Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian have agreed to pay $ 750 million to hundreds of women who were sexually abused by a former doctor who ran on prestigious New York hospitals for two decades in prestigious New York hospitals.
The agreement brings around $ 1 billion the amount paid for the misconduct of the doctor, Robert A. finished, after earlier settlements in which his former employers agreed to pay more than $ 200 million.
The Lord had been convicted of sexual crimes in 2023. Laurie Maldonado, a former patient and spokeswoman for his victims, said in a statement that this week’s civil settlement is not about money – it is about accountability. “
“Columbia University made sadistic abuse possible and now they are forced to face the truth,” she said. “We hope that this sends a clear message to each institution: survivors will not be silenced and those who protect abusers will be held responsible.”
Columbia and Newyork Presbyterian both refused to respond to messages that were commenting on Tuesday.
Anthony T. Dipietro, a lawyer for the claimants, said that the settlement was approved on Monday by the Supreme Court of New York and 576 women who had had been abused by the Lord for about two decades.
“We started this process 13 years ago, in 2012, that is before most people even heard of #metoo,” Mr Dipietro said in an interview. “It has been a long way.”
Said public prosecutors That the Lord, a former gynecologist, had abused dozens of patients since the early 1990s, including children. But the number of victims compensated by his former employers has grown to the hundreds.
The Lord had not been working as a doctor since 2012, when he was first arrested after a patient called the police and said he had sexually touched her during a medical exam.
Before that, he employed two of the elite hospitals in New York for decades. Public Prosecutors said he used the air of authority that was provided by his tires and white laboratory jacket to convince women that his insulting actions were medically necessary.
The survivors of his abuse include prominent New Yorkers, Including Evelyn YangThe wife of the former presidential candidate and the mayor of New York, Andrew Yang, who said she had been attacked by the Lord when she was seven months pregnant.
In 2016, after he had been accused of abuse by 19 patientsThe Lord agreed with a plea with the office of the public prosecutor in Manhattan, and then under Cyrus R. Vance Jr. Deal the Lord had admitted to avoid prison, but required him to uphold his medical permit and argue for lesser charges.
He was convicted in 2023 for inducing four patients to exceed state lines for studies in which he has sexually abused them, and sentenced to 20 years in prison by a federal court.
After he was convicted that year, Columbia agreed with measures intended to tackle the damage caused by his abuse.
It said that it would collaborate with a third -party researcher to “thoroughly investigate the circumstances and failures” so that the Lord had been able to abuse patients for so long, and also set up a $ 100 million settlement fund last year. That fund recently expanded the deadline For survivors to submit a claim on May 15.
Mr Dipietro said: “It seems that this could be”, the final arrangement in the long -term case against the Lord, but that the nature of abuse investigations made it difficult to know.
“It would not surprise me if more patients had been struck who have not yet emerged,” he said.
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