Articles Posted in Sexual Abuse

In the nineties, a Joint Commission adopted a formal Sentinel event policy with the goal of helping hospitals manage certain serious events. Recently, the Joint Commission reported that there had been an alarming increase in rape and assault in medical facilities and hospitals, and it released evidence to that effect. Sentinel events are patient safety events that aren’t mostly related to a natural progression of illness that results in severe harm, permanent harm, or death. Assault, rape, sexual assault and homicide were the third most common sentinel events in the first half of 2023. If you experienced assault or rape in a hospital setting, you should call the seasoned Chicago-based trial attorneys of Moll Law Group to find out your legal options.

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Hospitals and healthcare organizations are expected to provide safety to both patients and providers when treatment and care are being administered. Unfortunately, sentinel events do occur and can cause serious injury or even death. The Joint Commission issued a list of suggested actions that a health care institution could take to stop rape, and assault. If you were onsite in a hospital or healthcare setting and you were either offering or receiving medical care or were a visitor, any of the following would be a sentinel event: sexual abuse or assault of either a patient or a provider; physical assault of a patient being cared for; homicide of a staff person, licensed independent practitioner, vendor, or visitor; homicide of a patient receiving services and treatment.

Many safety problems could lead to frightening sentinel events including poor hiring practices and failure to conduct background checks; failure to develop adequate policies for responding to workplace violence; lack of training so that staff could properly respond to agitated and potentially violent patients; inadequate responses to reported security problems; poor mental health vetting of healthcare providers and on the other side of that not identifying patient mental health issues. Continue reading →

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Victims of childhood sexual abuse in Illinois may find the legal system daunting in addition to dealing with the trauma of the abuse they have suffered. Indeed, many different laws and standards can apply in a case. Under Illinois’s Code of Civil Procedure, sexual abuse includes but is not limited to sexual conduct and sexual penetration as defined in the Criminal Code. Childhood Sexual Abuse is defined as “an act of sexual abuse” when the abused person is under 18 years old. Generally, a claim based on childhood sexual abuse must be filed within 20 years of the date the statute of limitations began to run, or within 20 years of the date the victim discovers or should discover both “that the act of childhood sexual abuse occurred” and “that the injury was caused by the childhood sexual abuse.”

In 2017, Illinois eliminated the statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions for felony criminal sexual assault and sexual abuse crimes against children. The law applies to future cases as well as then-current cases in which the old statute of limitations had not yet expired. Before the change in the law, most serious sexual offenses against children had to be prosecuted within 20 years of the survivor turning 18 years old. Although the statute of limitations is shorter for civil cases, there are several exceptions that may extend the statute of limitations. If you were the victim of abuse and have questions about the timing of filing a case, reach out to a dedicated Illinois sexual abuse attorney.

Catholic Church Failed to Disclose Names of Priests Accused of Abuse

Illinois’s Attorney General announced this week that six Catholic dioceses in the state did not disclose the names of at least 500 priests who have been accused of sexual abuse, according to one news source. The state’s investigation was sparked by a Pennsylvania grand jury report that found there were 300 “predator priests” in that state.

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