Former New York gynecologist Robert Hadden has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for sexually assaulting patients over more than two decades while working as an OB-GYN at the Columbia University Medical Center starting in the late 1980s. Hadden’s federal conviction relates to four survivors, and he has been accused of abusing at least 245 women under the guise of medical examinations. Lawyers representing survivors say Columbia had a long history of ignoring Hadden’s behavior in order to protect its reputation instead of acting in the victims’ interests, and Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital have paid out $236 million to settle claims by over 200 former patients of Hadden. For more, we speak with two survivors: Laurie Maldonado was a gynecology and obstetrics patient of Hadden’s between 2003 and 2012 and gave testimony at his trial, and Marissa Hoechstetter was a patient from 2010 to 2012 and gave a victim impact statement.
“Every visit was an opportunity for him to commit abuse and assault,” says Maldonado. “Columbia very much knew about his behavior, and ultimately was thinking only about their own liability,” adds Hoechstetter, who has continued to push for institutional accountability to inform patients of Hadden’s guilt and put power into the hands of survivors through legislation. In response to advocacy from survivors, New York state passed the Adult Survivors Act, which was enacted last November and created a special one-year lookback window to allow sexual assault survivors to file a lawsuit, and lawyers are now filing another round of cases.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.