Protecting a Predator
How Columbia University ignored women, undermined prosecutors, and allowed one of its OB/GYNs to abuse hundreds of patients.
Laurie Kanyok was 38, a professional dancer on the cusp of retirement, when she learned she was pregnant. She had already suffered one miscarriage and had recently undergone a spinal treatment that she feared would increase the risk of birth defects. Kanyok booked an appointment with an obstetrician, Dr. Robert Hadden of Columbia University. She felt grateful to be in the care of someone who had spent his entire career at such a distinguished institution.
At first, Kanyok liked Hadden, who had a soft-spoken, fatherly way. With his prim, grayish beard and wire-rimmed glasses, he reminded her of a “skinny Santa Claus,” as she later put it. But there was one time when, heels in the stirrups, she thought she felt a flicker of something moist on her vagina. During another appointment, Hadden palpated Kanyok’s cervix with such force that his fingers lifted her from the exam table. She heard him moan.
Kanyok dismissed Hadden’s strange behavior, focusing on her baby. “You put yourself aside at that point, right?” she says. “You want to see a heartbeat. You want to know that the umbilical cord isn’t wrapped around the neck. And then you want to know that you’re going to get to the finish line, deliver, and go home. That’s it.”
Six weeks after giving birth to a daughter, on a Friday in late June 2012, Kanyok returned to Columbia’s suite of offices on East 60th Street for a checkup. She looked idly at her phone as Hadden examined her. He assured her that all looked good, and the nurse chaperoning the exam left the room. Hadden started to follow her out. Then he paused, turned, and told Kanyok that he’d forgotten to check her stitches. He instructed her to lie down again.
Beneath the paper blanket covering her knees, between her legs, the assault this time was unmistakable. Kanyok jolted back and saw Hadden’s face surface, bright red. She froze as he chattered nervously and performed what he told her was a breast exam. She texted her boyfriend. “Dr Hadden just licked my vagina,” she typed. “I’m shaking And freaked out.”
Kanyok’s boyfriend ran to the street and handed $50 to a black-car driver for the short ride to Hadden’s office. He collected Kanyok and called 911 twice, first on the drive back to their apartment and again once they got inside. He struggled to articulate what had just happened. “How do you even verbalize this horrendous act of an OB/GYN from a super-renowned place like Columbia?” he recalls. He told the 911 operator that his girlfriend’s doctor had “touched her orally.”
Soon, Kanyok and her boyfriend buzzed up two NYPD officers. As the police took their statements, Kanyok’s phone rang. It was Hadden. He left a voice-mail, which Kanyok played for the group on speaker.
“Hi, Laurie, it’s Dr. Hadden calling,” he said. “It’s, like, 4:30 on Friday. You know, I just got word that you called the office and you’re upset and you’re calling the police. What — what the heck happened? What’s going on? Please, can we talk? Um. If you can, please, just give the office a call and, you know — or come back and talk face-to-face. I, I, I don’t — I don’t understand. I just know that I just got word from the — first from the secretary and then from our office manager and the nurse. So I’m very upset. I don’t know what’s going on. So please, please, call me back. All right. Take care.”
The officers glanced at each other and then at Kanyok. “F*** him,” she remembers them saying. “Let’s go get this pig.”
Hadden was arrested at his office later that Friday. Mary D’Alton, the head of Columbia’s OB/GYN department, went to the clinic when she heard police were on the scene. Meanwhile, a squad car took Kanyok to St. Luke’s hospital for a rape-kit examination, then to meet with a prosecutor. She returned home around 11 p.m. After a long shower, she peeked in at her baby. My daughter’s asleep, she recalls thinking, and I am safe. Everybody is safe.
Kanyok didn’t know that Hadden had already been released from custody. On Saturday, police spoke with the department’s administrator, Jeanne Dellicarri. On Monday, Hadden received a hand-delivered letter from Columbia. “Dear Bob,” it began. “I write to inform you of the position of the University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital with respect to the allegations against you currently being investigated by the New York City Police Department.” The letter said that if Hadden had a chaperone with him while examining patients, and if he complied with all university and hospital policies, he was free to “resume clinical activities.” The document was signed by Hadden’s immediate supervisor, John Evanko. He cc’d D’Alton; Robert Kelly, then the president of NewYork-Presbyterian, the Columbia-affiliated hospital system in which Hadden was an attending doctor; and Lee Goldman, then the dean of Columbia’s medical school, where Hadden was a member of the faculty. On Tuesday, Hadden was back in the exam room. Columbia let him continue practicing for another five weeks. At least eight of those patients say he assaulted them.
Columbia University — where Robert Hadden spent his entire medical career — has never fully accounted for its role in allowing a predator to operate unchecked for decades. To date, more than 245 patients have alleged that Hadden abused them, which by itself could make him one of the most prolific sexual assailants in New York history. But the total number of victims may be far higher. On any given day during his two decades of practice at Columbia, Hadden saw 25 to 40 patients. Tens of thousands came under his care. A baby girl he delivered grew up to be a teenager he allegedly assaulted.
Hadden, 65, was sentenced in July to 20 years in federal prison — the result of a long, arduous process that Columbia often undermined. One of the country’s most acclaimed private universities was deeply involved in containing, deflecting, and distancing itself from the scandal at every step.
In agreeing to pay $236.5 million to resolve lawsuits brought by 226 of Hadden’s victims, Columbia admitted no fault, which is in keeping with public statements over the years placing the blame for what happened solely on Hadden. But the university’s own records show that women repeatedly tried to warn doctors and staff about Hadden. At least twice, the fact that Hadden’s bosses in the OB/GYN department knew of the women’s concerns was acknowledged in writing. They allowed him to continue practicing.
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