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A federal jury decided Wednesday that former urologist Dr. Darius Paduch was guilty of sexually abusing seven former patients – five of which were minors – under the guise of medical care. He now faces life in prison.
Paduch, who previously worked at New York-Presbyterian’s Weill Cornell Medical Center and Northwell Health, was convicted on 11 counts of sexual abuse in Manhattan federal court.
Federal prosecutors indicted Paduch in April of last year, charging him for luring patients to travel across state lines to engage in sexual activity and abusing minors. The prosecutors said that Paduch repeatedly abused male patients between 2007 and 2019, forcing them to masturbate and playing pornography during medical exams.
“As a unanimous jury has just found, Darius A. Paduch leveraged his position of trust as a medical doctor for his own perverse gratification,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement. “For years, patients seeking needed medical care, many of them children, left his office as victims.”
“Dr. Darius Paduch has maintained his innocence since the start of this case,” said Michael Baldassare, a lawyer representing the physician. Baldassare added that he will file an appeal and seek all available relief on behalf of Paduch.
Patients involved in the criminal case against Paduch are just a fraction of those who have alleged sexual abuse by the former physician. Hundreds have accused Paduch of sexual abuse in civil suits, the bulk of which were filed under the Adult Survivors Act, a law in New York that extended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases until last November. Many of the cases filed against Paduch also target New York-Presbyterian and Northwell for allowing the abuse.
Mallory Allen, a lawyer who represents more than a hundred cases filed by Paduch’s former patients, said that her clients feel vindicated by the jury’s verdict on Paduch’s criminal charges – a decision that they deliberated for just a few hours.
“The jury spoke loud and clear,” Allen said. “This was abuse.”
The sentencing hearing for Paduch’s case is expected to occur later this summer, Allen said.
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Amanda D'Ambrosio , 2024-05-09 11:33:05
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