Columbia ob-gyn Robert Hadden preyed on patients at ‘most vulnerable’: feds
Disgraced Columbia University ob-gyn Robert Hadden preyed on patients who trusted him as a respected doctor when they were at their “most vulnerable,” federal prosecutors charged in their opening statement at his sex crimes trial in Manhattan on Monday.
Hadden is accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women, some of whom were pregnant at the time, when they were in his care from the 1990s up to 2012.
“They trusted him to provide this care,” Assistant US Attorney Paul Monteleone told jurors in Manhattan federal court, adding some of the victims visited Hadden for the “health of the babies they were carrying.”
“All along he was motivated … by his own sexual desires,” Monteleone said.
The prosecutor described in excruciating detail the alleged abuse Hadden inflicted, including sexually stimulating his victims, licking them and making crude remarks that had no medical basis.
One of his victims was left so traumatized, she locked herself in a bathroom at the perverted practitioner’s office and messaged her boyfriend following a visit.
“The defendant used his position of power to sexually abuse his patients for years,” Monteleone told jurors.
The first witness to take the stand, a victim identified in court as Kate Evans, graphically told jurors how Hadden sexually assaulted her during two of her last visits to him at Columbia University’s Herbert Irving Pavilion in Washington Heights in 2010 and 2011.
“I was petrified,” she said. “I knew he sexually assaulted me. It was very clear he was a sexual predator.”
Evans, who had been referred to Hadden by her sister and who said she spoke with the doctor about her home life and kids, said she was “stunned and shocked” by the abuse.
“I can’t believe someone I trusted and my family trusted would do that to me,” she told the jury.
Hadden is accused of enticing four victims to travel from out of state so he could sexually abuse them in New York. He previously pleaded guilty in state court to abusing a number of patients, as part of a controversial no-jail deal with Manhattan prosecutors.
The limits of the federal charges he faces were highlighted by his attorney, Deirdre von Dornum, in her opening statement to jurors.
“Why are we here?” von Dornum asked jurors — before telling them the only crime Hadden is accused of committing is enticing or inducing his victims to cross state lines so he could sexually abuse them.
The attorney urged jurors to “put aside feelings” about the graphic testimony they’ll hear about Hadden’s sexual abuse and focus on the “very specific technical crime charged here.”
Von Dornum said the evidence will show Hadden’s patients traveled to him as part of their routine medical treatments. He did not purposefully entice them to travel across state lines so he could abuse them, she said.
“Cancel him; condemn him; but do not convict him of a crime he did not commit,” Von Dornum said.
If convicted on all counts, Hadden faces a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office said.