Robert Hadden was one of New York’s most prominent obstetrician-gynecologists, treating women and delivering babies under the auspices of two of the city’s most prestigious institutions: Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. However, behind Hadden’s stature, he had a secret.
For more than two decades, Hadden sexually abused many of his patients, authorities say. He abused around 1,000 women, and perhaps more. He told his victims, who included pregnant women and teenage girls, that his inappropriate touching was standard medical procedure.
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Victims of former OB/GYN Robert Hadden have received nearly $1 billion to settle lawsuits over his sexual abuse.
Now, after years of accusations and investigations, prosecutions and lawsuits, the university and the hospital have agreed to pay $750 million to end a lawsuit by many of Hadden’s victims. This settlement covers claims by 576 women, and hundreds more collected portions of another $200 million already paid out by Hadden’s employers.
“We deeply regret the pain that his patients suffered,” Columbia said in a statement released Tuesday, May 6, a day after a judge approved the latest settlement. “We commend the survivors for their bravery in coming forward.”
Women abused by Hadden say the financial settlement does not fully make up for what they describe as a yearslong coverup of the doctor’s crimes by Columbia and other institutions.
“Columbia University enabled abuse, and now, they’ve been forced to face the truth,” Laurie Maldonado, a spokeswoman for the victims and a former patient of Hadden’s, said in a statement to The New York Times. “We hope this sends a clear message to every institution: Survivors will not be silenced, and those who protect abusers will be held responsible.”
How common is abuse by doctors?
However, the settlement agreement does not address systemic issues that often let physicians off the hook for sexual abuse.
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A newspaper’s investigation found 3,000 doctors had been sanctioned for sexual misconduct. More than 2,000 still practiced medicine.
An investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found more than 3,000 physicians nationwide who had been sanctioned by state medical boards and other regulators for sexual misconduct with patients. Some touched patients in a sexual manner during examinations, while some conducted affairs with patients outside their medical offices. Still others committed rape or other violent offenses.
More than 2,000 of those doctors were still practicing when the Atlanta newspaper reviewed their cases. A shortage of doctors in many parts of the country, as well the prestige and respect accorded to the medical profession, often came into play when regulators decided between revoking a physician’s license or imposing a lighter punishment, the newspaper found.
No one knows precisely how many doctors have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct. In many states, patient complaints are kept secret, and regulators hand out penalties through private orders that, by law, never become public.
And even in cases where doctors’ offenses are publicly aired, few states require physicians to notify patients that they have faced sanctions for their misbehavior.
Investigations take years
Allegations against Hadden first surfaced in 2012, when a patient called the police in New York to report the doctor had touched her in a sexual manner during an examination. Hadden was placed under arrest, but Columbia allowed him to continue seeing patients after he bailed himself out of jail.
A grand jury indicted Hadden two years later on charges that he sexually abused six women. In 2016, he pleaded guilty to one felony and one misdemeanor in a deal that required him to surrender his medical license in exchange for receiving no time behind bars.
But, as the number of accusers grew, federal authorities opened a separate investigation. A jury convicted Hadden in 2023 on charges that he induced four women to cross state lines to engage in unlawful sexual activity in his office. Prosecutors said Hadden “exploited the power differential inherent in the doctor-patient relationship.”
Hadden, 66, is serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison in Kentucky. His projected release date, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, is June 4, 2039.
‘Justice and healing’
Among the strongest forces behind the investigations of Hadden were two of his victims: Marissa Hoechstetter and Evelyn Yang, the wife of businessman Andrew Yang, who ran for president in 2020.
In a statement posted this week on X, the women said the settlement brings “justice and healing” to Hadden’s victims, but they also said many women who suffered abuse have not been identified. In nearly 25 years at Columbia, they said Hadden saw more than 6,000 patients, “and we know that he abused women horrifically and indiscriminately.”
Moreover, Hoechstetter and Yang said, “throughout Hadden’s tenure, hospital personnel and administrators knew of, and covered up his sexual abuse.”
“Settlement money alone cannot restore public trust,” the women wrote. “Columbia still has significant work to do to address their role in the Hadden coverup and answer for the individual, leadership and systemic failures responsible for enabling the most prolific sexual predator in U.S. history.”
Columbia said last year it was hiring “a respected outside investigator to determine the circumstances that allowed Hadden’s abuse to continue for so long.”
The school pledged to make public the findings of the investigation, but a year later, no report has been released.
