What happened to you at a NewYork-Presbyterian hospital was not okay.

Three campuses. Three doctors. Robert Hadden, an OB/GYN, saw patients in Washington Heights for something like twenty-five years. Darius Paduch had a urology practice on East 68th Street from 2003 until 2019, sixteen years of it. And Flushing, where Zhi Alan Cheng worked the GI service from 2020 until his arrest. All three are in prison now, and the same hospital credentialed every one of them. If you were a patient at any NewYork-Presbyterian campus in those years (grown or a kid, with one of those men or with someone else) and a visit has stayed with you in a way you never quite explained, this page is for you.

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This applies to you no matter what

You thought it was part of the exam. That is how all three of these men worked, according to the records that convicted them: Hadden did it under the guise of an examination, Paduch under the guise of treatment, and Cheng's patients were sedated. Plenty of people only put a name to it years later, reading about somebody else.
You never said a word to the hospital. Most patients didn't. Columbia wrote to almost 6,500 of Hadden's former patients in 2023; a little over 700 had come forward by then. Weill Cornell's own signed agreement with federal prosecutors says the reports it did get, from 2012 to 2018, were never escalated.
You did tell someone, and nothing came of it. A complaint filed in Queens County alleges that NewYork-Presbyterian Queens ran a lineup in June 2021, that the patient picked out Cheng, and that he kept treating patients for another eighteen months. That's an allegation. It is also exactly the kind of fact a lawyer wants to hear about.
You were a teenager, or younger. Paduch's patients included boys as young as 13; Columbia's investigators found Hadden patients who saw him as minors. Under 18 at the time? Say so in the questions. New York gives a childhood claim until age 55, separate from every other deadline on this page.
You were sedated, or admitted, and honestly don't know what happened. Cheng's case was built on his own recordings of unconscious patients, not on their memories. Not remembering is not a reason to stay quiet.
You live in New Jersey or Connecticut now, or across the country. Paduch himself lived in North Bergen. Where you are today doesn't matter; where the visit happened does.

The NewYork-Presbyterian record: what is public, and when

None of what follows is ours. It comes from two federal courts and a Queens courtroom, from a signed agreement between Weill Cornell Medicine and the U.S. Attorney, from an investigation Columbia and NewYork-Presbyterian commissioned together, from filed complaints and the reporters who read them, and every line links to where it came from. Hadden, Paduch and Cheng were convicted; we say so plainly. Everything pleaded against NewYork-Presbyterian in the civil cases is an allegation, and the hospital has not admitted liability in any of them; the settlements it joined were without admission of fault. One thing we owe you straight: the criminal records, the complaints and the findings on this page name the Columbia campus (Hadden), the Weill Cornell campus (Paduch) and the Queens campus (Cheng). No other NewYork-Presbyterian site has a record cited here; if you pick 'another campus' in the questions, it is because the same hospital ran it, not because we have a filing on it.

December 2021 and October 7, 2022

Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian announced, jointly, a settlement with 79 former patients of Robert Hadden, and then a second one: a fund of $165,081,000 for 147 more women. Buried in the same announcement is the earlier history: a 2016 guilty plea in New York State court, to a criminal sexual act in the third degree and forcible touching, after which Hadden had to surrender his license. CUIMC and NYP joint announcement.

January to November 2023

Hadden's federal trial ended in January 2023 with a Manhattan jury convicting him on federal sexual assault charges (United States v. Hadden, 1:20-cr-00468, Southern District of New York); in July 2023 the judge gave him 20 years. Then, in November, Columbia sat down and wrote to almost 6,500 of his former patients, to tell them. By that point more than 700 had come forward. The letter also opened a $100 million settlement fund, Columbia's own, for patients who had not sued. Columbia's letter to former Hadden patients.

June 2023

A complaint was filed in Queens County Supreme Court against The New York and Presbyterian Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian/Queens by a 19-year-old patient admitted for gallstones on June 18, 2021. It alleges that Dr. Zhi Alan Cheng examined her alone, came back that night, injected something into her IV and assaulted her while she was unconscious; that she told staff, that the hospital ran a lineup and she identified him; that nothing was written in her chart, police were not called, and two days later he treated her again under sedation. It alleges he stayed on staff until December 2022. All of that is pleaded, not proven. Counsel's filing announcement, June 6, 2023.

November 6, 2023

Gothamist counted more than 160 civil suits over Darius Paduch, most of them against the hospitals rather than the man, with NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell and Northwell Health as defendants. One former patient's complaint says he emailed both systems in September 2020 about a 2016 police report he had filed on Paduch, and that 'New York-Presbyterian Hospital failed to even respond.' Paduch kept practicing until his arrest in April 2023. A NewYork-Presbyterian spokesperson, asked about Cheng, called his crimes 'a fundamental betrayal of our mission and our patients' trust.' Gothamist.

May 8 and November 20, 2024

Prosecutors' timeline ran 2007 through 2019, at a prominent Manhattan hospital first and then one on Long Island. A federal jury convicted Paduch on all eleven counts: six of inducing a person to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity, five of inducing a minor to do so (United States v. Paduch, 1:23-cr-00181, Southern District of New York). Eleven former patients testified. Life, from Judge Ronnie Abrams, on November 20. U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y..

June 30 and August 28, 2025

Zhi Alan Cheng, formerly a gastroenterologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, pleaded guilty in Queens Supreme Court at 35: four counts of rape in the first degree, three of sexual abuse in the first degree, and an Alford plea on one more count of sexual abuse. Justice Ushir Pandit-Durant gave him 24 years and ten years of supervision after. The District Attorney said the videos found on his devices showed him abusing unconscious female patients at the hospital, and that her office had worked the case with NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, where he was employed. Queens County District Attorney.

March 10, 2026

The investigation Columbia and NewYork-Presbyterian commissioned together into how Hadden got away with it for 25 years was made public. Its three conclusions: chaperoning was not used effectively, patients and staff faced obstacles to reporting, and the institutions failed to respond to the reports they did get. On NewYork-Presbyterian specifically, it found that no patient complaint ever made it into Hadden's credentialing file across two decades, and that the hospital renewed his privileges on August 9, 2012, more than a month after his arrest, while he was refusing to be interviewed about it. Both institutions, it says, have together paid more than $1 billion in settlements. Report of Investigation (Sidley Austin), March 2026.

July 26, 2026

Weill Cornell Medicine signed a Voluntary Compliance Agreement with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, ending a multi-year criminal investigation into how it handled Paduch. In it, WCM acknowledges that its policies 'were not adequate and failed to detect and sufficiently respond to Paduch's conduct.' The recitals list reports reaching the urology chair in 2015, December 2016, March 2018 and November 2018, none escalated; a reference for his next employer given 'with some reservation' and no mention of complaints; and abuse of 'over 50 victims' from at least 2009 to 2019, 'including boys as young as 13.' WCM has 'paid or agreed to pay over $1 billion' to settle individual claims. NewYork-Presbyterian is not a party to the agreement, and the agreement says nothing in it limits any patient's right to sue. Voluntary Compliance Agreement, U.S. v. Weill Cornell Medicine (PDF).

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from July 26, 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 NewYork-Presbyterian lawsuit

Not the three doctors, or not only them. Hadden and Paduch are in federal prison; Cheng is in state prison. The party that can actually answer for what happened is the hospital that credentialed all three: The New York and Presbyterian Hospital, the not-for-profit corporation that runs the Columbia, Weill Cornell and Queens campuses, and which is named as a defendant in the filed Hadden, Paduch and Cheng suits. Beside it, depending on the campus, sit the medical schools whose faculty these men were: the Trustees of Columbia University for Hadden, Weill Cornell Medicine (part of Cornell University) for Paduch. A hospital owes the person on its exam table a safe room. The claim in every one of these cases is that it was told, or should have known, and did not provide one.

The knowledge facts differ by campus, and we keep them separate. For the Columbia campus, it's the institutions' own report: five complaints reached physician leaders over the years, none was put in Hadden's NYP credentialing file, and the hospital reappointed him in August 2012 while he was refusing to explain his arrest. For Weill Cornell, it's a document Weill Cornell signed with federal prosecutors saying its safeguards 'were not adequate,' plus filed complaints alleging NewYork-Presbyterian ignored a patient's 2020 warning. For Queens, it's one complaint's allegation that the hospital identified Cheng in a June 2021 lineup and kept him on. The first two are findings and admissions. The third is pleaded and unproven. A lawyer reads each against your facts.

NewYork-Presbyterian is a private hospital, not a city agency, so there is no notice-of-claim step, and New York puts no cap on what a jury can award. It has already joined settlements worth more than $1 billion on the Hadden cases without admitting fault. These claims are pleaded under the city's gender-motivated violence law and as negligent hiring, supervision and retention. That is not a malpractice case, and the rules are different. Columbia's campus gets a page of its own on this site, and so does Hadden. Weill Cornell and Queens? This is their page.

Your deadline: the New York City window to July 29, 2027, and the age-55 rule for anyone under 18 at the time

Most adults reading this would be using a city law, not a state one, so let's start there. The city's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law has been given a second look-back window; the Council had to override a mayor's veto to do it (that's Local Law 50 of 2026), and the window opened on January 29, 2026. It runs out on July 29, 2027. While it's open, something that happened in the five boroughs before January 9, 2022 can be sued over, and it doesn't matter how long ago. Not only the person who did it, either. Anyone who, in the law's words, directed, enabled, participated in or conspired in it, which is why a hospital that credentialed the man and heard the complaints is the kind of defendant the amendment was written for. Every Hadden exam, every Paduch visit at East 68th Street and Cheng's 2021 patients all sit inside those dates. Eighteen months in all, and more than seven are gone.

Now the honest part. The state's own adult window, the Adult Survivors Act, closed on November 23, 2023. The city's law is the route left for most adults, and it is being tested. A federal appeals court asked New York's highest court, in a case called Parker v. Alexander, whether the state's revival laws override the city's; the Court of Appeals agreed on April 16, 2026 to answer, and as of this writing it has not. On August 6, 2026 a Manhattan judge restored a city-law claim against the City of New York and then paused it until that answer comes, with the City's agreement. Two more things a lawyer has to weigh for you: the city law is written around violence motivated by gender, and whether it fits a male urology patient's facts is a legal argument, not a given (the firms that have sued for Paduch's patients make it); and for a Cheng patient the ordinary seven-year period under the same law, and a separate twenty-year state rule for certain first-degree offenses (CPLR 213-c), may still be running with no window needed. Nobody can promise how Parker comes out. What a lawyer can do is file inside the window, so if the window holds you are through it.

If you were under 18 at the time, there is a separate state rule and it does not depend on the city at all. CPLR 208(b), the Child Victims Act, lets a claim for sexual abuse of a person under 18 be brought, against the abuser and against anyone whose negligence let it happen, until that person turns 55. Paduch's patients included boys of 13; Columbia's investigators found teenage patients of Hadden's. Born in 1971 or later, you have not passed that birthday. Born before 1971, or unsure whether your claim was already time-barred before 2019, that is a lawyer's question. It's why we ask your age at the visit. One conversation settles it, and the conversation is free.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a partner, not a parent. The Weill Cornell agreement lists reports reaching the urology chair from 2012 to 2018; most patients never made one.
You aren't sure whether what happened was medicine or something else. Every one of these three cases turned on exactly that confusion.
You went back to him after. Paduch's own indictment describes steps he took to make patients return. Going back proves nothing about you.
You saw the doctor at a Columbia or Weill Cornell office, not inside the hospital building. Same credentialing, same defendant.
You already applied to Columbia's fund, or got a letter in 2023 and put it in a drawer. Tell us; a lawyer sorts out what it means.
You live in New Jersey, Connecticut or farther away now. Where you are changes nothing. Where the visit happened does.

Facilities covered

Three campuses carry the record on this page. NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center at 622 West 168th Street in Washington Heights, along with Columbia's East 60th Street medical office (Hadden saw patients there too); the campus has a page of its own (/columbia-university-irving-medical-center-survivors), and so does the doctor (/dr-robert-hadden) · NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, 525 East 68th Street, Upper East Side, Paduch's practice from 2003 to 2019 · NewYork-Presbyterian Queens at 56-45 Main Street in Flushing, Cheng's workplace from July 2020 to December 2022. Other NewYork-Presbyterian campuses and clinics appear on the list for one reason, the same hospital corporation runs them; we cite no filing about any of them. Northwell Health is where Paduch went in 2019. Different system, outside the City, not this page. Was it one of these? Can't say which? Go through the questions anyway, and tell us whatever you remember, even if it's only the year.

Questions people are asking

What did NewYork-Presbyterian know about Hadden, Paduch and Cheng?

Different things at different campuses, and we keep them straight. On Hadden, the report Columbia and NYP commissioned found five complaints reached physician leaders, none went into his NYP credentialing file, and the hospital renewed his privileges in August 2012 after his arrest. On Paduch, Weill Cornell Medicine, not NYP, signed a federal agreement acknowledging its safeguards 'were not adequate'; complaints against NYP allege it ignored a 2020 warning. On Cheng, a Queens complaint alleges a June 2021 lineup identified him and he stayed on. So: one finding, one admission (by a different party, mind), one unproven allegation.

Is there a NewYork-Presbyterian settlement I can join?

No. The Hadden settlements (79 patients in 2021, 147 in 2022, 576 cases in 2025) were between specific plaintiffs and Columbia and NYP; Columbia's $100 million fund for patients who had not sued was Columbia's offer, with its own application deadlines; it was never a lawsuit, and a lawyer can tell you where it stands. The Weill Cornell agreement with federal prosecutors in July 2026 is not a fund either; it recites settlements already paid to people who sued, and says in so many words that it does not limit anyone else's right to sue. A new claim is your own. We will not put a number on it.

Can I still sue NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital?

Yes, until July 29, 2027, if the city's law holds; that's the close of its second Gender-Motivated Violence look-back window, which opened January 29, 2026. Anything that happened in the five boroughs before January 9, 2022 is inside it, and the hospital can be named, not just the man. The state's own Adult Survivors Act? Closed, November 2023. There is a challenge to the city's law pending (Parker v. Alexander), and that's exactly why a lawyer would want your case filed well inside the window, not in its last weeks. Under 18 at the time? A separate state rule gives you until you turn 55.

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

Yes, in your favor. New York's Child Victims Act, CPLR 208(b), lets a claim for abuse of someone under 18 be filed until the person turns 55, against the abuser and against any institution whose negligence is alleged to have allowed it. That runs on your birthday, not on the city's window. Prosecutors put Paduch's minor patients as young as 13, and five of his eleven convictions were for minors.

What kind of lawyer handles a case against a hospital?

A civil lawyer who does institutional sexual abuse cases, meaning cases against the hospital and the medical school, not just the doctor. That's the only kind we work with, and the firm we work with takes New York cases whether you live in Flushing, Hoboken or Hartford.

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.