OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
11:43 AM – Friday, September 29, 2023
Darius Paduch, a former New York urologist, has been accused of “sadistic” and “perverted” abuse towards patients at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center.
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A new lawsuit against the hospital systems has been filed on behalf of several victims alleging that the hospitals covered up years of abuse by Paduch.
Paduch, 55, was initially arrested in April after he allegedly sexually assaulted patients, including minors, that started in 2015. Since his arrest, dozens more victims have revealed that the doctor had allegedly sexually abused them.
According to the lawsuit filed on Thursday, 58 male victims were abused 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, explained to Fox News Digital.
The lawsuit filed on Thursday also stated it had been concluded that the victims claimed that they were raped, forced to undergo surgery without anesthesia, and deliberately fed addictive opioids.
The lawsuit alleges several medical institutions as suspects along with Paduch. These include New York-Presbyterian, the Weill Cornell Medical Center, Columbia University, Northwell Health and others.
“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 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.”
Additionally, it was reported that the 55-year-old would overprescribe his patients and get them hooked on opioids in order for them to become “dependent” on him.
While “actively breaking down the patients’ boundaries,” Paduch “subjected them to inappropriate” asking them about topics regarding their sex lives and their sexual orientation. Also, he “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.
Allegedly, defendants, their trustees, agents and employees at the hospital systems knew early on exactly what Paduch was doing to their patients. However, they did not come forward to the State Office of Professional Medical Conduct or local law enforcement to report it.
Instead of reporting his behavior, the employers conspired “to conceal his crimes from the authorities, gas-light their patients, while enabling and aiding Darius A. Paduch is becoming the second-most prolific serial sexual predator in New York State History.”
The lawsuit claims that even after his employers became aware of his criminal behavior in 2017, he was still given permission to practice medicine for another six years.
The lawyer who filed Thursday’s lawsuit, Anthony T. DiPietro, has helped dozens of women file lawsuits against well known New York hospitals related to Paduch’ abuse.
“My clients and I have had enough of the cover-ups that are happening at hospitals and medical clinics across the country—and we’re doing everything possible to help change this culture by holding institutions and their enablers accountable,” DiPietro told The Daily Beast. “We look forward to exposing the administrators who failed to protect patients from this known predator. I believe the work we’re doing will help make this world a better place for our kids, grandkids, and generations to come.”
Regarding Weill Cornell Medical Center’s ethics board, it reportedly received multiple complaints from victims but tried to “buy the victims’ silence,” according to the lawsuit.
The former doctor reportedly lied about having a wife and children to preserve the ongoing 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.
Additionally, the medical center claimed 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.”
Michael Baldassare, an attorney representing Paduch in the case, refuted the allegations. Instead, he went on to recognize his client’s decades of experience in the male reproductive field.
“Not only has Dr. Paduch been a well-respected physician for 20 years, he has authored or co-authored over 80 scholarly publications in his field and served our country honorably as a Captain in the Army Reserve Medical Corps,” Baldassare told NBC New York, adding that his team “will defend this case to [the] greatest extent of the law.”
Paduch has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and is no longer associated with any of the hospitals.
If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
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