Robert Hadden, a disgraced Obstetrician-Gynecologist (OB/GYN) who worked for Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was criminally convicted in 2016 of sexually exploiting and abusing patients under the guise of medical care.
Hadden used his position of authority and trust to sexually exploit women and girls for nearly 25 years as a Columbia University physician.
All the while, Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital administrators turned their backs and ignored reports of Hadden’s abuse, gaslighting patients and the public.
While hundreds of Hadden’s victims have already come forward, thousands of other women have not yet had their day in court.
Even though a State Agency directed that all of Hadden’s patients be notified of his criminal conviction, Columbia University has refused to notify thousands of patients that Hadden lost his license due to sexual misconduct he committed throughout his career.
We believe the women and girls who were exposed to Hadden deserve to be informed, and they deserve their day in court.
They deserve the opportunity to hold the University accountable for this cover-up.
You may be eligible to file a Robert Hadden sexual abuse lawsuit if you or a loved one experienced sexual exploitation or abuse by Robert Hadden at Columbia University or its affiliated hospitals between 1987 and 2016.
Our goal is to hold Columbia University accountable for the abuse they allowed Robert Hadden to commit so that this kind of thing isn’t allowed to happen again.
If you have information about Hadden’s abuse—or Columbia’s decades-long cover-up—please get in touch with us at (212) 233-3600.
We promise total confidentiality and 100% anonymity.
Contact Anthony T. DiPietro for a free consultation, or use the confidential chatbot on this page to see if you qualify to file a claim instantly.
Robert Hadden has been convicted on four federal charges. He now faces life in prison.
The fight to hold those accountable for the abuse of women and girls for decades at Columbia University’s medical facilities is not over. The DiPietro Law Firm is filing a new round of lawsuits against the institutions that enabled Robert Hadden.
Contact us today for a free and confidential consultation.
The DiPietro Law Firm secured a record-setting $165 million dollar settlement against Columbia University and its related entities (Over $1.1 million on a per-person case average).
This settlement, added to an earlier settlement of over $ 71 million, brings Mr. DiPietro’s clients a total recovery of over $ 236 million against Columbia University and Robert Hadden.
But there is more work to be done. Columbia University has refused to notify thousands of its patients about Hadden’s history of exploitation and abuse, and countless other women are continuing the fight to hold Columbia accountable.
Even if you’re just learning about Columbia and Hadden’s cover-up for the first time, there is still time.
New York’s Adult Survivors Act is going into effect now.
Call us to learn more about what we’re doing to increase patient safety, spread awareness about Columbia’s thirty-year cover-up, and hold Columbia accountable at (212) 233-3600.
If you were subjected to sexually inappropriate commentary, touching, testing, examinations, grooming or sexual abuse by Robert Hadden at Columbia University between 1987 and 2016 — or have information to report about the sexual exploitation and abuse of patients — please contact us at (212) 233-3600.
Over 236 women and girls have come forward to report abuse by Columbia-Presbyterian sexual predator OB/GYN Robert Hadden.
The total number of women and girls who are affected is currently unknown, but is believed to be in the thousands.
Despite being a known sexual predator, Columbia University allowed Hadden to perform repeated PAP smears and other invasive procedures on unsuspecting women and children for no legitimate medical purpose.
Patients were often tricked into scheduling appointments with Hadden multiple times a year, while being told by Hadden they needed invasive testing for various made-up medical conditions.
Countless patients were exploited in this manner, along with their health insurance companies, and thousands of women may still not know it happened to them.
Despite being ordered to inform Hadden’s patients that he no longer had a medical license, Columbia University and New York Presbyterian Hospital have concealed all of it from the public.
If you were subjected to sexually inappropriate commentary, touching, testing, examinations, or sexual abuse by Robert Hadden at Columbia University between 1987 and 2016 — or have information to report about the sexual exploitation and abuse of patients — please contact us at (212) 233-3600.
With the help of Columbia University, Robert Hadden has become the most prolific serial sexual predator in New York’s history.
The sexual felon recorded over 30,000 patient visits during his tenure at Columbia and NYP Hospital.
During this time, Hadden sexually exploited and abused single women, married women, pregnant women, recent mothers, and minors—including those he had previously delivered.
Hadden routinely attempted to conceal his sexual abuse as medically necessary procedures.
Hadden often gained his patients’ trust by sexually grooming them during their visits to Columbia’s medical clinics.
Many of the “examinations” that Hadden required were wholly medically unnecessary and performed simply to gain access to their bodies.
One such example was his insistence that women return to see him every couple of months so that he could perform PAP smears for what he cryptically referred to as “your condition.”
Countless women assumed their condition was potentially life-threatening, such as cancer or pre-cancer.
However, a review of hundreds of patient medical records has revealed that no such condition ever existed.
Instead, the only reason that Hadden was targeting these patients was so that he could digitally rape them regularly.
After Hadden was convicted of committing multiple sexual assaults by the Manhattan District Attorney in 2016, he was arrested again in September 2020.
He was charged with six federal counts of “enticing and inducing patients to travel interstate” – so that he could abuse them by engaging in illegal sexual activity under the guise of medical care and treatment.
On January 24, 2023, Robert Hadden was convicted on four of the six counts. Each of these charges carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, meaning he will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss has stated:
“As alleged, between 1993 and 2012, Robert Hadden sexually abused dozens of women and girls during Ob/Gyn examinations at his medical offices in Manhattan.
Hadden allegedly used the examinations of his victims for his own sexual gratification, abusing dozens of victims over a nearly 20-year period, including multiple minor girls, one of whom Hadden had himself delivered.
The allegations show that Hadden acted as a predator in a white coat.
He allegedly used the cover of conducting medical examinations to engage in sexual abuse that he passed off as normal and medically necessary when it was neither normal nor necessary – it was criminal.
I want to thank and commend the brave women who were willing to come forward to tell us what happened to them, without whom these charges could not have been brought.”
It is virtually impossible for one individual to single-handedly sexually exploit and abuse thousands of people.
As we’ve seen in similar cases, it takes a village—of idiots—to help conceal the sexual abuse from patients and the public at large.
Internal reports and witnesses prove that the serial sexual abuse committed by Robert Hadden was not only known to Columbia University but was covered up by several of the highest-ranking administrators within the University.
Simply put, the sexual crimes that Hadden committed were aided and abetted by two-separate Chairpeople and the University’s General Counsel.
Hadden’s ties within Columbia University reached all the way to the top.
The cover-up involving Hadden’s serial sexual abuse of women is exemplified by Columbia University’s “Catch & Kill” strategy.
When news reports started circulating about Hadden’s abuse of patients, Columbia’s lawyers devised a plan to contain the spread.
Their plan included the referral of reports telling all employees who received reports of abuse by Hadden’s survivors to direct those women to Columbia’s legal department immediately—and not to law enforcement.
Rather than taking complaints seriously or sending relevant information to the authorities, Columbia’s lawyers would offer a hush-money settlement to those patients.
Such settlement offers included a mandate that the women sign Columbia’s non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
Those NDAs had the real-life effect of scaring survivors into thinking they were prevented from speaking out about the abuse they suffered in Columbia medical facilities.
However, the reality is far different.
Courts in New York have held that it is 100% against Public Policy (and illegal) to prevent a victim from reporting a crime to a lawyer or the authorities simply because the victim signed an NDA.
If you, or someone you know, has information about Colombia’s Cover-up but is afraid to speak out because of an NDA, we’re here to help.
Columbia’s attempted cover-up of Hadden’s sexual abuse over multiple decades speaks to the lengths to which institutions that harbor abusers will go to shirk their responsibilities of patient safety.
If you have information that will help us hold Columbia accountable, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at (212) 233-3600.
All consultations are 100% anonymous and free.
Serial sexual predators rarely work alone.
Access and status provided by institutions continually enable their actions.
It’s nearly impossible for a single sexual predator to abuse hundreds of patients.
Years of analysis and countless examples prove that serial sexual predators must align themselves with permissive institutions to carry out their misconduct.
Institutions, such as Columbia University, owe a duty to patients and are required to police their own staff.
Here’s why:
If a person is assaulted on the street, they will call the police.
The police will then come, arrest, and prosecute the wrongdoer.
But experience has shown us that when a patient is assaulted in a place like a university or a hospital by a staff member, the victims will most often report the misconduct to the corporate institution where the assault happened.
The corporation literally stands in the position of policing its own employees. The conflict of interest is apparent.
Whenever we see a story emerge about a serial predator (whether it be at a university, religious institution, or other corporation), what we’re really seeing is the failure of private companies to police themselves.
Or, more directly, we’re seeing the choice that the company’s administrators have made to put corporate interests over the interests of victims and survivors.
The evidence shows that Columbia University and its affiliated clinics have killed countless reports about Hadden’s sexual exploitation and abuse throughout his career.
What’s worse is that medical personnel are mandated reporters under New York laws.
In other words, all medical personnel licensed in New York must report acts of professional misconduct to the authorities under N.Y. Social Services Law § 491.
Despite receiving repeated complaints about Hadden’s sexual abuse of patients, Columbia administrators not only allowed Robert Hadden to continue seeing women, but they also allowed him to do it in a wholly unsupervised manner.
The American Medical Association requires the implementation of written policies regarding the availability of chaperones at all medical facilities that provide gynecological services.
By allowing Hadden, a known sexual predator, to see patients in a manner that was completely unsupervised, Columbia University acted recklessly and must be held accountable for the harm they have caused.
While the Robert Haddens of the world are clearly deranged, they are not the problem—they’re merely a symptom.
As we have seen with far too many other institutions, the real “problem” that exists in cases of serial sexual exploitation and abuse is the institutional actors who enable the abuse by:
We will continue to encourage state and federal prosecutors to use the laws available to them, including RICO charges, to bring these institutions to justice for conspiring to cover the tracks of their sexual predator employees.
In 2013, Columbia University tried to gaslight women by sending out a bogus “Dear Patient” letter to all of their patients who they exposed to Hadden’s abuse.
Instead of telling patients that Hadden had been arrested for making oral contact with a patient during a bogus pelvic exam, the letter implied that Hadden had chosen to close his practice (as if it was his decision).
The letter further insinuated how grateful these patients should be to Columbia because the University would try to offer these women the opportunity to continue care with another of Hadden’s “excellent partners.”
Unbeknownst to patients but well known to the OBGYN Chairperson who wrote the letter, Hadden was under an active criminal investigation for licking a patient—which was just the latest sexual assault Hadden had committed in his long career of sexual assaults.
One week after Columbia mailed the letter, Hadden was indicted for the felony assault of multiple patients.
He was then convicted in 2016.
When Hadden was convicted in 2016, the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) issued an order mandating that all of Hadden’s patients be informed that Hadden had lost his medical license.
To this day, Columbia University has refused to notify an estimated 6,000-8,000 women who were exposed to Robert Hadden that he lost his license because he repeatedly sexually assaulted and abused patients at Columbia University and its related medical clinics.
Even though Columbia has all patient information and the proven ability to send out letters to their patients, the University claims that “a loophole in the law” makes it Hadden’s responsibility to notify patients, not their responsibility.
Learn more about Columbia’s enabling and cover-up of Robert Hadden’s sexual abuse and their refusal to act in the interest of their patient here.
For the past decade, our Founder Anthony T. DiPietro, Esq., has been suing Columbia University to hold them accountable for covering up decades of Robert Hadden’s sexual exploitation and abuse.
From the early years, Mr. DiPietro made a conscious and deliberate decision to put his clients’ comfort level first.
While you have likely read the stories of several survivors who have gone public to hold Columbia accountable, there are also hundreds of other women, girls, and men, who Mr. DiPietro has represented that you haven’t read about.
The reasons for this are quite simple:
If you or a loved one suffered sexual abuse by Robert Hadden, you are eligible to file a legal claim anonymously.
In addition, those who witnessed Hadden’s abuse are encouraged to share their stories or reports about what they’ve seen or heard.
If you decide to contact us regarding Robert Hadden’s sexual abuse, confidentiality is 100% GUARANTEED.
We understand the pain you’re going through, and our staff is sensitive to your needs as a victim or whistleblower.
The DiPietro Law Firm has:
