Doctor Who Abused Women Sentenced to 20 Years Imprisonment
Robert A. Hadden, a gynecologist, was convicted of luring women across state lines to appointments in Manhattan where he abused them.
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| Robert Hadden was previously convicted of state charges that he abused 19 patients, but faced no prison time |
A former Manhattan gynecologist was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on Tuesday after being convicted of inducing four patients to cross state lines for examinations during which he sexually assaulted them.
The sentencing of the former doctor, Robert A. Hadden, 64, came after two days of hearings this week. The judge, Richard M. Berman, ordered Mr. Hadden to serve 20 years, the statutory maximum, concurrently on each of the four charges on which he was convicted in January. His incarceration would be followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
The federal charges stemmed from assaults against four patients who traveled from and through New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania for gynecological and obstetrics appointments.
The length of the sentence for Mr. Hadden, who has not worked as a doctor since 2012, “is appropriate given the seriousness of the offenses, the need for punishment and deterrence,” Judge Berman said.
The sentencing hearing, which began on Monday, was extended so the judge could evaluate a raft of objections from Mr. Hadden’s lawyers, which he addressed on Tuesday.
“This case is like no other in my experience,” Judge Berman said Monday, adding that Mr. Hadden’s actions were “lewd, serious, unchecked, out of control.”
On Monday, Mr. Hadden — wearing the brown undershirt and tan scrubs of a federal detention center — blew a kiss to his wife, son and other supporters seated in the front row as he walked into the courtroom. He fidgeted throughout the nearly five-hour hearing as the judge meticulously went over the trial’s transcripts — dissecting witness testimony and an evaluation of Mr. Hadden’s mental health history.
Dozens of victims, their relatives and supporters packed the seats, anxiously awaiting the judge’s official sentencing.
The hearing in the Southern District of New York was the latest chapter in the decades-long saga. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Hadden abused dozens of his patients during medical exams starting in the early 1990s.
Mr. Hadden was first arrested in 2012 when a patient called the police after an exam and said he touched her sexually. But about seven years ago, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, then under Cyrus R. Vance Jr., struck a plea deal with Mr. Hadden, who had been accused of sexually abusing 19 patients. The deal allowed him to avoid prison time.
Mr. Hadden instead gave up his medical license and pleaded guilty to a single felony count of a criminal sexual act in the third degree, and one misdemeanor count of forcible touching.
The decision brought scrutiny for former prosecutors amid a nationwide reckoning with cases of sexual assault and the legal system’s handling of them.
In 2019, about one month after Evelyn Yang, the wife of the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, told CNN in an interview that she was one of Mr. Hadden’s victims, the Manhattan district attorney’s office declared it had opened an investigation into new abuse allegations against him.
After an investigation, the office determined that any possible criminal charges were past the statute of limitation, according to a spokeswoman with the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday.
Federal charges were announced against Mr. Hadden in September 2020.
At a hearing last month, several women spoke about how the assaults had affected them in the decades since.
“The system has taken over a decade to bring justice to this horrible crime,” said Laurie Kanyok, whose report to the police in 2012 led to Mr. Hadden’s arrest.
“I have spoken one too many times in court, and implore you to make this the last time,” she told Judge Berman.
Mr. Hadden’s former employers, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, have also been sued by victims in recent years. The hospitals have reached at least two separate settlements with 226 former patients for a total of about $236 million.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/nyregion/manhattan-gynecologist-sexual-abuse-hadden.html