NEW YORK — A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former Columbia University gynecologist Robert Hadden guilty of enticing patients to New York City to sexually abuse under the guise of giving them medical care.
Jurors took less than three hours to deliberate the case after hearing two weeks of evidence.
The verdict caps a stunning downfall for Hadden, whose patients have pressured New York authorities for more than a decade to hold him criminally accountable for sexual abuse they suffered at his hands.
Hadden faces up to 80 years in prison when sentenced in April, but his victims say they’re serving life terms.
“I have had the memory of his fingers and his face and his giddiness as he touched me,” victim Jessica Sell Chambers said in court. “He has sentenced us to thousands of years of memories and trauma.”
Sell Chambers and other women urged U.S. District Judge Richard Berman to remand Hadden until he is sentenced, but the jurist agreed to let the disgraced doctor stay out on a $1 million bond at his home in Englewood, New Jersey.
That decision led one of the victims, a woman named Adina, to rise up from a spectator bench and question how the judge could allow a “sexual predator” to go home and care for his disabled wife and son, which Berman conceded was a valid point.
Hadden was convicted in 2016 of committing a perverted sexual act and forcibly touching two women in a widely criticized plea deal that did not require him to serve prison time.
“Robert Hadden was a predator in a white coat. For years, he cruelly lured women who sought professional medical care to his offices in order to gratify himself,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
“Hadden’s victims trusted him as a physician, only to instead become victims of his heinous predilection. We thank and commend the brave women who came forward to tell their stories, many of whom testified at trial, to end his years-long cycle of abuse.”
Jurors heard testimony from two nurses who said they witnessed Hadden abuse patients as far back as the late 1980s. They heard from nine victims who testified about him sexually abusing them between 1998 and 2012, which prosecutors said revealed a longstanding pattern. Evidence showed that Hadden abused patients of all ages, including some who were pregnant.
In her closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Kim said Hadden committed the abuse while hiding under the cloak of his white doctor’s coat and “the prestige of Columbia University.”
Hadden was not charged with sex abuse crimes in the federal case. It centered on four women the feds said he enticed to travel from out of state so he could abuse and molest them.
His lawyers sought to convince jurors that the underlying sex abuse allegations were irrelevant to the case.
Asking panelists to “be frustrated” with the Manhattan DA, Congress and the federal case, Hadden’s lawyer Kathryn Wozencroft requested they set aside their feelings about the abuse allegations and focus solely on the charges alleging he lured them to his practice.
“Robert Hadden didn’t induce people to cross state lines. He just didn’t,” Wozencroft said in her closing argument. “Do not convict him of a crime he didn’t commit.”
The victims in both Hadden’s state and federal cases represent a fraction of the more than 350 former patients who have accused him of abuse since allegations came to light in 2012, one of the first women to come forward, Marissa Hoechstetter, said in court.
Laurie Kanyok, the first woman to report Hadden to authorities, told Judge Berman that every time she’s appeared in court the doctor managed to evade justice.
She told the court the physical and psychological pain, and torture Hadden caused his victims meant “we walk the earth free, but we are not free.”
In October, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian announced an ongoing $165 million settlement with 147 of Hadden’s alleged victims. It came after a similar deal in 2021 when the institutions paid 79 of his former patients $71 million.
Evelyn Yang, married to former New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, is among Hadden’s former patients to publicly accuse him of assault. She said Hadden sexually abused her during an OBGYN visit when she was seven months pregnant in 2012.
She was overcome with emotion in the courtroom listening to other women recount their abuse, and said she felt validated by the jury coming back so quickly.
“When I came forward publicly about Hadden in 2020, it was almost three years ago to this date. I knew that there were others who had been affected by him, but I had no idea it would be hundreds of women,” she said.
“And when hundreds of women came forward, they were told, ‘It’s too bad. You’re too late.’ And that’s horrible. I thought there has to be something that we can do.”
Yang was among a group of Hadden’s alleged victims who lobbied New York lawmakers to pass the Adult Survivors Act, which went into effect in November. The legislation created a one-year look-back period for victims of sexual assault to sue their alleged assailants no matter how long ago the abuse allegedly occurred.
Hadden left court with his wife, son, and a family friend without commenting.
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