Nearly 150 more male patients are suing former New York City urologist Darius Paduch, who was convicted of being a “sadist,” making it the largest case involving male victims, with a total of 310, and one abuser, lawyers said.
“Darius Paduch exploited more male patients than any other predator in history,” said plaintiff attorney Anthony T. DiPietro, and new court documents allege the doctor abused “what are believed to be thousands of victims and survivors.”
The former doctor’s depravity knew no bounds, according to accounts shared in documents filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, with victims ranging from several minors to older men who had retired.
Paduch injected some of his victims’ penises with serums to force long-term erections, enlarged their penises in ways that caused disfigurement, performed cystoscopies (a tube inserted through the urethra) without anesthesia and forced some of his patients to get on all fours for humiliating examinations, the documents say.
During some of his consultations, the defendant would walk around with a pen and point at parts of the patient’s naked body, “as if he were acting as a teacher,” court documents say.
“It’s worse than I could have ever imagined,” the mother of one of the latest plaintiffs, a patient of Paduch’s at Weill-Cornell Medical Center, said in a statement provided by DiPietro.
“Knowing what happened during those visits almost killed me.”
The former urologist was arrested in April 2023 and convicted in May on 13 counts of sexual abuse in federal court. He faces a sentence of up to 60 years in prison.
Paduch worked as a urologist for several years at Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University and Northwell Health Systems, whose prominence helped him in his “grooming” campaign, according to court documents.
“Patients trust that these so-called ‘top-notch hospitals’ will provide them with safe and appropriate medical care for deeply personal conditions. Patients don’t go into a doctor’s office expecting to be exploited by some evil criminal in a white lab coat,” DiPietro said.
In some circumstances, the abuse occurred in front of nurses, assistants and even other colleagues, according to court documents.
The former doctor’s attacks, under the guise of providing necessary medical care, included ordering patients to masturbate in front of him, or masturbating them himself, often while playing pornography.
He sometimes measured his patients’ erect penises and used “phallic-shaped sex toys” on them, the New York Post reported.
One patient saw Paduch for more than a decade, starting when he was just 7 years old. Another victim was 13, according to media reports.
Another victim said the defendant squeezed his penis so hard that “he was left bruised for weeks,” according to the documents.
One plaintiff claimed her abuser prescribed her so many unnecessary medications that she suffered liver failure.
A 56-year-old patient on an examination table, meanwhile, said Paduch “pulled down his pants” and told the victim “he wanted her to see what an erect penis looked like,” according to court documents.
The former urologist practiced his sick medicine until his arrest in 2023, but the court document claims his employers were aware of the disgusting abuses as early as 2017.
The plaintiff’s attorney filed an initial class-action civil claim against Paduch and his employers, which include Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork Presbyterian Hospital, Northwell Health and Columbia University, last August.
Although the cases against the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America included more male plaintiffs (more than 82,000 in the Boy Scouts class action lawsuit), the lawsuits were broadly against institutions and numerous predators.
“The one thing that all of these places, all of these cases, have in common is that these individual predators have had a multi-billion dollar corporation conspiring with them and helping them cover up the abuse,” the plaintiff’s attorney said.
In July, a judge rejected an effort by Paduch’s lawyers to dismiss and seal DiPietro’s massive class-action lawsuit.
The 143 new victims are not currently part of the class action and filed individual lawsuits.
A Weill Cornell spokesperson said the hospital is “heartbroken for these survivors” and that the institution 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.”
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