A woman who was sexually assaulted by a Columbia University doctor in 2012 is suing the university for continuing to employ the ‘predator in a white coat,’ claiming it was aware that he had been abusing his female patients for more than two decades.

Laurie Kanyok, 47, has joined dozens of victims of gynecologist, Robert Hadden, to bring a civil suit against trustees of Columbia University and its affiliated College of Physicians and Surgeons and New York Presbyterian Hospital.

They allege that hospital personnel were not only aware of the ‘sexual exploitation and abuse’ being perpetrated by Hadden as far back as the 90s, they ‘actively, deliberately and inexplicably’ concealed it. In fact, they claim, Hadden’s reputation was so egregious that he was known amongst medical assistants as ‘a shark’ for his ability to outmaneuver chaperones to make ‘quick hits at sexually abusing patients’ and keep going.

Now, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Kanyok is speaking out against the institution that, she says, protected her abuser for decades.

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Kanyok story began when she chose Hadden, 64, as her doctor when she became pregnant in 2011. On first meeting, she recalled, the, ‘mild-mannered and prominent physician…inspired trust.’

Today it is impossible for Kanyok to look back on those pre-natal exams without seeing the abuse to which she was being subjected.

On one occasion, under the guise of checking the dilation of her cervix Hadden subjected her to an internal exam so forceful that he lifted her off the exam chair while she ‘gripped the arms’ and caused her to bleed afterwards.

But with no prior experience Kanyok suppressed any misgivings and trusted her doctor.

She said, ‘You know as your stomach grows the only thing that matters is you want to hear the heartbeat.’

Kanyok is thankful that Hadden was not on call when she went into labor and so was not the doctor who delivered her child.

Instead, she was attended by a team of women and, for the first time, realized that what she had come to accept as ‘normal’ was anything but.

She said, ‘When I was close to delivering the gal came into check my dilation and it was as if nothing was going on. And I was sort of like, ‘Okay, that was different.’

Still, she might have let it go were it not for what happened six weeks later at a post-partum consultation.

She recalled, ‘[At first] he did the whole exam with a nurse in the room. He started to comment on my weight and how much I’d lost and how good I looked.’

According to Kanyok the comments felt ‘off’ and out of place, but she let it slide.

But then, after the exam was finished and the nurse had left the room Hadden said he wanted to check something else and asked Kanyok, who was naked, to lie down once more.

She said, ‘I said, ”You didn’t just do a full exam?” And he said, ”No, just lay back down let me just check one more time.”

‘So, I lay back down and put my feet in the stirrups, and he pulls the sheet taught and all of a sudden, his head ducked down, and he licked my vagina and I jumped off the table and he was white as a ghost.’

She texted her partner and her best friend, telling both what happened. The father of her child told her to call the police immediately.

She said, ‘I tried to leave. I got dressed and walked out. I didn’t go to his office, I didn’t stop at admin. It was a big, long hallway and [just as I was leaving] he’s coming after me calling, ”Laurie, you forgot to come get your [birth control] prescription. Come back.”’

Scared, she followed him back to his office where he flipped his prescription pad back and forth nervously apparently trying to gauge and manage her reaction to what had happened. 

He insisted on walking her out, rubbing her back and making small talk as he did.

Kanyok called the police from her Uber home. By the time she got there Hadden had left a lengthy and agitated voicemail on her cell. 

She said, ‘He said, ”I understand something happened, that you’re not happy with your visit.” And he’s saying, ”Why don’t you come back in, and we’ll talk about it face to face.” And then the call got progressively more agitated and at the end he was sort of manic and frantic and said, ”You know I’m really, really upset too.” And he hung up the phone.’

Kanyok played the voicemail to detectives who headed to the hospital to arrest him.

Meanwhile new mother Kanyok went through the invasive process of undergoing a rape kit. The sample taken from Kanyok was a 98-99% match for Hadden’s saliva.

Yet a few months later Kanyok received a phone call from the Assistant District Attorney saying that the criminal case against Hadden was being dropped for lack of evidence.

She said, ‘I was in shock. I said, ”This is insane.” I was told to file a civil suit.’

Kanyok did so and the decision led to the DA’s office re-opening the criminal case.

She explained, ‘My attorneys did a little blurb in the newspaper and women started coming forward with corroborating stories.’

Eleven women came forward and Kanyok testified before a Grand Jury. She said, ‘It was vindicating but at the same time it was scary because now this is a serial predator.’

Hadden was charged with nine counts of sexual misconduct and assault. But, in 2016, he took a sweetheart plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to Kanyok’s counts and was allowed to surrender his medical license and walk free.

Kanyok was casting a major Broadway musical when she got the phone call telling her the news.

She said, ‘I was numb. I said, ‘What do you mean they’re giving him a plea deal? What about the other women you’re not acknowledging?’

She was told that many were outside the statute of limitations – which is just one year.

Kanyok said, ‘There was no vindication. I felt agitated. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t focus.’

Kanyok settled her civil case in 2017. She said, ‘I remember pacing round this boardroom [during mediation] and smacking my fists on the chair and saying, ‘It’s MeToo’ but nobody wanted to acknowledge it. ‘Take the money, Laurie, and go raise your daughter,’ is what I was told.’

And for a while that is what Kanyok tried to do. But the trauma never left her nor the sense of injustice at the way Hadden had walked free, and Columbia never held accountable.

She said, ‘This is a gynecologist, this is your most vulnerable state as a female. How does an institution allow this? That messes with your psyche.

‘There is no dollar amount, there is no time. There is no fix to that. I didn’t feel anything except what’s wrong with the system that lets this person be free?’

‘I’m tough. I can handle a lot but [this trauma] is the suit you can’t get off. You can never get rid of it. You can be happy. I can go on a holiday. I can have a birthday party. I could do a lot of things. But at the end of the day, it’s there. And I was supposed to have won? What did I win? All I could think was I signed this piece of paper and I accepted money, for what?’

Then, in 2020, Kanyok was watching television when she saw Andrew Yang’s wife, Evelyn, share her story of abuse at Hadden’s hands.

Yang was speaking publicly as the disgraced doctor was indicted on federal charges relating to 16 women and including six counts of inducing others to travel to engage in illegal sexual acts. He was released on a $1million bond and is currently awaiting trial.

Announcing the indictment Audrey Strauss, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District Of New York, described Hadden as, ‘a predator in a white coat [who] used the cover of conducting medical examinations to engage in sexual abuse.’

For Kanyok, news of the arrest was bittersweet. Because, as she watched Yang speak, Kanyok realized that the democratic candidate’s wife had been assaulted after she herself had reported the doctor to police.

Suddenly Kanyok saw the bigger picture. She had thought she was the last of his victims but now she realized that he had been allowed to step back into his role. Both she and Yang were victims of a cycle of abuse that could – and should – have been stopped.

She said, ‘Evelyn Yang was assaulted after me…I couldn’t let that go. Then I found out there was a woman who had written a letter in 1993 to the hospital and they responded saying, ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this.’ And that was it. They dropped it.

‘Essentially it should have never happened to me because she made them aware. It should have never happened to Evelyn because I called the police and I made them aware but they [Columbia] were still allowing this behavior.’

She said, ‘That’s why I came back out. I shouldn’t be sitting here; I shouldn’t be telling my story. I shouldn’t have to be facing the prospect of telling the story to my daughter when she’s of an age and has to go to the gynecologist or, God forbid, does a random Google search on her mom and finds out like that. I have to face telling my daughter because they didn’t listen to a letter from a patient in 1993. That’s deplorable.’

Today’s class action in which Kanyok is included contains multiple allegations from numerous Jane Does that echo and build on her claims.

These include that Hadden ‘touched his tongue’ to patients’ vaginas, had patients ‘remove clothing for no legitimate medical purpose,’ ‘conducted prolonged wholly medically unnecessary ‘breast examinations’ and performed ‘serial’ and ‘non-medically indicated internal examinations’ often with’ ungloved hands.

Last month 79 of Hadden’s former patients reached a partial settlement in a suit brought against Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital allowing them to seek $71.5million from a victims’ compensation fund. 

A Columbia University spokesperson said in a statement to DailyMail.com, ‘Hadden’s arrest was voided within hours. No one at Columbia at the time had any knowledge of any prior allegations of misconduct. We regret that he saw patients again for several weeks.’

But the settlement came with no admission of culpability from Hadden’s employers, and it is that for which Kanyok is fighting.

She said, ‘It is 100 percent institutional. It’s no longer about the serial predator that was assaulting pregnant women. This is about the institution.’

She said, ‘I feel very strongly and passionately about the people in the institution that allowed this to happen for multiple decades. All they’ve done is to try to stop us from talking.

‘It’s habitual. It’s a pattern [of silencing victims]. We are living in this moment of MeToo and social justice and why are they the only institution that can’t do the right thing? 

‘It’s very black and white. We’re not crazy. He should have been in jail, and I know there’s a lot of victims that want that justice. And I understand that, it’s just not where my concern is.’

For Kanyok, it’s about holding Columbia accountable that – and that alone – will be vindication for her.

Meanwhile she, Yang and a third victim, Marissa Hoechstetter, are advocating for the Adult Survivors Act which would increase the statute of limitations for victims like them.

She said, ‘If – when – we succeed I don’t know how that’s going to feel but at least I can say to my daughter when she’s a young adult this was the fight. This is what we did. You should be safe.’