Before anything about the law: if you are struggling today, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is reachable at 1-800-656-4673, free and confidential, every hour of every day. Dial 911 if you or someone else faces immediate danger. A conversation with the hotline will not limit any legal option, and you never have to disclose it to an attorney.
Once you have room to think about next steps, it may help to know that Illinois offers a defined civil path for people sexually exploited by therapists and counselors. A police report is not a prerequisite, and neither is a prosecution. The civil questions concern the employer: its knowledge, its reasonable knowledge and its response.
For Partners, Parents and Friends
Plenty of inquiries come from someone other than the survivor. A spouse notices a change, a parent worries about a teenager's counselor or a friend hears something troubling. Calling on another person's behalf is welcome and does not commit them to any course of action. Parents of minors also have record access rights, described further down.
The Settings Covered Here
This post deals with outpatient mental health care: solo and group practices, community mental health agencies and treatment programs. Psychiatric hospitals and inpatient units involve different facility issues.
What Illinois Law Says
740 ILCS 140, formally the Sexual Exploitation in Psychotherapy, Professional Health Services, and Professional Mental Health Services Act, allows a patient or former patient to recover from a psychotherapist for injury caused by sexual contact. During treatment, coverage is straightforward. After treatment, coverage applies when the former patient was emotionally dependent on the therapist or when the therapist relied on therapeutic deception, representing sexual contact as consistent with or part of therapy.
Lawmakers defined sexual contact expansively. It reaches intercourse, kissing, deliberate touching of the genitals, groin, inner thighs, buttocks or breasts with or without clothing, and requests for such contact. Consent is irrelevant to the definition, and an encounter away from a session or the usual office remains covered.
The term psychotherapist is equally broad: physicians, psychologists, nurses, chemical dependency counselors, social workers and anyone else who performs or purports to perform psychotherapy, licensed or not. Religious or spiritual counseling and casual advice from friends or relatives are excluded.
When the Employer Is Accountable
Practices and agencies are typically the defendants, with negligent retention as the most frequent theory and others alongside it as warranted. Section 3 makes an employer answerable when it fails or refuses to act reasonably after it knows, or has reason to know, of the therapist's sexual contact with the plaintiff or any other patient or former patient. Employers of licensed counselors must supervise them, so even a complaint that never reached the state can surface in internal records. As private bodies, these employers generally do not receive the Tort Immunity treatment given to Illinois public entities, and the Act's claim can be combined with ordinary institutional theories.
Records and Regulators
Therapists are licensed by IDFPR through boards that differ from the physicians' board, which means a separate complaint trail. Boards exist for professional counselors, social workers, clinical psychologists and marriage and family therapists. You can confirm a license online by name or number, and an IDFPR complaint can result in discipline but no compensation.
For records, 740 ILCS 110 lets a person aged 12 or older inspect and copy their own therapy file. Parents and guardians may access records for children under 12. For ages 12 to 17, access depends on the child being informed and not objecting, unless the therapist finds compelling reasons otherwise, and a parent who is turned down can go to court.
Privacy Inside the Lawsuit
Sections 4 and 5 of the Act keep a plaintiff's sexual history out of discovery and trial unless a court, after the defendant requests a hearing and makes an offer of proof, finds it relevant and more valuable than prejudicial, and then only as to the specific information the court names. Claims of damage to sexual functioning are the exception that permits discovery. Survivors may also ask the court to keep their names out of public records.
Quick Answers
Is a criminal conviction necessary? It is not. Civil claims have a lower burden and usually name the organization.
Will people find out it was me? Identity protections are available, and we explain them before filing.
I'm outside Chicago. Our office is downtown, but we talk with survivors and families throughout Illinois.
What to Expect From Us
You can call simply to ask questions, without describing events. If it makes sense, we investigate the employer's responsibility, its knowledge, the available records and filing deadlines, and that work is free. Our assessment is direct, and the decision rests with you. Choosing not to proceed closes the matter and keeps your information private. Choosing to proceed hands the filings, deadlines, records and insurer negotiations to us, with identity protections available. Deadlines depend on specific facts, so do not put off the conversation.
Our Chicago Office
Coplan + Crane, 60 W Randolph St, Suite 333, Chicago, IL 60601. Phone: (708) 671-6858, answered 24 hours a day, every day. Ervin Nevitt, a partner, has been licensed in Illinois since 2014. Everything you tell us remains confidential. For more information, visit: https://survivorsofabuseil.com/therapist-sexual-abuse-lawyer-il/
Attorney advertising. Please treat this as general information, not legal advice.
