Lawsuit filed against Illinois DCFS over teen sex abuse at Aunt Martha's foster care facility
"A house of horrors." That's how one former Chicago foster child described Aunt Martha's Integrated Care Center, a facility that's been at the center of a years-long CBS News Chicago investigation.
On Thursday, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services was added as a defendant in a lawsuit accusing the foster facility of failing to protect a 17-year-old foster child from sexual assault by an Aunt Martha's employee.
In March, a Cook County jury convicted former Aunt Martha's youth center manager Trulon Henry of sexually assaulting that teen. There were also allegations involving five other girls, as young as 12.
A lawsuit filed earlier this month claims those sexual assaults and other abuse allegations at the state-funded foster care center went unchecked by DCFS for years.
"We pray for all the young people who suffered in the house of horrors," attorney Ben Crump said on Thursday, after DCFS was added to the lawsuit.
Crump joined the legal fight against Aunt Martha's just two weeks after a lawsuit was filed against the facility and its security contractor, A-Alert.
Now the Department of Children and Family Service is named in a complaint, filed on behalf of Yadira Escamilla, who said she and other minors were sexually abused at the now-shuttered facility on the city's South Side.
In March, Henry was convicted of sexually assaulting then 17-year-old Escamilla and other female residents at Aunt Martha's
Henry is scheduled to be sentenced in August. Escamilla alleges that after she reported abuse, DCFS removed her from Aunt Martha's, but then sent her back, where she was isolated in a basement room and repeatedly assaulted by Henry.
The suit also alleges dangerous conditions at the facility.
"From 2018 until Aunt Martha's was shut down, there were over 3,000 unusual incident reports to DCFS. The police were called to the facility 175 times," said attorney Margaret Battersby Black.
Escamilla's attorneys said DCFS should have stepped in sooner.
"Aunt Martha's was supposed to give her a safe environment. They failed," Crump said.
DCFS stopped sending children in its care to Aunt Martha's in 2024, after Henry and another employee were charged with sexually abusing or sexually assaulting children.
DCFS said they could not comment on the allegations because this is still an active lawsuit. Aunt Martha's and the security company have not responded to requests for comment.
