By AP/KWMU
Springfield, Ill. – The board that disciplines attorneys in Illinois is leveling accusations against well-known Madison County attorney Thomas Lakin. The board is accusing Lakin of sexually assaulting teenagers and providing them and others with cocaine.
A complaint made public Wednesday alleges Lakin had at least ten sexual encounters last year with a 15-year-old boy whose mother worked for Lakin.
The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission's complaint orginally filed Dec. 7.
In 2005, according to the three-count complaint, Lakin also orchestrated group sexual encounters with the boy, a 17-year-old girl and two adult women and inappropriately touched the boy's older brother in the late 1990s.
Lakin also frequently provided teenagers and others with cocaine, "engaging in conduct which tends to defeat the administration of justice or bring the courts or the legal profession into disrepute," the complaint reads.
Messages were left Wednesday with Joseph Tighe, a Chicago attorney representing Lakin in the disciplinary matter. No home listing for Lakin could be immediately found.
Peter Rotskoff, the commission's senior counsel in Springfield, said the complaint was unsealed Wednesday because a copy of it had been given to Lakin or his attorney. Lakin now has three weeks to respond, after which time a hearing date would be set before a panel two lawyers, two non-lawyers randomly picked by a computer.
That panel's recommendations then would go to the state Supreme Court.
Lakin, who earlier this year voluntarily put his law license on inactive status, could face censure or disbarment if the commission and Supreme Court deem the allegations true.
The allegations, which the complaint says "reflect adversely on the lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects," are similar to those in a St. Clair County lawsuit by the boy and girl, whose accusations also are being investigated by state and federal prosecutors.
Lakin has not been charged criminally in the matter.