If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
A new lawsuit against NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, filed on behalf of dozens of victims, alleges that the hospital systems covered up years of abuse by disgraced urologist Dr. Darius Paduch.
Paduch, a 55-year-old former urologist at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, was initially arrested in April after he was accused of sexually assaulting patients, including minors, beginning in 2015.
Since then, dozens more alleged victims have come forward accusing the doctor of sexual abuse, and the new lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of 58 male victims states that the alleged abuse went on between 2003 and 2022.
"I've been at this for the past 11 years. Every time the story has run, people call. That's just how it's been for over a decade. I know there are thousands of patients out there that just don't know that what he was doing was sexual exploitation and abuse," attorney Anthony T. DiPietro, who is filing a new lawsuit on behalf of dozens more alleged victims in New York Supreme Court, told Fox News Digital.
PROMINENT NEW YORK UROLOGIST CHARGED WITH SERIAL SEX ABUSE AGAINST PATIENTS, INCLUDING MINORS
The lawsuit names Paduch, NY-Presbyterian, the Weill Cornell Medical Center, Columbia University and others as defendants.
"For nearly two decades, [Paduch] pretended to practice medicine in the field of Urology, while instead engaging in a career of racketeering, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, and sex-trafficking of both minors and adults," the lawsuit filed Thursday states.
The lawsuit continues, "During this time, [Paduch] acted as a disgusting, sadistic, and perverted sexual predator who used his esteemed and trusted position with [defendants] to sexually groom, exploit, abuse, rape, molest, fondle, sodomize, and commit various acts of physical, verbal, and sexual assault and battery on thousands of patients, including the plaintiffs herein, all under the pretense of providing legitimate, medically necessary, medical care."
Paduch would also allegedly overprescribe his patients and get them hooked on opioids so that they would become "dependent" on him over time.
While "actively breaking down the patients' boundaries," Paduch "subjected them to inappropriate" questioning on topics from their sex lives to their sexual orientation, and "peppered each of them with a series of irrelevant questions for long periods while ogling, groping, touching, penetrating, and objectifying each of their unclothed bodies and penises," the lawsuit states.
Defendants and their trustees, agents and employees allegedly "knew, early on, exactly what [Paduch] was doing to their patients" but did not take action against the former doctor.
Weill Cornell's ethics board apparently received direct complaints from victims and attempted to "buy the victims’ silence," the lawsuit says.
DISGRACED NYC GYNECOLOGIST SHOULD FACE AT LEAST 25 YEARS FOR SERIAL SEXUAL ASSAULTS: PROSECUTORS
Weill Cornell Medical Center told Fox News Digital in a statement that it "values the care and safety of our patients above all else."
"The conduct described in these suits is extremely disturbing, and we feel deeply for all those involved," the statement said. "No patient who entrusts us with their care should ever experience such appalling behavior. We continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement and are committed to maintaining the highest professional and ethical standards."
Columbia University could not immediately be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear if Paduch had an attorney representing him in the lawsuit.
Paduch allegedly lied about having a wife and children to perpetuate the apparent lie that he was heterosexual and married "with the sole intention of grooming, distracting, normalizing the abuse, and disarming the patients, so he could prolong the time he had access to their bodies while pretending that everything he was doing to them was clinical in nature," according to the complaint.
The allegations come months after Dr. Robert Hadden, an OB-GYN at Columbia/NY-Presbyterian, was sentenced in June to 20 years in prison for enticing four victims to travel between states to engage in sexual activity.
FLORIDA TEACHER, DISNEY EMPLOYEES AMONG 219 ARRESTED IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING OPERATION: AUTHORITIES
Over the years, DiPietro has helped dozens of women file lawsuits against the prominent New York hospital systems related to Paduch's and Hadden's alleged abuse. Evelyn Yang, the wife of former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang, was one of the first to publicly voice allegations against Hadden.
In a new true-crime podcast called "Exposed: Cover-Up at Columbia University," Evelyn Yang said that after she came forward with her own allegations, dozens of other women followed suit.
"All at once, I learned that dozens of women, at least, came forward right away. That number kept getting higher and higher," she told the podcast.
Trial evidence has suggested Hadden committed sexual abuse against dozens of victims — his patients — for more than 20 years, using his position as a doctor to make inappropriate comments, touch his patients in a sexual manner and give patients unsolicited advice about their sex lives, prosecutors said.
"These predators are really good at doing something so horrific," DiPietro said. However, while the "Robert Haddens of the world" and the "Larry Nassars of the world" are "sick," he said it is the institutions they work for "that lie, gaslight and cover up for these predators instead of protecting patients."
