A gynecologist who molested patients for two decades has been convicted of federal charges that he enticed women to cross state lines so he could abuse them.
Gynecologist Doctor Charged With Sexually Assaulting Patients, Convicted Of Sex Trafficking (PHOTO: CBS News)
New York Doctor Convicted
Tuesday, nine former patients told a New York jury how the doctor they once trusted attacked them sexually when they were most helpless. Robert Hadden, 64, of Englewood, New Jersey, was found guilty after less than a day of deliberations at a two-week trial. Hadden served at two prestigious Manhattan hospitals Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital until complaints about his assaults ended his career a decade ago.
The hospital institutions have already agreed to settle more than $236 million to resolve civil lawsuits by more than 200 former patients. Hadden’s attorneys acknowledged that their client had sexually abused patients, but they said his guilty plea to charges in state court seven years ago put those crimes behind him. Defense lawyers argued that he was unaware that patients were from other states, including New Jersey and Nevada.
Damian Williams U.S. Attorney after the verdict released a statement in which he referred to Hadden as “a predator in a white coat.”
The Victims Of The Predator In a White Coat
The judgment ended a two-week trial that featured a procession of former patients who testified how the doctor interrogated them about their personal lives, including their sexual experience, before touching them unwantedly between their legs or on the breasts. An indictment charged Hadden with sexually abusing patients from 1993 until at least 2012, despite the prosecutor during a closing argument on Monday that a nurse testified that he was molesting patients in the 1980s.
Defense attorney Kathryn Wozencroft said what some of Hadden’s victims endured at his hands was “disgusting and horrific,” but that his state court convictions covered those offenses. She argued that the federal charges were inappropriate because they required that Hadden lure his victims over cross-state borders when he was unaware in advance of which patients he would treat every day and where they were from.
A former patient who has voiced publicly was Evelyn Yang, whose husband, Andrew Yang, ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for president in 2020 and New York City mayor in 2022. In 2020, Yang claimed Hadden sexually abused her, even while she was 7 months pregnant. She had reached the sentence in the state case a “slap on the wrist.”
The Associated Press generally withholds the names of sexual abuse victims from stories unless they are determined to tell their stories publicly, which Yang and others have done.
READ ALSO:
Savings, Tax Relief Will Be Republicans’ Top Priority In The 67th General Session
Deadline For Detroit’s Property Tax Relief Program Filling Extended
