What happened to you at Weill Cornell was not okay.

One doctor, one building, sixteen years. Darius Paduch came to Weill Cornell as a fellow in 2003 and saw urology patients on East 68th Street until April 2019, when the medical school told him his appointment would not be renewed and told his patients only that he had left. He is in federal prison now, for life. And in July 2026 Weill Cornell Medicine put its name to a document with the U.S. Attorney that says the reports about him started reaching its urology chair in 2012. If you were his patient at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, grown or a kid, and a visit has stayed with you in a way you never quite explained, this page is for you.

WatchingSeptember 2026: the New York City window this page relies on is being tested. The state's highest court agreed on April 16, 2026 to answer whether the state's own revival laws override the city's (Parker v. Alexander) and has not answered yet; we check for a decision every week. Weill Cornell's July 26, 2026 agreement with federal prosecutors is the newest record on this name. The questions work now.

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

Looking for the page about the whole hospital, not just this campus? NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital survivors: the Columbia, Weill Cornell and Queens campuses, one defendant, one page.

This applies to you no matter what

You thought it was part of the treatment. Prosecutors said that was the method: he used his position at the hospital to make patients believe what he did was medically necessary, and eleven of them had to explain that to a jury. Plenty of people only put a name to it years later, reading about somebody else.
You never said a word to anyone at Weill Cornell. Most patients didn't. The agreement Weill Cornell signed in July 2026 lists the reports that did arrive, from staff in 2012 to 2014, from an outside urologist in 2015, through an OB-GYN in December 2016, a state medical-board complaint in March 2018, a patient's email in November 2018, and says the chair passed none of his on.
You told someone and nothing happened. One of the filed complaints says exactly that, a police report in 2016, an email to the hospital about it in September 2020, no reply from NewYork-Presbyterian, and though it's pleaded rather than proven, it's the first thing a lawyer would want to hear from you.
You were a teenager. The federal finding says his patients included boys as young as 13, and five of his eleven convictions were for minors. Under 18 at the time? Say so in the questions. New York gives a childhood claim until age 55, on a clock of its own.
You went back. More than once, maybe for years. His own indictment describes him texting patients from his personal phone to set the next appointment, and deciding how often they'd return. Going back proves nothing about you.
You live in New Jersey or Connecticut now, or somewhere far from Manhattan. He lived in North Bergen himself. Where you are today doesn't matter; where the visit happened does.

The Weill Cornell record: what is public, and when

None of what follows is ours. It comes from a federal courtroom in Manhattan, from the New York County clerk's index, from a signed agreement between Weill Cornell Medicine and the U.S. Attorney, and from the reporters who read the complaints, and every line links to where it came from. Paduch was convicted; we say so plainly. Everything pleaded against The New York and Presbyterian Hospital and against Weill Cornell Medicine in the civil cases is an allegation, and neither has admitted liability in any of them; what Weill Cornell has acknowledged, it acknowledged in its own words in the July 2026 agreement, and we quote it as that. Every record on this page names the Weill Cornell campus. The rest of the hospital's record, Columbia and Queens, sits on the NewYork-Presbyterian page linked below and isn't re-told here.

June 3, 2023

Seven weeks after federal agents arrested Paduch at home in North Bergen, New Jersey, the first of the civil actions on this campus was filed in New York County Supreme Court: John Doe #1 et al v. Darius A. Paduch et al, Index No. 952051/2023, under the Adult Survivors Act case type. It is still marked Active on the court's electronic index, which is where we read it on September 14, 2026, in a search on NewYork-Presbyterian's name. The complaint is pleaded, not proven, and the hospital has not admitted anything in it. NYSCEF case search, New York County (Index No. 952051/2023).

September 28, 2023

Index No. 952105/2023 was filed the same way: 18 named John Doe plaintiffs against Darius A. Paduch and others. Active. The federal case had grown by then too. A superseding indictment announced October 24 charged 13 counts over eight patients, six of them minors for part of it, and put the conduct from about 2007 through 2019 at a prestigious medical institution in Manhattan the indictment doesn't name and a Long Island hospital he joined in 2019. U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y., October 24, 2023 (superseding indictment).

November 6, 2023

Gothamist counted more than 160 lawsuits over Paduch, 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 police report he had filed against Paduch in 2016, and that 'New York-Presbyterian Hospital failed to even respond.' Paduch kept practicing until his arrest. Weill Cornell's spokesperson called the alleged conduct 'extremely disturbing.' Gothamist, November 6, 2023.

November 16 to 24, 2023

Then the numbers. Index No. 952158/2023, filed November 16, carries eight more named John Does. Active. In the last four days before the Adult Survivors Act closed, November 21 through 24, roughly 25 single-plaintiff suits landed on top of it. Search the hospital's name and there are 34 actions captioned against Darius A. Paduch and others in New York County alone: 16 Active, 16 not yet assigned a judge, 3 disposed. We don't name the plaintiffs, and we won't. NYSCEF case search, New York County (Index Nos. 952105/2023, 952158/2023 and the November 2023 filings).

May 8, 2024

After a two-week trial a federal jury in Manhattan 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). 'For years,' the U.S. Attorney said that day, 'patients seeking needed medical care, many of them children, left his office as victims.' His lawyers said he maintains his innocence. U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y., May 8, 2024.

September 4, 2024

Between the verdict and the sentence, 143 more civil cases were filed in New York Supreme Court against Paduch and the hospitals that employed him, bringing one firm's total to 310 plaintiffs. The new complaints, NBC News reported, name Weill Cornell and allege the institutions knew what he was doing and 'conspired' to 'conceal his crimes.' Allegations, every one. Weill Cornell Medicine's spokesperson called the acts described at trial 'deeply disturbing' and said two other things: that the general counsel had brought in outside counsel to investigate, and that policies and training had been changed since. Buried in the same report: his motion for a new trial, denied August 2. NBC News, September 4, 2024.

November 20, 2024

Life, from Judge Ronnie Abrams. Prosecutors' timeline ran from at least 2007 through 2019 at the Manhattan hospital, then Long Island; eleven former patients had testified, dozens more sent the court statements, and at least two of the minors had been invited to be his high-school interns. The release says what the method was: he used his position at prominent medical institutions to make patients believe the abuse was 'medically necessary and appropriate.' U.S. Attorney, S.D.N.Y., November 20, 2024.

July 26, 2026

Weill Cornell Medicine signed a Voluntary Compliance Agreement with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, closing a federal investigation into how it handled Paduch. Paragraph 4 is the sentence this page turns on: WCM 'acknowledges that the policies and programs that WCM had in place at the time of Paduch's offenses to detect, prevent, and respond to sexual abuse of patients were not adequate and failed to detect and sufficiently respond to Paduch's conduct.' The recitals say he joined WCM in 2003; that the urology chair got reports in 2015 and December 2016 and 'did not escalate these allegations or report them to others at WCM'; that a March 2018 medical-board complaint went to an employee with no training for it; that his chaperone rule was unwritten; that the April 2019 letter to his patients gave no reason; and that the chair later completed a reference for another institution 'with some reservation.' Over 50 victims, 'including boys as young as 13,' from at least 2009 to 2019. WCM 'has paid or agreed to pay over $1 billion to settle claims from victims to date.' Paragraph 11: nothing in it 'shall limit the rights of any complainant to bring his or her own action.' NewYork-Presbyterian is not a party. The next day Cornell's president and Weill Cornell's dean wrote to their community about expanded chaperone rules, one central complaints process, a $30 million patient-safety institute, and 'the substantial settlements we've reached with survivors who brought claims.' Who brought claims. That's the phrase. Voluntary Compliance Agreement, United States and Weill Cornell Medicine (PDF).

We checked this on September 15, 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 Weill Cornell lawsuit

Not the doctor, or not only him. Paduch is serving life and the money isn't there. Two institutions stood behind the exam-room door on East 68th Street, and the filed cases name both. The New York and Presbyterian Hospital, the not-for-profit corporation that runs the Weill Cornell campus along with Columbia and Queens, appears as a party in every one of the 34 Paduch actions we found in New York County, and it is the defendant the NewYork-Presbyterian page on this site is built around. Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University's medical college, was his employer, is the party that signed the July 2026 agreement, and is the one that says it has paid or agreed to pay more than $1 billion to people who sued. A hospital owes the person on its exam table a safe room. The claim in these cases is that it was told, again and again, and didn't provide one.

On this campus the knowledge facts are unusually strong, and we still keep them sorted. What Weill Cornell has acknowledged in writing: its safeguards 'were not adequate'; reports reached its urology chair from 2012 on and stopped there; the 2018 complaint went to someone untrained; the chaperone rule was unwritten. That's an acknowledgment by Weill Cornell Medicine, and it binds no one else. What is only pleaded: that NewYork-Presbyterian ignored a patient's 2020 email, that the institutions 'conspired' to hide what he did. Complaints say those things; no court has found them. A lawyer reads each against your own visit.

Both are private institutions, not city agencies, so there's no notice-of-claim step and New York puts no cap on what a jury can award. These cases are pleaded under the city's gender-motivated violence law and as negligent hiring, supervision and retention. Not malpractice; the rules for that are different and worse for you. The hospital's page, /newyork-presbyterian-survivors, covers every campus. This page is Weill Cornell's: same defendants, same questions, sorted so the person who calls you knows where to start.

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. The city's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law got a second look-back window this year, and it did not come easily: 48 to 0 in the Council, a mayoral veto, then an override vote on January 29, 2026 that made it Local Law 50 and opened the window the same day. The window shuts July 29, 2027. While it's open, something that happened in the five boroughs before January 9, 2022 can be sued over, however long ago, and not only against the person who did it: the law reaches anyone who directed, enabled, participated in or conspired in it, which is why the hospital and the medical school are the kind of defendants it was amended for. Every Paduch visit on East 68th Street, 2003 through April 2019, sits inside those dates. Eighteen months in all, and more than seven are already gone.

Now the honest part. The state's own adult window, the Adult Survivors Act, closed on November 24, 2023; the flurry of filings you saw in the record above is what that deadline looked like. 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 hasn't. On August 6, 2026 a Manhattan judge restored a city-law claim against the City itself and then paused it until that answer comes. One more thing a lawyer weighs 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, though the firms that have sued for Paduch's patients make it. Nobody can promise how Parker comes out. What a lawyer can do is file inside the window, so if the window holds you're through it.

If you were under 18 at the time, there's a separate state rule and it doesn't 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. The federal finding puts Paduch's youngest patients at 13, and anyone born in 1971 or later hasn't reached 55 yet. Born before that, or unsure whether your claim was already out of time before 2019, that's 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 July 2026 agreement lists reports reaching Weill Cornell from 2012 to 2018; most patients never made one.
You aren't sure whether what happened was medicine or something else. His whole method, the jury heard, was making it look like medicine.
You went back to him after, or kept the next appointment he texted you about. Going back proves nothing about you.
You saw him in the Starr building office, not inside the hospital proper. Same campus, same defendants.
You got the 2019 letter saying he'd left and thought nothing of it. The agreement says the letter gave no reason. Tell us anyway.
You already talked to one of the firms with hundreds of Paduch clients, or signed something years ago. Say so in the questions; a lawyer sorts out what it means.

Facilities covered

This is the East 68th Street page. 525 East 68th Street, Upper East Side, to be exact: the hospital there is NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and Weill Cornell Medicine's urology offices sit in the same building, at what the practice lists today as Starr 900. Paduch's sixteen years there ran from 2003, as a fellow and then on the faculty, to April 2019, when the appointment ended; the conduct itself goes back to at least 2007 on the federal timeline, at least 2009 by Weill Cornell's own agreement. Northwell Health came after, from 2019 on, out in New Hyde Park, Great Neck and Manhasset, which is a different employer and outside the city limits, so it's not this page. Wrong page? Maybe. The hospital's own page is /newyork-presbyterian-survivors, all three campuses. Columbia's is /columbia-university-irving-medical-center-survivors. And if you're only fairly sure it was East 68th Street and can't say much more than that, go through the questions anyway, tell us whatever you remember, and if the year is all you've got, the year is enough.

Questions people are asking

What did Weill Cornell know about Dr. Paduch?

By its own account, more than it acted on. In the July 2026 agreement with the U.S. Attorney, Weill Cornell Medicine acknowledges its safeguards 'were not adequate,' and the recitals list staff reports in 2012 to 2014, an outside urologist's in 2015, a patient's through an OB-GYN in December 2016, a state medical-board complaint in March 2018 and a patient's email in November 2018. The chair, it says, did not pass his on. That is Weill Cornell's acknowledgment about Weill Cornell, and nothing more; what the complaints say about NewYork-Presbyterian is still only pleaded.

Is there a Weill Cornell settlement fund I can apply to?

No. The 'over $1 billion' in the agreement is money Weill Cornell says it has paid or agreed to pay to people who already sued; Cornell's own statement calls them settlements 'with survivors who brought claims.' There is no fund, no claim form and no bar date, and the agreement says in so many words that it limits no one else's right to sue. A new claim stands on its own, and no, we're not going to put a number on it.

Was Dr. Paduch convicted?

He was. All eleven counts, May 8, 2024, a federal jury in Manhattan: six of inducing a person to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity, five of inducing a minor to do so. Life, from Judge Ronnie Abrams, on November 20, 2024. His lawyers said afterward that he maintains his innocence and would appeal; the new-trial motion was denied August 2, 2024, and no appellate decision has crossed our desk.

Can I still sue Weill Cornell or NewYork-Presbyterian?

Yes. The date to hold onto is July 29, 2027, when the city's second Gender-Motivated Violence look-back window closes (it opened January 29, 2026), assuming the city's law holds. It reaches the hospital and the medical school, not just the man. The state's Adult Survivors Act closed on November 24, 2023. The city law is being challenged (Parker v. Alexander), which is exactly why a lawyer would want a 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.

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.