JACKSON, MI – Saying he was treated as a “virtual sex slave” by a Michigan Department of Corrections counselor, a former inmate has filed a lawsuit against the department and the social worker, the mother of his 1-year-old child.

Steven Moerman, 44, accuses Susan Clingerman of raping him on a weekly basis, intentionally inflicting emotional distress, and the department of improperly supervising and training her and for creating and failing to prevent a “sexually hostile prison environment.”

Moerman filed suit in September in Jackson County Circuit Court, a little less than two years after Clingerman was terminated from her job at Parnall Correctional Facility in Blackman Township, north of Jackson.

Because he is mentally ill, the Grand Rapids man had frequent counseling sessions with Clingerman, who in May 2014 initiated a sexual relationship by asking questions about his genitals. Feeling he had no real choice in the locked office, Moerman “reluctantly acquiesced,” according to the lawsuit.

Clingerman, 44 of Mason, treated the man as a “virtual sex slave,” demanding sexual gratification “at her whim” and taking full advantage of her control over Moerman, the document alleges. “Given the profound disparity in power and authority…, the sexual relationship was inherently involuntary.”

This continued until September 2014 and Clingerman, desperate to have a child, gave birth to his baby on April 3, 2015, a fact proven by the results of a paternity test contained in the court file.

No answers to the complaint had been filed as of Thursday, Nov. 10.

A lawyer for Clingerman, Lauren Elster, said an answer was forthcoming. She said she could not make any further comment.

An attempt to contact Clingerman was not successful. I n an interview with the Detroit Free Press , she denied she used him as a sex slave and targeted him because she wished to be a mother.

She said she suffered from seizures that left her feeling confused, a condition that contributed to her involvement in what she characterized as a consensual relationship with a man who has become her “protector” during group therapy sessions.

A spokesman for the Department of Corrections, Chris Gautz said he was unable to provide much information because of the pending litigation.

In an email, he said Clingerman was barred from the prison on Sept. 12, 2014, and discharged on Jan. 8, 2015.

She was charged in 2014 with second-degree criminal sexual conduct, an accusation the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office eventually dropped. She pleaded guilty in June 2015 to to misconduct in office and Jackson County Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson ordered her to serve nine weekends in jail.

She was on probation for 18 months and had to pay $1,148 in fines and costs, according to court records.

Moerman, paroled in February, was sentenced in March 2013 in Kent County to at least three years in prison for operating or maintaining a drug lab, corrections records show.

Last spring, Clingerman filed a child support and paternity complaint against him in Ingham County.

In the lawsuit, Moerman also names Gov. Rick Snyder, former Department of Corrections Director Daniel Heyns and other department officials.

Corrections authorities should have known he was at “serious risk of being sexually assaulted” and failed to provide him with human conditions of confinement by “knowingly, voluntarily, recklessly, and with willful disregard to (his) personal safety allowing him to be sexually assaulted and raped.”

He alleges another counselor employed by the corrections department served as a “lookout” for Clingerman. The other counselor was not terminated and Gautz did not believe her name surfaced in the department’s investigation.

Moerman asks for more than $25,000 in damages.

“(He) suffered severe mental distress, indignity, great humiliation, emotional distress, embarrassment, anger, disappointment, fear, stress, worry, all of which is substantial and enduring,” the lawsuit states.