What happened to you at Hartgrove Hospital was not okay.

The old building on North Ridgeway. The new one on West Roosevelt Road since 2007. The children's units, 2 South, the adult side. If you were a patient at Hartgrove in any of those years and someone on staff, or someone the staff should have been watching, crossed a line, this is about you. Fifteen former patients have already filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, the court has pulled every new Hartgrove case into one proceeding, and on December 1, 2025 the State's Attorney charged a counselor who worked there from 1993 to 2004. None of that is ours. It is all linked below.

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

This applies to you no matter what

You told someone, a nurse, a tech, the guard on the door, and got told you were making it up. That exact thing is in the Jane Doe 4 complaint twice over: a 13-year-old in 1997, and a girl there somewhere between 2016 and 2018 who asked a guard to go check the camera and was refused. Allegations, both. Being disbelieved then is not a mark against you now.
It was another patient, not staff. Hartgrove's job was to keep you safe from the people it put on your hall. If staff sedated you first, or walked in and walked out, say so on the call.
The year. People worry about the year, and it matters less than you'd think, because the Illinois deadline mostly turns on when you were born, not when it happened (why, further down). For what it's worth: the charges cover 1996 to 2004, Jane Doe T.G.'s stays were 2010 and 2011, and the police reports listed in the complaint go up to 2024.
You were a state ward. DCFS itself stopped sending children to Hartgrove in June 2011, after a University of Illinois review found about 100 violent incidents in six months. That review is public.
You were an adult patient. The clock is shorter and a lawyer needs to look at when it started for you. Twenty minutes tells you where you are on it.
You're a parent, a sibling, a former staff member who saw something. Reach out anyway. Choose 'I'm asking for someone else' and the questions adjust.

The Hartgrove record: the state's 2011 review, the Cook County complaints, the charges, and what the courts have said, in order

We didn't write any of this. A state agency and a state university did, former patients and their lawyers in the Circuit Court of Cook County, the Cook County State's Attorney, and two federal judges in Chicago. Every line links to where it came from. Where a complaint is the source it is an allegation, and we say so. Where a man is charged, he is charged and not convicted, and we say that too.

September 28, 2011

CBS Chicago reported the University of Illinois at Chicago review that the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services had ordered of Hartgrove: roughly 100 violent incidents in one six-month stretch, including, in the words of DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe, "assaults of a sexual nature"; reviewers found "deliberate and chronic understaffing." DCFS had stopped sending its wards there in June 2011, after seeing a preliminary draft. Hartgrove's answer: "a track record that spans more than 50 years." A state agency's action and a state university's review, not a lawsuit. CBS Chicago, September 28, 2011.

December 12, 2024

The lead case. More than 100 people who'd been minor patients at Hartgrove Hospital and other UHS facilities in Illinois sued Universal Health Services; their lawyers called it systemic abuse and said sexual assault was part of it. Some of the plaintiffs were 8 years old at the time, the complaint says (one of them, John Doe, was 11, and that was 2001), made to perform sexual acts on other children and told it was therapy, and when they reported it, punished, or just ignored. Hartgrove denied all of it and said it would "defend this case vigorously." The court number on the lead case, John Doe 1 v. UHS of Hartgrove, is 2024 L 013843; we take that from the federal opinion further down, because the news report doesn't print it. Allegations, every one. FOX 32 Chicago.

November 12, 2025

"Was told he was lying, injected with a sedative, and punished with isolation." That, Jane Doe 4's complaint says, is what happened to a boy who reported being assaulted in the gym in 1998, and it is one item on a long list. Two more from it. In 2000 and 2001, the complaint pleads, Hartgrove "became expressly aware" that girls on the 2 South unit were reporting male counselors. And Edmond Rivers was among staff "identified by other staff as being some of the most well-known problematic staff." The list runs on into Chicago police reports from 2022 to 2024. Jane Doe 4 herself was born in 1985 and says she was about 16, in 2002, when a counselor abused her. Her case is No. 2025 L 014133 in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Law Division, against UHS of Hartgrove, Inc. and the UHS companies above it, the same defendants the next section walks through. Fourteen counts. Every one of them an allegation, and not one proved. Complaint at Law, Jane Doe 4 v. UHS of Hartgrove, Inc. et al. (Cook County; on RECAP as Exhibit A to the removal).

December 1, 2025

The Cook County State's Attorney charged Edmund Rivers, 68. He'd been a mental health counselor at Hartgrove from 1993 to 2004. Three counts of criminal sexual assault, two counts of predatory criminal sexual assault. Charged, and presumed innocent; nothing has been proved. Five boys, aged 7 to 14 at the time, between 1996 and 2004, in patient rooms, a seclusion room, a cafeteria bathroom and a gym equipment room, according to the release. The five did not know each other. "Several of the victims came forward and contacted police after learning about a civil lawsuit filed against Hargrove Hospital for a pattern of abuse by its staff," the office wrote. A judge ordered him detained. Cook County State's Attorney, press release.

December 10, 2025

Back in court, before Judge Luciano Panici Jr. No bond; December 16 set as the return date. The criminal complaint was still sealed and his lawyer declined to comment. The civil lawyers told FOX 32 they now represent nearly 200 former patients, the firm's count, not a court's. We have found no public report on the criminal case since December 2025; the status here is as of that month. FOX 32 Chicago.

February 17, 2026

Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman of the federal court in Chicago sent Jane Doe 4's case back to Cook County. UHS had removed it two days after filing, before a summons could issue, which she called "one of the most egregious 'snap removal' abuses of the Forum Defendant Rule that this Court has encountered," done "seemingly to stymie a sweep order issued by the Circuit Court of Cook County." Her opinion counts "fourteen other cases" against these defendants in Cook County, John Doe 1, No. 2024 L 013843, first, and says the sweep order pulls "any future cases to be filed against these Defendants" into one consolidated proceeding. Doe 4 v. UHS of Delaware, Inc., No. 25-cv-14026 (N.D. Ill.), memorandum opinion and order.

August 6, 2026

A separate case, Jane Doe T.G. v. UHS of Hartgrove, Inc., No. 25 C 9339, was filed in federal court in Chicago on August 6, 2025 over three stays in 2010 and 2011, at 14 to 16. A year later to the day, Judge Jorge Alonso dismissed it without prejudice, a procedural ruling that she had not stated a federal claim, and gave her until September 1 to replead; the docket shows an amended complaint filed on September 1, 2026. His opinion recites her allegations: Hartgrove "was on notice during the years of 2010 to 2011," and Chicago police hold "at least 50" abuse reports from the hospital. Allegations restated by a judge, not findings. Jane Doe T.G. v. UHS of Hartgrove, Inc., No. 25 C 9339 (N.D. Ill.), memorandum opinion and order.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 6, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Hartgrove Hospital lawsuit

The hospital, first, and the companies behind it. UHS of Hartgrove, Inc., which does business as Hartgrove Behavioral Health System and as Hartgrove Hospital, holds the licence and is a defendant in every one of the fifteen Cook County cases, Jane Doe 4's included. So are UHS of Delaware, Inc., the management subsidiary the Jane Doe 4 complaint says hired Hartgrove's chief executives and received its abuse reports, and Universal Health Services, Inc., the parent in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. For anything before March 12, 1999, the complaints also name the companies that owned Hartgrove then. UHS has its own page on this site, universal-health-services-illinois-survivors.

The theory is the plain one. A counselor who abuses a child on a locked unit answers for himself; that is what the criminal case against Rivers is about. A hospital that hired him, put counselors alone with children at night, was told in 2000 and 2001 that counselors on an adolescent unit were being reported, and kept the same staff in place, answers for what it allowed. That is what the complaints allege. Hartgrove and UHS deny it and have admitted no liability.

Why it matters who is on the other side: damages are only worth what the defendant can pay. UHS reported $4.64 billion in revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2026 and told investors in the same filing that it faces abuse suits "spanning decades." A description of the defendant, not a promise about your case.

Your deadline: the Illinois statute of limitations for sexual abuse at Hartgrove Hospital

Under 18 at the time? Then there may be no deadline at all. Since January 1, 2014, when Illinois amended section 13-202.2(f) of its Code of Civil Procedure so that an action for childhood sexual abuse "may be commenced at any time," the clock has been off, with one catch, and it's a real one: the change only reaches claims that hadn't already run out under the old law by that date. Which is why the questions ask your birth year. Born in 1983 or later and, in practice, the door is open on age alone. Born before that and it turns on when you understood what the abuse did to you (subsection (b) gives 20 years from that discovery, and knowing it happened is not by itself discovery of the injury) and on whether anyone kept you from knowing (subsection (d-1) stops the clock during threats, intimidation, manipulation or fraud). Jane Doe 4 was born in 1985 and her lawyers filed anyway. A lawyer decides, not a calendar.

If you were an adult patient, the clock is shorter. Illinois gives two years for most injury claims, section 13-202, and a lawyer will need to look at when the clock started for you, which is not always the day it happened. That is a conversation, not a form. Say '18 or older' in the questions and the person who calls you will know to ask.

No cap. Illinois puts no ceiling on what a jury can award against a private hospital for pain and suffering. Not a promise about your case; the rules a Hartgrove case would be tried under.

Your situation still qualifies even if

Nobody in your family knows. Nobody at the hospital wrote it down, or wrote down something else.
You were told it was your imagination, or your medication. One police report in the complaint is from a girl who tried to tell staff for three days and "no one believed her."
You think a psychiatric admission makes you a bad witness. Fifteen former Hartgrove patients are in court right now with exactly that history.
You were only there a few days. One report in the complaint came from a five-day stay.
It was years ago and you've built a life since. The charged conduct runs back to 1996.
You live in Indiana or Wisconsin now, or anywhere else. The cases sit in Cook County and you don't need to.

Facilities covered

Hartgrove Hospital, now Hartgrove Behavioral Health System, run by UHS of Hartgrove, Inc., a Universal Health Services company since the March 1999 asset purchase pleaded in the complaints. Two addresses, one hospital: 520 North Ridgeway Avenue, the building Hartgrove occupied in the 1996 to 2004 years of the charges, and 5730 West Roosevelt Road in Austin, open since 2007, 160 inpatient beds for children, adolescents and adults, plus day programs for ages 5 to 17 and adult outpatient. The Ridgeway building is now Garfield Park Behavioral Hospital, also UHS. A different UHS hospital, Streamwood, Riveredge, Garfield Park or The Pavilion? The parent page, universal-health-services-illinois-survivors, sorts those; The Pavilion has its own, pavilion-behavioral-health-survivors. Not sure which? The questions still work. Answer them and say where on the call.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Hartgrove Hospital for abuse that happened when I was a patient there as a child?

Fifteen former patients already have, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, and the court's sweep order sends every new case against Hartgrove and UHS into the same proceeding. Whether you can depends mostly on your birth year and when it happened, which is what the questions sort out. Asking is free.

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

Possibly no deadline at all. Illinois has had no time limit since January 1, 2014 for a childhood sexual abuse claim that hadn't already expired by then (735 ILCS 5/13-202.2(f)). Born 1983 or later and that is usually the whole answer. Born earlier and it depends on discovery and on whether anyone kept you from knowing, which a lawyer works out with you. Adults at the time have two years under a different section.

Is there a Hartgrove Hospital settlement?

No. Nothing about Hartgrove has settled, and there is no fund or claims deadline to apply to. The Cook County cases are pending; a new case is filed on its own, in court. If you've already signed with a lawyer, say so on the call and nobody wastes your time.

Has anyone been convicted?

Not as of this writing, and nothing on the civil side has been decided either; those complaints are allegations the hospital denies. Edmund Rivers, the former counselor, was charged on December 1, 2025 and was being held without bond that month. He is presumed innocent. We have found no public report on the case since.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency: the lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

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 7 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.