A D.C. teen has filed a $10 million lawsuit against the city, alleging that child welfare bureaucrats negligently consigned her to a Pennsylvania clinic where she was raped by a trusted counselor.

The federal lawsuit also names KidsPeace Corporation, the nonprofit group that runs the clinic where the girl was raped in 2005. KidsPeace counselor Jerry McChristian pleaded guilty to institutional rape in 2006, admitting that he lured the teenager into a conference room and had sex with her. The lawsuit alleges that she was brutally attacked by McChristian.

The suit is another potential blow to the city’s child welfare bureaucracy. The teen, a former ward of the city who suffers from mental illness, claims she was farmed out to KidsPeace by an indifferent bureaucracy that ignored reports of abuse at the Pennsylvania clinic, “thereby contributing to the sexual assault of [the victim].”

D.C. interim Attorney General Peter Nickles did not respond to requests for comment.

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Under a federal consent decree, the city has agreed to limit the number of children it ships out to remote clinics such as KidsPeace. But there have been a host of problems. Earlier this month, a congressionally appointed monitor found that D.C. children were being treated like “garbage” at a Florida clinic, and D.C. officials had to learn about abuse and neglect there from media reports.

Last year, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee ordered her staff to stop sending kids to KidsPeace after a series of children had their arms broken under “therapeutic restraint.”

Judith Meltzer, the federal court-appointed monitor of D.C.’s child welfare system, said that the city has agreed under a consent decree to limit the number of kids it sends to remote clinics.

“You want these kids to be closer to home and community,” she said. “[Sending them to remote clinics] makes it more difficult to check on them.”

Nonetheless, thousands of city children are sent to private schools around the country. It’s a program that will cost the public at least $210 million this year. Critics say the kids are warehoused with little regard to their safety or welfare.

But the District region lacks a top-flight residential program to take in disturbed, ill and disabled children.

“The truth is, it’s always best for the child to go where the best treatment is,” KidsPeace spokesman Mark Stubis said. Stubis hadn’t seen the teenager’s lawsuit, but he defended the clinic’s treatment.

“We work with more than 10,000 children every year who are the highest possible risks,” he said. “Many facilities don’t want these kids. They’d rather send them straight to jail. We don’t want to give up on those kids.”

He added that KidsPeace officials reported McChristian immediately after hearing about his encounter with the youth.

“We were so outraged,” Stubis said.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com