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Man Says His Former Social Worker Kept Him As A Sex Slave For Three Years

Ben Hurt filed a lawsuit and the former worker has been charged with sexual misconduct.

In 2017, a 24-year-old Chicago man filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Human Services and his former social worker for allegedly sexually abusing him while he a patient at the Elgin Mental Health Center. Now, the former worker named in the suit has been charged with 14 felony counts related to the misconduct.

Ben Hurt claimed one of his social workers, 53-year-old Christy Lenhardt, sexually abused him so regularly that she basically kept him as a sex slave for the last three years, reported WBBM.

“She engaged in all kinds of various sexual misconduct. The graphic details are every sex act that you can imagine,” Joe Cecala, an attorney for Hurt told the local Chicago news station.

According to the lawsuit, Lenhardt was Hurt’s psychiatrist while he was at Elgin Mental Health Center, where he was sentenced as a patient after pleading guilty by reason of insanity in 2014 for battery against a police officer.

“She’s accused of manipulating and seducing our client, repeatedly. It took her about four months until she actually had sex for the first time with him,” Cecala said.

“We have evidence of her perversion, both in her emails to the client, nude photos.”

According to Hurt’s mother, he should have been released in six to 12 months; however, Lenhardt, said Hurt’s mother, made up excuses to keep him at the facility.

“They assured me that they were going to help me with my child,” Hurt’s mother, D’Anntanette Lee, told WBMM. “What they did to my son was wrong.”

In July 2017, Lenhardt was fired from the Center after Hurt finally released and filed a complaint.

Lenhardt was indicted on eight counts of sexual misconduct with a person with disabilities and six counts of official misconduct on Thursday. She was held on $100,000 bond, reported the Chicago Tribune.

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