Dozens of victims deliver emotional impact statements in sex abuse trial of OB-GYN Robert Hadden
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Victims of convicted sexual predator Robert Hadden delivered emotional impact statements in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday.
Hadden, 64, of Englewood, New Jersey, was convicted in January of enticing victims to cross state lines so he could sexually abuse them.
Seventy-eight victims were heard from during the trial; eleven of them gave victim impact statements to Judge Richard M. Berman before he sentences Hadden next month.
Victim one called Hadden, "a sexual predator disguised in a white coat."
Victim two testified she's been living in fear and blaming herself... "how many other women could I have saved if I had spoken up sooner?"
Victim six said she was highly vulnerable as she was 17-years-old, pregnant and undocumented when Hadden abused her.
Victim seven was shaking, violently as she went into excruciating detail about how she was sexually assaulted at every single visit over several years, as her husband and 15-year-old daughter sat in the courtroom.
Victim eight testified, "I'm so broken that day-to-day survival is a challenge."
At the trial, Hadden's lawyers did not dispute that he had molested patients, but they said he was already prosecuted for those crimes in state court, where Hadden pleaded guilty in 2016 to allegations that he had abused several women. That plea required him to surrender his medical license, but he served no time behind bars.
Prosecutors said in their papers that Hadden's "calculated career as a serial sexual predator" began soon after he started working in 1987 at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, which later became New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
Trial evidence proved Hadden committed from 167 to 310 acts of sexual abuse or assault on dozens of patients as he honed his abuse techniques so the assaults would go undetected for over 20 years, prosecutors wrote.
They said he built rapport with victims in a private office decorated with pictures of his children and put them at ease by asking about their personal lives and talking about his family.
Eventually, he sought sexual gratification when he asked victims "detailed, inappropriate, and medically unnecessary questions and provided unsolicited advice and commentary about their bodies, pubic hair, masturbation, sexual activity, sex toys, pornography, and sexual partners," prosecutors said.
They said he devised ways to get nurses and medical assistants to leave him alone with patients in the examination room, where he pretended that he needed to "conduct a fake second exam, during which time he sexually assaulted patients."
Prosecutors said they learned that Hadden assaulted "a staggering number of victims ... under the guise of medical care."
He worked at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital until complaints about his attacks shut down his career. The institutions have agreed to pay more than $236 million to settle civil claims by more than 200 former patients.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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