A doctor charged with sexually assaulting a bedridden patient is facing new abuse allegations from another former patient in a civil lawsuit filed Thursday in Cook County Circuit Court.
Dr. Charles S. Dehaan was charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated sexual abuse against a physically handicapped person in March for an alleged series of attacks over 3 1/2 years against a Des Plaines woman. A judge ordered him held on a $250,000 bond, the Sun-Times reported at the time. He has since been released on electronic monitoring, according to court records.
Thursday’s civil suit was filed by a different woman who claims that while Dehaan treated her in Rockford, he sexually assaulted her through “intentional and willful touching” between October 2012 and November 2013, the suit says.
The 11-count suit names Dehaan, now 60, as a defendant along with Housecall Physicians Group of Rockford and MD at Home Management, who employed Dehaan at the time of the alleged attacks. Representatives for the companies could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday evening.
At Dehaan’s bond hearing in March, prosecutors said the Belvidere doctor is thought to have sexually assaulted up to 11 other patients. His medical license was suspended in January, according to state records.
Beginning in 2009, and continuing until 2012, Dehaan paid home visits to the Des Plaines woman’s home to treat her anxiety disorder, prosecutors said in court. After arriving, Dehaan would close the woman’s room door and fondle her while forcing her to touch his genitals, prosecutors said.
When the woman cried during his assaults and pleaded for him to stop, Dehaan told her that no one would believe her because he was a reputed doctor and she had psychiatric “issues,” prosecutors said.
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Prosecutors also said Dehaan is still licensed to practice in other states. But his Illinois medical license was suspended on January 16, “for sexually inappropriate conduct with multiple patients of his practice as well as authorizing Controlled Substances for individual without establishing physician-patient relationship,” according to state licensing records, which indicate he started practicing medicine in the state in 1982.
The civil suit seeks an unspecified aount of money in punitive damages. Dehaan is next scheduled to appear in court Jan. 21 next year, according to court records.
