Predator gynaecologist gets 20 years jail in New York for sex abuse

A former New York gynaecologist accused of assaulting dozens of women, including the wife of a one-time US presidential candidate, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexual abuse.

Evelyn Yang says she was assaulted by former New York gynaecologist Robert Hadden in 2012. Picture: Matthew Putney

A former New York gynaecologist accused of assaulting dozens of women, including the wife of a one-time US presidential candidate, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sexual abuse.

Robert Hadden, 64, was convicted in January of enticing ­patients to travel across the country for examinations in Manhattan where he would sexually assault them.

Federal prosecutors called Hadden, who has not worked as a doctor since 2012, “a predator in a white coat”.

Judge Richard Berman handed down the sentence on Monday, saying the case was “like no other in my experience in terms of horrendous, beyond extraordinary, depraved sexual assault”.

After serving his sentence, Hadden will be placed on supervised release for the rest of his life.

Hadden, of New Jersey, has been accused of abusing scores of women between the early 1990s and 2012.

Among them was Evelyn Yang, wife of tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang who ran for president in 2020 as a Democratic outsider.

In January that year, Evelyn Yang told CNN she was assaulted by Hadden in 2012 while seven months pregnant with her first child, and had at first not even told her husband.

Hadden had pleaded guilty in 2016 to two state charges of forcible touching and third-degree sexual abuse under a plea deal that saw him avoid jail.

Last year, Columbia University Irving Medical Centre announced it had reached a $US165m settlement with 147 of Hadden’s ­patients.

That settlement came after a $US71.5m deal in 2021 between Columbia hospitals and 79 of ­Hadden’s patients who had been represented by a different lawyer.

AFP