Lawyers for a Columbia University gynecologist convicted of sexually abusing hundreds of women during his career have asked the judge to hand him a three-year sentence despite state prosecutors wanting him to serve 25.
Robert Hadden, 64, made a career from the late 1980s until 2012 in prestigious New York hospitals – institutions that have since agreed to pay more than 200 former patients a total $236million to settle civil claims.
Federal prosecutors said he leveraged his position of power for decades to sexually assault, rape and molest patients in fake and predatorial medical exams.
Now, the public defender representing him has described the state’s call that he serve 25 years in prison as ‘staggering’ and ‘extraordinarily disturbing’, according to a report from The New York Daily News.
Robert Hadden, 64, made a career from the late 1980s until 2012 in prestigious New York hospitals and was convicted in January of sexually assaulting women throughout
Evelyn Yang, the wife of former presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, revealed in 2020 that she was preyed upon by Hadden eight years prior
Former Broadway dancer Laurie Kanyok was also among the accusers who brought a civil suit against trustees of Columbia University
Among Hadden’s accusers was Evelyn Yang, the wife of the former presidential and New York City mayoral candidate, Andrew Yang.
Former Broadway dancer Laurie Kanyok was also among the accusers who brought a civil suit against trustees of Columbia University and its affiliated College of Physicians and Surgeons and New York Presbyterian Hospital.Â
‘In its zeal to persuade this Court to give Mr. Hadden the equivalent of a life sentence, no matter what the facts or law, the government takes extreme positions better suited to our current political discourse than a brief from a litigant with special responsibilities in our system of justice,’ his attorney Deirdre von Dornum wrote.
In January, Hadden was convicted of enticing victims to cross state lines so he could sexually abuse them
‘The government’s entire brief reads like a one-sided, cable news opinion piece,’ she added.
Von Dornum also argued prosecutors had ignored the opinion of a psychiatrist who told the court Hadden would be unable to reoffend because he is no longer a gynecologist.
She also said the Manhattan US attorney’s office had disregarded Hadden’s role as the primary caretaker of his disabled wife and son.
‘The government’s position is on one level understandable. The pain Mr. Hadden has caused is immeasurable – emotional harm always is – and there is a real need for punishment to recognize the harm caused,’ his attorney wrote.
‘It is for that reason that we do not ask for leniency for this 64-year-old first-time offender who has not committed a crime in over a decade and has extraordinarily compelling family circumstances, but instead ask for a Guidelines sentence.’
In January, Hadden was convicted of enticing victims to cross state lines so he could sexually abuse them. At trial, nine former patients testified.
Hadden has lost 35 pounds and repeatedly been threatened with violence at a federal jail in Brooklyn, leading him to stay in his cell except to shower or call family members, the lawyers said.
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 he 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.
Robert Hadden leaves Manhattan federal court on January 9
Once victim said she blamed Columbia for not heeding complaints about Hadden and warning signs. Pictured is the university’s New York City campus
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.’
He worked at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital until complaints about his attacks ended his career.
As part of his sentencing hearing nearly a dozen women made emotional statements about their continuing pain as they asked the judge to keep him behind bars for as long as possible.
‘Robert Hadden is a sexual predator disguised in a white coat,’ said one woman, who spoke under the pseudonym Emily Anderson.Â
Amy Yoney, who was employed by Columbia as a research nurse in the Department of Cardiology, said outside the courthouse that she was a victim of Hadden herself for nearly 12 years and feels ‘intense guilt’ that she referred her best friend and others to Hadden, thinking he was a trusted physician.
‘He walks into the courtroom and he acts like he’s at happy hour. He waves, he looks around. I think he is a true sociopath,’ she said.
Yoney said she blamed Columbia for not heeding complaints about Hadden and warning signs.
Attorney Anthony T. Dipietro, who represents numerous Hadden victims, said women continue to surface to say they too were victims of Hadden.
He said he believes Hadden treated between 6,000 and 8,000 women and that his victims number in the ‘hundreds, if not thousands.’Â
