A convicted Manhattan urologist faces hundreds of civil lawsuits for allegedly sexually abusing his patients, and court documents detail the horrors his victims allegedly faced.
Dr. Darius Paduch was found guilty in May of six counts of persuading, inducing, enticing or coercing a person to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity and five counts of using an interstate facility to persuade, induce, entice or coerce a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity. according to the New York Times.
But the former doctor now faces a total of 310 individual lawsuits against him and the hospital systems where he practiced, after 143 more male patients came forward. This is reported by the New York Post.
The large number of accusers makes it the largest case against a single abuser involving male victims, as newly filed court documents suggest Paduch abused “what is believed to be thousands of victims and survivors.”
“Darius Paduch exploited more male patients than any other predator in history,” plaintiff Anthony T DiPietro told the Post.
Dr. Darius Paduch, a convicted Manhattan urologist, faces hundreds of civil lawsuits for allegedly sexually abusing his patients.
The victims ranged in age from retirees to minors who were treated at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in the New York City area, Columbia University and Northwell Health System.
Paduch injected a serum into their penises to force erections for extended periods, performed disfiguring penis enlargements, performed cystoscopies (in which a tube is inserted through the penis and into the urethra) without anesthesia and forced some patients to get on all fours during exams, according to documents filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday.
During some of the sessions, Paduch would walk around with a pen and point to parts of patients’ naked bodies “as if he were acting as a teacher,” the documents reportedly say.
He also sometimes measured his patients’ erect penises and used “phallic-shaped sex toys.”
The abuse sometimes even occurred in front of nurses, assistants and other doctors, the civil lawsuits allege.
Newly filed court documents suggest Paduch abused “what is believed to be thousands of victims and survivors”
One victim also said Paduch squeezed his penis so hard that he was left with bruises for weeks, and another claimed the doctor prescribed him so much unnecessary medicine that he suffered liver failure.
In another case, as a 56-year-old patient lay on the exam table, Paduch allegedly pulled down his pants and told the man he “wanted him to see what an erect penis looked like.”
Court documents also indicate that one of the alleged victims saw Paduch for more than a decade, starting when she was just seven years old, and another said she was victimized at the age of 13.
“It’s worse than I could have ever imagined,” the mother of one of the latest plaintiffs, a patient at Weill-Cornell Medical Center, said in a statement to the Post provided by DiPietro.
“Knowing what happened during those visits almost killed me.”
Paduch, who began practicing in the city in 2003, continued to practice until 2023, although court documents claim his employers knew about his abuse since at least 2017.
“Patients trust that these so-called ‘top-tier hospitals’ will provide safe and appropriate medical care for deeply personal conditions,” DiPietro said.
‘Patients don’t go into a doctor’s office thinking they’re going to be exploited by some deviant in a white lab coat.’
The doctor was found guilty in May of six counts of persuading, inducing, enticing or coercing a person to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity and five counts of using an interstate facility to persuade, induce, entice or coerce a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity.
Paduch worked for several New York City area hospitals, including Weill-Cornell Medical Center.
The attorney originally filed a class-action lawsuit against Paduch and his employers last August, several months after the doctor was accused of telling seven male patients, including two minors, to masturbate while he played pornography and performing rectal exams without wearing gloves.
One section of the indictment accuses the 55-year-old of telling patients they were masturbating incorrectly and then grabbing their penises.
The indictment also accuses Paduch of touching his victims’ penises, pressing himself against them and openly discussing penis size as well as sexual activity.
“He leveraged his position of trust as a physician for his own perverse gratification,” federal prosecutor Damian Williams said after Paduch was convicted in May.
‘For years, patients seeking necessary medical care, many of them children, left his office as victims.’
DiPietro also said at the time that he was “grateful that Darius Paduch can never do this to any patient again in New York State or anywhere else.”
Paduch’s medical license was suspended last year by the state Department of Health and is expected to be permanently revoked following his conviction.
Paduch’s medical license was suspended last year by the state Department of Health and is expected to be permanently revoked following his conviction.
Still, DiPietro is continuing to pursue civil claims against the doctor and the hospitals he worked for, after a judge in July rejected an effort by Paduch’s lawyers to dismiss and seal the class-action suit.
The 143 new victims, however, are not part of the civil suit and have filed their own individual lawsuits.
A representative for Weill-Cornell Medicine told the Post that the hospital is “heartbroken for these survivors” and said it has “implemented improvements to our policies and training requirements, and launched new patient safety programs to minimize the risk of such abhorrent conduct occurring in the future.”
DailyMail.com has also reached out to Columbia University and Northwell Health for comment.
It is unclear whether Paduch has hired a civil attorney to defend himself in these cases, as his criminal attorney, Michael Baldassare, has insisted he is innocent of the criminal charges.
“We will continue to fight for him,” Baldassare said after the conviction.