What happened to you at Columbia was not okay, and it was not yours to carry.

Columbia University Irving Medical Center, up on 168th Street, and the East 60th Street office downtown. For twenty-five years Robert Hadden saw patients for Columbia, and Columbia's own investigators now say the first complaint about him came in the late 1980s. He is serving twenty years. The university is still here. If you were a patient there (any year, 1987 through 2012) and one visit has stuck with you in a way you never found words for, then yes. This is about you.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

Looking for the page about the man, not the place? Dr. Robert Hadden.

This applies to you no matter what

You thought it was an exam. That is the whole shape of what he was convicted of: a prosecutor told the jury he passed it off as normal, and a lot of women only understood it years later, reading about someone else.
You never told a soul. Of the almost 6,500 former patients Columbia wrote to in 2023, a little over 700 had come forward. The rest hadn't, at least not to Columbia.
You did tell someone there, and nothing came of it. Columbia's own report found complaints going up the chain in 1994, 2000 and 2008, handled, in its words, ad hoc.
Maybe you were a teenager then. He had patients that age, and the record shows it: a pregnant 16-year-old complained in 1992, and the earliest complaint Columbia's investigators turned up at all came from a girl who'd seen him as a minor. The federal indictment named a patient he had delivered himself. Under 18 at the time? Say so in the questions; it changes the deadline in your favor.
You never took the settlement fund, or never heard about it until it closed in June 2026. That fund was Columbia's offer. A lawsuit is a different door, and it is open.
You live in New Jersey or Connecticut now, or across the country. Plenty of his patients crossed a bridge to get to him. Where you live today doesn't matter; where the visit happened does.

The Columbia and Hadden record: what is public, and when

None of what follows is ours. It comes from a federal court, from Columbia's own investigators, from filed complaints and from the reporters who read them, and every line links to where it came from. Hadden's convictions are convictions and we say so. Everything pleaded against Columbia and NewYork-Presbyterian in the civil cases is an allegation, and both institutions settled the earlier cases without admitting fault.

Late 1980s to 2008

Columbia's outside investigators found complaints about Hadden going back to the late 1980s, the first from a patient who had seen him as a minor. At least five reached physician leadership: a patient's letter to the department chair in 1994, a complaint to a practice leader in the 1990s, one about his computer use in 2000, a patient complaint to the division chief in 2008. The report says they were handled informally and rarely written into his file. Columbia's Report of Investigation, March 2026.

June 2012, then February 2016

A patient called 911 from the office and Hadden was arrested. Columbia let him back to work the following Tuesday, on a signed letter whose one condition was a chaperone, and at least eight more patients have said he assaulted them in the five weeks before he stopped seeing patients that August. Patients got a letter in April 2013. He had closed his practice, it said. Nothing more. Then, February 2016, a guilty plea in Manhattan. One felony, criminal sexual act in the third degree. One misdemeanor, forcible touching. No jail, and he gave up his license. ProPublica investigation, September 2023.

December 2021 and October 7, 2022

Columbia and NewYork-Presbyterian settled with 79 former patients for $71.5 million, then with 147 more for $165 million. Two hundred twenty-six women, about $236 million between them. Columbia said it deeply regretted the pain his patients suffered. CBS News.

January 24 and July 25, 2023

Four counts, all of them for enticing and inducing patients to travel across state lines to engage in illegal sexual activity, and a Manhattan federal jury convicted him on all four (United States v. Hadden, 20-cr-468, Southern District of New York). On July 25 Judge Richard M. Berman gave him twenty years, the maximum, plus supervised release for life, and called what he did shocking in the extreme. Prosecutors said he had abused dozens of patients over roughly twenty-five years at Columbia. U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y..

November 13, 2023

Ten days before the state's Adult Survivors Act deadline of November 23, Columbia wrote to almost 6,500 of Hadden's former patients to tell them he had been convicted and sentenced. It said it was profoundly sorry, and that it regretted how its handling of this had landed on survivors. The same letter announced a $100 million settlement fund for patients who had not sued, with no lawyer needed. More than 700 former patients had come forward by then. Columbia's letter to former patients.

January 5, 2025

Eighty more former patients sued Columbia, NewYork-Presbyterian, the medical center and seven named administrators in New York Supreme Court under the city's Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, during its first look-back window. The 171-page complaint alleges the institutions knew as early as 1994, concealed reports, and ignored a 2016 state order to notify his patients. It put the number of plaintiffs suing the university over Hadden at more than 500. Columbia Daily Spectator.

May 2025

Columbia agreed to pay $750 million to 576 former patients, the largest of the settlements. With the earlier ones, more than $1 billion has now gone to more than a thousand of Hadden's patients. No administrator had been fired. ProPublica.

March 10, 2026

Columbia released the outside investigation it had promised in 2023, led by a former federal prosecutor. In the university's own summary it found ineffective and uneven use of chaperoning, barriers to patients and staff reporting misconduct, including a hierarchical culture that discouraged it, and failed institutional responses to the reports that were received. The OB/GYN chair stepped down and the medical school's dean retired. Columbia's statement on the report.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from March 10, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Columbia University Irving Medical Center lawsuit

Not Hadden, or not only him. He is in federal prison. The cases that matter are against the Trustees of Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the two institutions that employed him, credentialed him, and, according to the complaints and now to Columbia's own report, heard about him for twenty years before a patient's 911 call ended it. A hospital owes its patients a safe exam room. The claim is that it was warned and did not provide one, and that after the arrest it put him back in that room for five more weeks.

There is a second layer the earlier cases did not have. Columbia's March 2026 report, written by a former federal prosecutor Columbia hired, is the university's own document saying its chaperone rule was not enforced and its complaint handling failed. Its president had already said, in November 2023, that Columbia failed these survivors. A lawyer will read both alongside your facts. So will the New York Attorney General, who confirmed in March 2026 that her office is investigating how the institutions responded.

Columbia has no bankruptcy, no cap on what a New York jury can award, and has already paid more than $1 billion without admitting fault. That is the defendant. The claims here are for what the institution enabled, pleaded under the city's gender-motivated violence law and as negligence, which is a different thing from a malpractice case, with different rules.

Your deadline: the New York City window for claims against Columbia, and the July 29, 2027 close

The door New York City reopened on January 29, 2026 closes on July 29, 2027. The door has a name, Local Law 50 of 2026, the city's second look-back window under its Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, and what it does is this: conduct in the city before January 9, 2022, however long ago, can be sued over, and not just the man who did it but anyone who, in the law's words, enabled it. Every Hadden exam happened in Manhattan between 1987 and 2012, so on dates and place the window leaves nobody out. The Council passed it over a mayor's veto. Eighteen months in all, and more than seven of them are behind us.

Now the honest part. The state's own windows are shut. The Adult Survivors Act closed on November 23, 2023, and Columbia's $100 million fund stopped taking claims on June 15, 2026. The city's law is the route that is left, and it is being tested: a federal appeals court has asked New York's highest court whether the state's revival laws override the city's, in a case called Parker v. Alexander, and the Court of Appeals agreed on April 16, 2026 to answer. In August a Manhattan judge kept a city-law claim alive but paused it until that answer comes. Nobody can promise you how it ends. What a lawyer can do is file inside the window, so that if the door holds, you are through it.

If you were under 18 at the time, there is a separate state rule. New York lets a childhood claim be filed up until the day you turn 55, under CPLR 208(b), and that one does not depend on the city's window at all. It is why the questions ask your age at the visit. A teenager in 1992 has time, still. But that's a conversation, not a guess, and it's what the call is for.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a partner, not a sister, nobody. Most of the 6,500 Columbia wrote to hadn't come forward either.
You aren't sure whether what happened was an exam or something else. The jury heard that exact confusion from woman after woman.
He delivered your children, and you went back to him after. Plenty of the women who sued did.
You saw him at the East 60th Street office, not the hospital. Same employer, same case.
You already got a letter from Columbia in 2023 and put it in a drawer.
You live in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania or farther. Where you are now changes nothing.

Locations covered

Columbia University Irving Medical Center at 622 West 168th Street in Washington Heights, the Herbert Irving Pavilion and the 168th Street clinic included · NewYork-Presbyterian, the main hospital on that same campus, plus its Washington Heights clinic · and Columbia's East 60th Street medical office in Midtown, where Hadden also saw patients. Different Columbia or NewYork-Presbyterian site? Different doctor? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I still sue Columbia University over Robert Hadden?

For now, yes. The city's second Gender-Motivated Violence look-back window, the one that opened January 29, 2026, runs until July 29, 2027, and it reaches conduct at Columbia back into the 1980s. The state's Adult Survivors Act window and Columbia's own settlement fund are both closed. A court challenge to the city's law is pending, which is a reason a lawyer would want your claim filed well inside the window, not near its end.

What did Columbia know about Dr. Hadden?

By its own report, released March 10, 2026, complaints reached department leadership in 1994, 2000 and 2008, chaperoning was required from 2007 and not enforced, and after his 2012 arrest he was back seeing patients within days. The complaints on file call it a cover-up; Columbia has called it institutional failure. That gap is what a jury would decide.

Is there a Columbia Hadden settlement I can join?

No. Each settlement so far was between Columbia and a specific group of patients who had already sued (79 women in 2021, 147 in 2022, 576 in 2025), and the $100 million fund for patients who hadn't sued stopped taking claims on June 15, 2026. None of that covers a person who was not in it. A new claim is your own, and we won't put a number on it.

I was a minor when I saw him. Does that change my deadline?

It does, in your favor. New York gives a person abused as a child until age 55 to file, under CPLR 208(b), separate from the city's window. Columbia's investigators found teenage patients in the record going back to 1988.

What kind of lawyer handles a case against a hospital?

A civil lawyer who does institutional sexual abuse cases, meaning cases against the university and the hospital, not only the doctor. That is the only kind we work with, and the firm we work with takes New York cases whether you are in Washington Heights or three states away.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed New York attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.