As Elgin Mental Health Center sex assault case nears trial, lawsuits await
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a date in the story.
A misconduct case against an Elgin Mental Health Center social worker accused of sexual assaulting a patient could be resolved next month or be set for a jury trial.
Christy L. Lenhardt, 55, of the 200 block of Paine Street, South Elgin, is charged with 28 felony counts of sexual and official misconduct. Between November 2017 and January 2018, authorities allege, she sexually assaulted a man serving a sentence at the facility after he had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Lenhardt appeared briefly in Kane County court last week, and her case was continued to Sept. 6 when she will plead guilty or the case will be set for trial by Judge D.J. Tegeler, according to court records.
If convicted, she faces a sentence ranging from probation to up to five years in prison.
Her defense attorney, Robert Stanker, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, two federal lawsuits against Lenhardt and mental health center officials have been put on hold until the criminal proceedings in Kane County are completed.
Randolph Kretchmar, an attorney representing former mental health patients in both lawsuits, said a half dozen potential victims have contacted his office. “This is an extremely corrupt, extremely shameful system,” Kretchmar said.
A lawsuit filed in November 2017 by the man Lenhardt is charged with sexually assaulting argues she came on to him from the time he arrived at EMHC in August 2014, and that Medical Director James Corcoran and five subordinates ignored or covered up wrongdoing.
It also argues Lenhardt admitted to the victim she had engaged in sexual contact with two other patients and groomed the victim while under her control. “During those 2½ years, she used cash payments, gifts of electronic devices and clothing and other inducements to maintain control over plaintiff so she could continue to use him sexually,” read part of the suit.
The same defendants also are being sued by a second man, who argues he, too, was sexually assaulted by Lenhardt, and the staff ignored the matter. That suit, filed in January 2018, argues the man also was targeted by Lenhardt and felt he had no choice because of her position of power.
“The clear message of the whole clinical regimen in the facility was that full compliance with staff judgments or recommendations for whatever might be called 'treatment' was mandatory if a patient ever wanted to make any progress toward release,” read part of the suit. “Thus, if his social worker wanted to have save sex with him, plaintiff was convinced he had best go along with it.”
Lenhardt is not charged with criminal wrongdoing in the case of the second man.
The attorney general's office, which is defending the mental health center employees in both lawsuits, is seeking to have the litigation dismissed. Lenhardt is free on $9,000 bond.