kevin Johnson, Sean Gunderson, Gustavo Rodrigues, Paul Olsson, Shanovia Fowlkes, Marci Weber, Mickey Russell, Michael Dopson, Jennifer Coleman, and various other current and future plaintiffs, from staff sexual abuse or staff appropriation of their sexuality, and all the trauma and dehumanization which results from that. 

And Kwame Raoul runs his Office of the Illinois Attorney General, using huge taxpayer funded resources, paying enormous taxpayer funded salaries, to protect the abusers from the Plaintiffs. 

It's corrupt. But throw taxpayers a bone like Larry Vancil once in awhile, find a scapegoat, and dues paying members of the right club can get away with it. Kwame Raoul can say, "Instead of insuring a safe environment for some of our most vulnerable residents, the defendant chose to instead violate the rights of an individual that did not have the capacity to speak up and protect themselves. I am committed to holding individuals accountable for taking advantage of people they are responsible for protecting."  

No, he's not committed to that. He's committed to protecting the racket.