First Trial Begins in Connecticut Doctor Sex-Abuse Case
All the victims are now grown and the suspect now deceased, but the witness are still coming forward to testify against a Connecticut doctor who police believe may have molested hundreds, or even thousands, of children over a thirty-year span of time.
A civil case in Waterbury Superior Court is the first of about 90 to reach the trial. They are all suing St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center of Hartford, alleging that hospital official did nothing to stop the abuse by the doctor who died in 1998 and never faced any criminal charges.
One victim, now 50-years-old, told the court that the doctor took pictures of him and his sister performing sex acts together. The doctor abused him over a three year period, starting in 1969 when the victim was only eight years old. Parents and hospital officials were told the victim was being used in a human growth study.
“He took pornographic pictures of us in his office,” testified the victim to New York Injury Lawyers. “He asked us to disrobe. He asked us to insert things.” The jury saw these photographs, along with graphic photos of other victims who would testify later.
The abuse was only recently revealed in 2007 when the owner of the doctor’s former home cracked open a basement wall while renovating the house. Inside that wall were tens of thousands of slides and videos of children engaged in sexual activities or posed in a sexual manner.
As for the hospital, they don’t dispute the abuse, but they also said to New York Injury Lawyers the officials there had no idea what was going on and should not be held liable.
The hospital’s attorney told the jury the doctor, and the doctor alone, was responsible, not the hospital. According to him, no one ever complained about the abuse. “We are all angry at what he did,” the attorney said. “We’re certainly not in any way defending his actions.”
No one thought of the doctor as anything other than a respected physician who was engaged in a great deal of legitimate study and research, as well. He did take measurements from the children, though he never actually published his findings. He resigned in 1993, due to molestation accusations, but was never charged, and his license to practice medicine was revoked in 1995. As it would be in Staten Island and Westchester County.
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