What happened to you at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital was not okay.

Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, on North Marine Drive in Uptown. The Children's Pavilion around the corner on Clarendon, the adult floors, the years when DCFS was sending kids there because no other hospital in the city would take them. If you were a patient there and something was done to you that the staff should have stopped, this page is about you. In December 2019 the Cook County Public Guardian took the hospital, its owner and a list of DCFS officials to federal court for seven children. Nearly seven years on, the case is still there. Nothing has settled, and the hospital is still a defendant.

Free
Confidential
No obligation
You never pay a dollar

6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

It was another patient, not a staff member. The complaint covers both, and so did the federal inspectors. The hospital's job was to keep a 7-year-old away from a kid it already knew about.
You told a nurse and nothing came of it, or the footage that would have shown it somehow didn't exist. The complaint says exactly that: staff didn't produce the video, and investigators treated the missing video as proof nothing had happened.
You were a ward of the State. DCFS placed you there, not your family. All seven children in the federal case were in DCFS custody, and DCFS officials are defendants too.
You were a kid there. Illinois took the filing deadline off childhood sexual abuse in 2014, and for anyone who was a child at Lakeshore in 2013 or after, that rule is clean. Details below.
You were an adult patient. The clock is shorter, and honestly for most adult years it has run. Still worth twenty minutes to know for sure.
You're a foster parent, a caseworker who saw something, a sibling asking for a brother. Reach out anyway. Many of our calls start with someone else.

The Chicago Lakeshore record: inspections, the funding cut, the federal case, and where it stands

None of this is ours. It comes from a federal judge, an administrative law judge at Health and Human Services, the Public Guardian's complaint, a state board file and the ProPublica reporters who broke the story in 2018. Every line links to where it came from. Where a sentence is an allegation in a lawsuit, we say so; no court has ruled on the facts yet.

May 2011

A University of Illinois at Chicago review found four young patients at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital had been sexually assaulted by other patients since 2008 and blamed thin staffing and lax supervision. Some youth units, it said, still presented unacceptable risks. The hospital dismissed the report. That was seven years before the events in the lawsuit. CBS Chicago.

November 30, 2018

State inspectors working for Medicare found the hospital had failed to keep patients free from sexual and physical abuse, had not reported abuse allegations to the Illinois Department of Public Health and had not completed its investigations. Federal officials set the Medicare termination for December 15, 2018. The ACLU of Illinois had demanded that DCFS pull every child in state care out of the building; the last two were discharged that day. Hundreds of DCFS children had been treated there over the years. ProPublica.

November 26, 2019

An administrative law judge at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services upheld the termination (Aurora Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, DAB CR5480). The decision describes a 161-bed hospital with a 60-bed Children's Pavilion in three units and finds the hospital 'failed to meet its obligation to ensure that its patients were kept free from all forms of abuse.' It records a 7-year-old who reported an assault by another patient in September 2018 and was not sent to the emergency room as the hospital's own policy required, and a video system that was not available when staff tried to review it. HHS Departmental Appeals Board.

December 17, 2019

Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, No. 1:19-cv-08257, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Illinois law, against Aurora Chicago Lakeshore Hospital LLC, Signature Healthcare Services LLC, the hospital's former chief executive and staff, and current and former DCFS officials. Justia Dockets.

December 18, 2019

The 16-count complaint, as reported the next day, alleges that seven children in DCFS custody were sexually abused by staff and by other patients on the Children's Pavilion in 2017 and 2018, and were given sedatives they should not have been. It alleges DCFS and Lakeshore 'turned a blind eye,' and that when staff failed to hand over video, investigators 'treated the missing videos as evidence that the complained of incident did not happen.' Allegations, all of it. The hospital did not respond to reporters. NBC Chicago.

February 28, 2022

Judge Mary M. Rowland refused to dismiss the case against Signature Healthcare Services LLC and its sole member, Soon K. Kim. She held the plaintiffs had adequately alleged that Signature and Kim 'refused to allow Chicago Lakeshore Hospital to install functional video surveillance cameras' despite knowing the existing ones did not work, and that despite 'regular reports of abuse' they failed to act. The federal civil-rights counts survived, and so did the state-law negligence, negligent hiring and institutional negligence counts. A ruling that claims may go forward, not a finding that they are true. CourtListener.

June 7, 2022

The building changed hands. Lakeshore discharged its last patient in April 2020 and closed. In 2021 Acadia Healthcare bought the properties; the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board's file records that Montrose Behavioral Health Hospital 'was formerly Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, a 161-bed AMI hospital that was purchased by the Applicants in 2021,' at 4840 North Marine Drive, with the Children's Pavilion at 4720 North Clarendon. Montrose is a different owner. It is not a defendant, and nothing on this page is about the hospital as it runs today. Illinois HFSRB.

August 2026 update

The case sits with Judge Jeffrey I. Cummings now. Signature, Kim, the hospital and its staff defendants asked for summary judgment on August 14, 2026, and the DCFS defendants followed with a motion of their own on August 21. We read the docket through August 31, 2026: no trial date, nothing settled, and the hospital defendants still in the case. When the judge rules, this line changes. DocketBird.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 2026 update. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Chicago Lakeshore Hospital lawsuit

Start with the hospital itself, and the company above it. The operator was Aurora Chicago Lakeshore Hospital LLC; the owner behind that was Signature Healthcare Services LLC, out of California, which still runs psychiatric hospitals in other states today. A hospital that takes a 7-year-old off a DCFS caseworker's hands owes that child a few plain things: staff enough to watch the hall, cameras that work, a background check on the people it hires, a real investigation when a child says something happened. The complaint says Lakeshore failed at each, and says the reason was money: lease payments, management fees and bonus targets flowing up to the owner left the hospital 'unable to hire sufficient staff, secure hospital monitoring devices, and ensure patient safety.' Those are allegations. Judge Rowland found them detailed enough to go forward.

The State's people, too. Nine current and former DCFS officials are defendants, sued personally under the federal civil-rights statute. The complaint alleges DCFS kept placing children at Lakeshore because it had worn out its welcome at the other Chicago-area psychiatric hospitals, and that officials knew of serious complaints and worked to bury them. Pleaded, not proven. But it means the case does not rest on one company's insurance alone.

Not the current owner. Acadia Healthcare bought what was by then an empty set of buildings, in 2021, and reopened them as Montrose Behavioral Health Hospital. Montrose isn't on this page as a claim. Acadia isn't either. No filed record we've read names them. If your years there were 2022 or later, the questions still work. Say so on the call and we will tell you honestly what we know.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for what happened at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital

If you were under 18, Illinois took the deadline off in 2014. That's the whole rule, honestly. The statute (735 ILCS 5/13-202.2(f)) puts it as an action 'may be commenced at any time,' and for a kid who was on the Children's Pavilion it means what it says. If that is you, your claim runs on age alone. No clock.

There is a catch, and we'd rather you hear it from us than from an intake form: the 2014 change didn't reach a claim that was already dead on January 1, 2014. At Lakeshore that shuts out almost no one, for a reason we spell out in the questions at the bottom of the page; the short version is that the Children's Pavilion is too young a place for it to matter. If you were born before 1983, though, and it happened at Lakeshore when you were a child, a lawyer needs a few more facts: when you first understood the harm, and what the hospital or the State said or hid. Illinois keeps a discovery path and a concealment path open for older claims. Ask. Don't assume.

If you were an adult patient, the clock is two years (735 ILCS 5/13-202), and for most adult years at Lakeshore it has run. When it started is not always the day it happened; that is a question for a lawyer, not a form. We won't tell you there is a case when there probably isn't.

Two more things a lawyer sorts out, not you. The federal civil-rights claim against the DCFS officials runs on a different, shorter clock than the Illinois abuse statute, though it pauses while a child is a minor. And Illinois has no ceiling on what a jury can award for pain and suffering against a private hospital. Neither changes the first paragraph. If you were a kid there, you are not too late.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You figure nobody will believe a foster kid with a psychiatric admission. The Public Guardian believed seven of them enough to sue.
You have never said it out loud. Not to a caseworker, not to a foster parent, not to anyone since.
You told someone at the hospital and they wrote it down as behavior, or medication, or nothing at all.
You couldn't name the person. The unit, roughly the year, staff or another patient. That's enough to start.
You're in Indiana or Wisconsin or farther now. DCFS placed kids at Lakeshore from all over Illinois, and the case stays in Chicago either way.
The hospital is a different place with a different name now. That changes nothing about the years it was Lakeshore.

Facilities covered

Chicago Lakeshore Hospital. 4840 North Marine Drive, Chicago; Aurora Chicago Lakeshore Hospital on some of the paperwork. Both parts of it: the adult units in the main building, and the Children's Pavilion around the corner at 4720 North Clarendon Avenue, which is where the children's and adolescent units took DCFS placements until late 2018. The doors closed in April 2020. Today the same buildings run as Montrose Behavioral Health Hospital under Acadia Healthcare, a different owner, one the federal case doesn't name. A different psychiatric hospital in Illinois? The questions still work. Answer them and say where on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Chicago Lakeshore Hospital?

Seven children already have, through the Cook County Public Guardian, in federal court in Chicago, and the hospital's owner has not managed to get the case thrown out. Whether you can depends on how old you were, when you were there and what happened, which is what the questions above sort out.

Is Chicago Lakeshore Hospital still open?

No. Not under that name, anyway, and not under that owner. The buildings are Montrose Behavioral Health Hospital now, Acadia Healthcare's, and Acadia has no part in the lawsuit; the record above has the closing and the sale, with dates. Lakeshore years only, on this page.

How long do I have to file in Illinois if it happened when I was a child?

As long as you need, in most cases. Illinois has had no statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse since 2014; the only claims shut out are the ones that had already died before January 1 of that year, and at Lakeshore that's almost nobody. Do the birthdays and you'll see why. A children's building that opened in 2013, inside a hospital that was gone by 2020, held almost nobody born before 1995, which means nearly every child who passed through it was still a minor when the law changed. Anyone who was a kid there from 2013 on is inside on age alone. Older than that? Discovery or concealment can still open the door, but a lawyer has to look. Adults get two years.

What happened at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital?

Two things, a year apart. In 2018 inspectors walked through and found patients weren't being kept free from abuse, and allegations weren't being investigated or reported the way they had to be; Medicare cut the hospital off. Then came the lawsuit, December 2019: the Public Guardian, suing for seven children in DCFS care, alleging that staff and other patients abused them across 2017 and 2018 and that it was covered up. Still pending. Nobody has won or lost it. Each document is linked in the record section above.

How much is a Chicago Lakeshore Hospital settlement?

We won't put a number on this page, and be careful with anyone who does. Nothing has settled in the federal case and no jury has heard it. It depends on what happened, what the hospital and the State knew, and when. A lawyer will tell you plainly after looking at your facts.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Illinois attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.