MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, Manhattan (WABC) — A culture of silence at Columbia University allowed a doctor to sexually abuse hundreds of women for decades, according to the findings of a new independent report.
Robert Hadden, the former Columbia University OBGYN, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for sexually assaulting dozens of women beginning in the 1980s through 2012.
On Tuesday, the results of an external investigation commissioned by two of his former employers, Columbia and New-York Presbyterian Hospital, was revealed.
According to the report, a culture at Columbia protected Hadden from allegations of abuse.
Among its key findings were ineffective medical chaperoning, barriers to reporting misconduct and a culture that suppressed or discouraged it, a lack of reporting procedure, and insufficient record-keeping, which allowed Hadden to keep working after his 2012 sex crimes arrest on state charges.
“Just another ingredient in their stew of cover up and deception,” said former patient Laurie Kanyok.
Kanyok is one of the survivors who testified in Hadden’s 2023 federal trial.
In a statement the university added, “While we cannot undo the harm of the past, we are firmly committed to ensuring that nothing like this can happen again.”
Columbia has already established a $100 million survivors settlement fund and settled with more than a thousand former patients for over a billion dollars.
The accusations of abuse stretched for nearly two decades.
“It’s just money and I hate to be so flippant about it but you can’t take away the actions. You can’t take away the pain,” Kanyok said.
“It’s extremely inadequate, insufficient, especially for a report that took almost three years to generate,” said former patient Evelyn Yang.
Yang says Columbia’s promise to strengthen and improve training, protocols, and oversight is the bare minimum.
Meanwhile, two prominent university leaders are stepping down following the release of the report, but Yang says the problem is the scope of the investigation.
“The entire period where after he was arrested where survivors and advocates, student advocates and faculty advocates, experienced things like silencing and other intimidation tactics. None of this cover-up is reported,” Yang said.
Separately, the state attorney general is investigating Columbia for its handling of sex abuse claims.
Survivors say they hope that investigation leads to true accountability.
Columbia declined comment on the investigation.
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