Prosecutor accused of sexual relationship with defendant, staging naked photos while she slept
Mark A. Shlifka of Yorkville, Illinois, has been licensed to practice law since 1988. Shlifka was the first assistant state’s attorney for the Kendall County state’s attorney’s office. Image from Shutterstock.
Updated: A former Illinois prosecutor is facing an ethics complaint that accuses him of secretly taking nude photos of a sleeping woman with whom he was having a sexual relationship, staging the photos to include his penis near her body and on her head.
The lawyer, Mark A. Shlifka of Yorkville, Illinois, is accused in a Dec. 12 ethics complaint noted by the Legal Profession Blog. He has been licensed to practice law since 1988. Shlifka was the first assistant state’s attorney for the Kendall County state’s attorney’s office at the time in question.
The woman, referred to as J.N. in the ethics complaint, was a victim in an aggravated battery case that Shlifka was personally handling and was a defendant in a DUI case handled by Shlifka’s office.
She also accompanied Shlifka to a legal conference in Palm Springs, California, in December 2022, even though a condition of her bond in the DUI case barred out-of-state travel, the ethics complaint said. Shlifka allegedly bought her plane ticket.
Shlifka began communicating with J.N. on LinkedIn around March 31, 2022, and began a sexual relationship with her the next month, the ethics complaint said. The man accused in the battery case had been convicted but not yet sentenced when the sexual relationship began. The DUI case against J.N. was pending.
The sexual relationship ended around January 2023, and Shlifka resigned from his job in April 2023, the ethics complaint said.
Shlifka resigned after the woman filed a lawsuit against Shlifka and the Kendall County state’s attorney, report Shaw Local News Network, the Patch.com and WSPY. The suit alleged that the woman went along with the relationship because she thought that Shlifka could help her in the pending court cases.
In a parting email to colleagues, Shlifka said he was in the relationship “during a time of turmoil in my marriage including a months long period of separation from my wife,” Shaw Local News Network reported. He said he notified J.N. that she needed a special prosecutor for her case, but she “was determined to see if she could resolve the case with her attorney and the assigned” prosecutor.
Shlifka’s online profile with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission does not include an email address or a phone number. A phone call placed to a number found at Radaris, a people and business search engine, produced a recording by a person named “Mark,” who did not immediately respond to the ABA Journal’s request for comment.
The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission did not have contact information for Shlifka other than his address. No attorney has filed an appearance for Shlifka in the case.
Updated Dec. 21 at 8:01 a.m. to report that no attorney had filed an appearance in Mark A. Shlifka’s case.
