Disgraced Columbia University ob-gyn Robert Hadden preyed on patients who trusted him as a respected doctor when they were at their “most vulnerable,” federal prosecutors charged in their opening statement at his sex crimes trial in Manhattan on Monday.
Hadden is accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women, some of whom were pregnant at the time, when they were in his care from the 1990s up to 2012.
“They trusted him to provide this care,” Assistant US Attorney Paul Monteleone told jurors in Manhattan federal court, adding some of the victims visited Hadden for the “health of the babies they were carrying.”
“All along he was motivated … by his own sexual desires,” Monteleone said.
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| Robert Hadden accused of abusing numerous patients seated at defense table surrounded by his defense team. |
The prosecutor described in excruciating detail the alleged abuse Hadden inflicted, including sexually stimulating his victims, licking them and making crude remarks that had no medical basis.
"The defendant used his position of power to sexually abuse his patients for years,” Monteleone told jurors.
The first witness to take the stand, a victim identified in court as Kate Evans, graphically told jurors how Hadden sexually assaulted her during two of her last visits to him at Columbia University’s Herbert Irving Pavilion in Washington Heights in 2010 and 2011.
“I was petrified,” she said. “I knew he sexually assaulted me. It was very clear he was a sexual predator.”
Evans, who had been referred to Hadden by her sister and who said she spoke with the doctor about her home life and kids, said she was “stunned and shocked” by the abuse.
“I can’t believe someone I trusted and my family trusted would do that to me,” she told the jury.
Hadden is accused of enticing four victims to travel from out of state so he could sexually abuse them in New York. He previously pleaded guilty in state court to abusing a number of patients, as part of a controversial no-jail deal with Manhattan prosecutors.
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