{"id":97365,"date":"2026-01-12T15:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T15:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/97365\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T15:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T15:52:13","slug":"effie-phillips-staley-runs-for-congress-following-sexual-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/97365\/","title":{"rendered":"Effie Phillips-Staley Runs for Congress Following Sexual Assault"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFifteen years ago, Effie Phillips-Staley<\/a> gave birth to a beautiful daughter at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. It was a routine C-section \u2014 performed by the attending physician because her own obstetrician wasn\u2019t on duty \u2014 but as Phillips-Staley was leaving the hospital, her stitches opened up. She sent her husband and their new baby home with the couple\u2019s toddler, while she returned to have the incision closed.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe was waiting in an exam room when the man who delivered her baby swept in, Phillips-Staley says, \u201cacting like a hero. He tells the nurse to leave, and then ends up giving me an exam that was sexual assault.\u201d What she needed in that moment was simple: her stitches closed. Instead, the doctor proceeded to give Phillips a vaginal exam \u2014 and an exam of her entire body \u2014 offering a medical justification for each seemingly inexplicable decision he made.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was so vulnerable,\u201d Phillips-Staley recalls. \u201cI just had a baby, and my body was splayed open. I have to depend on this person. I need someone to treat this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe doctor was Robert Hadden, the notorious gynecologist\u00a0and, now, convicted sex offender accused of assaulting hundreds of patients during his more than two-decade career at Columbia\u2019s New York-Presbyterian-affiliated hospital. Hadden was sentenced in 2023 to more than 20 years in prison. In May, Columbia agreed to pay more than $750 million dollars to settle the claims of 576 former patients who say Hadden assaulted them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat settlement \u2014 like Cassie\u2019s lawsuit against Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs<\/a>, E. Jean Carroll\u2019s against Donald Trump<\/a>, as well as claims brought against Bill Cosby, Rudy Giuliani, and Andrew Cuomo \u2014\u00a0was made possible by the New York Adult Survivors Act<\/a>, signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022. The legislation allowed survivors of sex crimes to file civil lawsuits over incidents for which the statute of limitations had already lapsed.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, that law may help Democrats recapture control of the House of Representatives. Phillips-Staley is funding her campaign to defeat Rep. Mike Lawler<\/a> (R-N.Y.) \u2014 one of the Congress\u2019 most vulnerable Republicans \u2014 with money received from her own suit brought under the legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis campaign could only happen because of the New York Adult Survivors Act, in truth, because we all know how brutally expensive it is to run a campaign in the era of Citizens United,\u201d Phillips-Staley says. (Campaign finance records indicate that Phillips-Staley, who previously worked in the nonprofit space, has loaned her campaign $165,000 to date.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs she was going through the process of filing and defending her claim, Phillips-Staley watched Trump reclaim the nation\u2019s highest office \u2014 after he was found liable for sexual abuse<\/a> \u2014 then go on to install, in similarly lofty positions, a string of men<\/a> credibly accused of sex crimes.\u00a0 \u201cThe Me Too movement and the Adult Survivors Act \u2014 these are advances to enable justice that are actively being dismantled [by the Trump administration and its allies],\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWatching that dismantling lit a fire under her, one that was matched only by her frustration watching the Democratic Party fail to meaningfully engage with and activate the tens of thousands of Hispanic voters in her district.<\/p>\n

\n\tPhillips-Staley is the daughter of a Salvadoran immigrant, and she previously worked as vice president for strategic advancement at the Hispanic Federation. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason, I think, Hispanics pivoted to Trump and Lawler last time: [Republicans] were better at communicating to needs and I don\u2019t know what we [as Democrats] were doing,\u201d she says. Democrats lost both of the last two House elections in this swing district badly. \u201cWe can\u2019t keep following the same formula in terms of what it takes to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tHer plan to win back the district centers around bringing Hispanic voters, whom she says the Democratic Party here has long dismissed, back into the fold. \u201cThere are 30,000 registered Hispanic Democrats in New York\u2019s 17th. Five thousand [of them] vote, and then they\u2019re defined as \u2018low-propensity\u2019 voters, so there\u2019s no outreach. It\u2019s a self-fulfilling prophecy,\u201d Phillips-Staley says.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore she can take on Lawler, Phillips-Staley, who currently holds local office as trustee of the village of Tarrytown, will have to battle it out among the many others who want to bring Lawler down. It\u2019s a crowded field: Phillips-Staley is one of seven Democratic candidates who have declared their intention to run. They include Cait Conley, a Biden administration National Security official, Rockland County official Beth Davidson, and Briarcliff Manor\u2019s deputy mayor, Peter Chatzky, a tech entrepreneur who announced earlier this week he was putting $5 million<\/a> of his own money into his campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Republican Party currently holds a slim five-seat majority in the chamber \u2014 one that is expected to narrow even further after a runoff election in Texas later this month, where the Democrat is favored to win. New York\u2019s 17th district, meanwhile, is one of three districts nationwide currently represented by a Republican in Congress that former Vice President Kamala Harris carried in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifteen years ago, Effie Phillips-Staley gave birth to a beautiful daughter at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[45052,45053,883,9,24,55,54,56,5474],"class_list":["post-97365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-adult-survivors-act","tag-effie-phillips-staley","tag-mike-lawler","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-sexual-abuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}