A New York doctor who treated former presidential candidate Andrew Yang's wife is charged with sexually abusing patients for 2 decades under the guise of medical exams
- A former New York gynecologist accused of sexually abusing women and girls including former presidential candidate Andrew Yang's wife was charged on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.
- The Justice Department said Robert Hadden faces six federal counts of "enticing and inducing individuals to travel interstate to engage in illegal sexual activity."
- The sex-abuse allegations span from 1993 to 2012, while Hadden worked at Columbia University and at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
- The indictment said there were dozens of victims, but the charges against Hadden involve five women and one minor.
A former gynecologist accused of sexually abusing women and girls including former presidential candidate Andrew Yang's wife was charged in New York on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.
Robert Hadden was indicted in the Southern District of New York on six federal counts of "enticing and inducing individuals to travel interstate to engage in illegal sexual activity," the Justice Department said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss said that Hadden "inappropriately touched, squeezed, and even licked his victims" and that one of his victims was a minor he had helped deliver as a baby, the AP reported.
"He used the cover of conducting medical examinations to engage in sexual abuse that he passed off as normal and medically necessary," Strauss said. "His conduct was neither normal nor medically necessary."
Prosecutors said Hadden abused dozens of women and girls from 1993 to 2012 while he worked at Columbia University and at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The charges involve five adults and a minor.
In the DOJ press release, Strauss called Hadden "a predator in a white coat."
Hadden surrendered his medical license in 2016 as part of a plea deal with the Manhattan district attorney, whose office in 2014 brought a case against him over accusations of criminal sex acts. The plea deal meant Hadden avoided jail time but "pleaded guilty to a single felony count of criminal sexual act in the third degree, and one misdemeanor count of forcible touching," The New York Times reported.
Yang's wife, Evelyn Yang, testified as part of the 2014 case against Hadden. An NPR report said it was unclear whether she was one of the six victims included in the new indictment.
Evelyn Yang told CNN in January that Hadden sexually abused her in 2012 when he was her gynecologist and she was pregnant. She said it "started with inappropriate questions" that were "unrelated to my health."
She said the doctor examined her more frequently than was medically necessary, adding, "I feel like I put up with some inappropriate behavior that I didn't know at the time was straight-up sexual abuse/sexual assault."
Yang said Hadden had examined her internally without a glove on when she was seven months pregnant. "At that moment, I knew it was wrong," she said. "I knew I was being assaulted."
Yang had called Hadden's plea deal with the Manhattan DA a "slap on the wrist," the AP reported.
The federal indictment "only puts into high relief the betrayal I and his other victims experienced by the Manhattan DA," Marissa Hoechstetter, who has also accused Hadden of abuse, told the AP.
"I hope that through the course of this, the world will finally see the full extent of Hadden's decades of sexual abuse and the institutional cowardice that protected and enabled him for so long," she said. "He and his enablers must be held accountable if we are to make change in a system that harms those it is meant to protect."