Victims of convicted gynecologist confront him during sentencing hearing

Nearly 11 years after Laurie Kanyok left her Manhattan gynecologist’s office and reported him for sexual assault, she faced him again in federal court.

The 4,016 days since she called the police on June 29, 2012 to tell them about Robert A. Hadden had been measured from ear to ear as she told and retold the story of her abuse. It was years “riddled with injustice, confusion and heartbreak,” she told the court on Wednesday.

“It has taken the system more than a decade to do justice to this horrible crime,” she told the federal judge who will decide Mr. Hadden’s sentence: “I have spoken too many times in court and I beg you to this lately.”

The sentencing hearing, attended by about two dozen victims, their families and supporters, was the first of two for the former Manhattan gynecologist; at the second, on July 24, he will be sentenced by Judge Richard M. Berman. Mr Hadden was convicted in January of inducing patients to cross state lines for appointments which they thought were routine examinations but were in fact grounds for sexual assault.

On Wednesday, Mr. Hadden, 64, sat at the defense table to the right of the lectern where 11 women spoke. Mr. Hadden’s wife and son, who had been sitting in the rows behind him during the trial, were absent. He wore the brown undershirt and tan scrub of a federal detention center and sat looking straight ahead, sometimes glancing at the women speaking.

Cases against Mr. Hadden, who lost his medical license and has not practiced as a doctor since 2012, have moved through state and federal courts over the past decade. He first admitted to being sexually assaulted six years ago, but made a plea deal between the state and the court that kept him from serving a sentence.

Mr. Hadden’s case, along with revelations about the treatment of wealthy sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, sparked an investigation into how the Manhattan district attorney, then headed by Cyrus R. Vance Jr., handled such crimes.

Mr. Hadden, who worked as a gynecologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was arrested in 2012 after a patient told police he harassed her during an exam. He was charged in 2014, and prosecutors said more than a dozen other women had accused him of similar misconduct during medical appointments as far back as the 1990s.

But two years later, prosecutors agreed not to seek jail time for Mr. Hadden and pledged not to bring any new sexual assault charges against him. Under the agreement, his sex offender status would end after 20 years.

Years later, federal prosecutors filed a case against Mr. Hadden, taking a tougher stance than the state.

In 2020, federal prosecutors charged him in a case that stemmed from attacks on four patients traveling to and through New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania for gynecology and obstetric appointments.

“Hadden acted like a predator in a white coat,” said Audrey Strauss, who was then the acting US attorney in Manhattan.

In recent years, hospitals where he has been employed have reached at least two separate settlements with 226 former patients totaling approximately $236 million.

Throughout the proceedings, more than 70 victims testified in court or in writing, said Jane Kim, an assistant US attorney.

“Today is about the victims in this case,” she said in court. “This has been a long and painful path for them.”

On Wednesday, the women told how Mr. Hadden abused the trust they had in him as a doctor and in the medical facilities he worked for, to systematically and repeatedly abuse them.

“We have to do better,” Ms. Kanyok said. “Robert Hadden had a long history of sexual abuse that was hidden until now.”