Chicago Psychiatric Hospital Investigated by Federal and State Authorities for Abuse of Children Under CPS Care

A psychiatric hospital in Chicago is being investigated by federal and state authorities for multiple reports of abuse of children in their care, many of whom are under state custody through the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Although the following ProPublica article highlights one particular hospital, investigations by Health Impact News have found that the stories contained within this piece are repeated in psych wards, group homes, and juvenile detention centers all over the country. Many children who are able to tell their stories have told our reporters of similar horrors to the treatment suffered by the children in this story. Once they are hidden away behind the locked doors of these facilities, in state custody, with little contact with the people who love them, they often become victims of sexual assault, physical abuse, and drugging that they neither consent to nor want. They become invisible, hidden in the shadows, with their only hope of a voice being the very people with vested financial interests in keeping them silent about the abuse. It is not unlike slavery in many ways. It seems that every time that we talk to any former foster child that was forced into a psych ward, group home, or juvenile detention center, their stories of widespread sexual and physical abuse are the same. They are the rule, not the exception. The response is always the same: the children all report that no one listened to them. When anyone of them reported abuse by foster parents or in the facilities, they were told that no one would believe them. They are bullied or shamed into silence, left to suffer, while taxpayers pick up the tab to finance institutionalized abuse.