A disgraced Manhattan urologist was convicted Wednesday for sexually assaulting patients, including six boys, under the guise of medical treatment.
Darius Paduch, 55, was found guilty by a jury Wednesday in Manhattan federal court on all 13 counts he faced related to his sexual abuse of eight patients, according to the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office.
Paduch — who formerly worked at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center and Northwell Health — carried out the abuse from 2015 through 2019 when he was alone with his patients in the exam room, prosecutors have said.
The doctor — who specialized in infertility and male reproductive health — would allegedly instruct his victims to masturbate themselves or he would masturbate them himself. He also used sex toys on them and carried out unnecessary rectal exams without wearing gloves, the feds have claimed.
“As a unanimous jury has just found, Darius A. Paduch leveraged his position of trust as a medical doctor for his own perverse gratification,” Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “For years, patients seeking needed medical care, many of them children, left his office as victims.”
Paduch is also being sued by more than 130 of his former patients in a slew of cases for alleged sexual abuse and for allegedly torturing patients with unnecessary medical procedures conducted without anesthesia so he could “inflict pain” on them.
Mallory Allen, a lawyer representing his victims said in a statement that, “Justice was served today.”
“For nearly twenty years, patients who trusted him for their medical care and treatment were instead brutalized by his degrading, sexually violating, and medically unfounded acts while the hospitals where he worked looked the other way,” Allen said.
“The jury verdict in the criminal case affirms that these heinous acts will not be overlooked, and the pending civil cases will ensure that the institutions who repeatedly prioritized profits over their patients will face consequences for their indifference in ignoring years of complaints,” the statement concluded.
Paduch— who’s been behind bars since his April 2023 arrest — faces up to 60 years imprisonment at his sentencing on the conviction for the charge of inducement of minor victims to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity and related crimes.
Paduch’s lawyer Michael Baldassare said his client would seek to appeal.
“Dr. Darius Paduch has maintained his innocence since the start of this case,” Baldassare said. “He maintains it to this day and we will continue to fight for him.”
“We will be filing post trial motions and an appeal and will seek all available relief.”
His sentencing is Aug. 22.
