Trial of Dr. Robert Hadden: Former Columbia University OBGYN found guilty of federal sex trafficking

New York — A gynecologist who molested patients during his decades of work was found guilty of federal sex trafficking charges Tuesday after nine former patients told a New York jury how a doctor they trusted sexually attacked them when they were most vulnerable.

A Manhattan federal court jury returned its verdict less than a day later in the case against Robert Hadden, 64, who worked at two prestigious Manhattan hospitals — Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital — until complaints about his attacks were closed. his career a decade ago.

Note: The video in the player above is from a previous report.

The institutions have already agreed to pay more than $236 million to settle civil claims from more than 200 former patients.

Hadden’s attorneys admitted their client had sexually abused patients, but said his guilty plea in state court seven years ago put those crimes behind him.

Prosecutors said the federal charges were appropriate because Hadden, of Englewood, NJ, lured the women across state lines so he could attack them.

Defense attorneys argued he did not know the patients came from other states, including New Jersey and Nevada.

After the verdict was handed down, US Attorney General Damian Williams issued a statement calling Hadden a “predator in a white coat”.

“For years,” he said, “he had cruelly lured women seeking professional medical care into his offices in order to gratify himself. Hadden’s victims trusted him as a doctor, only to become victims of his vile inclinations.”

The ruling came at the conclusion of a two-week trial that included a parade of former patients who described how the doctor asked them about their personal lives, including their sexual experiences, before inappropriately touching them on the breasts or between their legs.

The indictment accused Hadden of sexually assaulting patients from 1993 until at least 2012, though the prosecutor noted during closing arguments Monday that a nurse testified he harassed patients in the late 1980s.

“He put on his white coat and swore all the doctors ‘to cause no harm,’ and then did the exact opposite,” Assistant US Attorney Gene Kim told the jury.

She said he tried to “hide behind his white coat” and the prestige of Columbia University as he won over vulnerable patients before sexually assaulting them.

In closing, defense attorney Katherine Wozencroft said that what some of Hadden’s patients suffered at his hands was “disgusting and horrible,” but that his conviction in state court covers those crimes.

She said the federal charges were inappropriate because she asked Hadden to lure his victims to cross state lines when he was unaware in advance of which patients he would treat each day and where they came from.

Among the former patients who have spoken out is Evelyn Yang, whose husband, Andrew Yang, is running unsuccessfully as a Democrat for president in 2020 and for mayor of New York City in 2022.

In 2020, she said that Hadden sexually assaulted her eight years earlier, even when she was seven months pregnant. She described the verdict in the state case as a “slap on the wrist”.

The Associated Press generally withholds the names of sexual assault victims from stories unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, which Yang et al. have done.