Judge says damage done by Darius Paduch is 'irreparable,' sentences him to life in prison for sexual abuse of patients

A federal judge sentenced former Long Island urologist Darius Paduch on Thursday to life in prison for repeated sexual abuse of boys and men, including a Nassau County district attorney investigator.

"The damage that Dr. Paduch has done through his abuse and gaslighting is irreparable," Manhattan District Court Judge Ronnie Abrams said. "I am of the view that he will always pose a danger to the community and everyone in it."

In May, a Manhattan federal jury convicted Paduch, 57, who practiced at Northwell Health in Great Neck and Lake Success from 2019 until his arrest in April 2023, of six counts of inducement to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity and five counts of inducing a minor to engage in sex. 

The doctor, who also practiced at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City for at least 16 years, spent years building a specialty treating men and boys with Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic condition that causes infertility.

Building trust in victims

Several victims, who testified under pseudonyms because of the deeply personal nature of the abuse, said that Paduch groomed them, building trust through frequent text messages asking about their sexuality and sexual habits.

A man who went by the name of Luke Bevin, of Maryland, testified that the doctor started molesting him when he was just 14 years old.

His parents would travel to New York City and Long Island with him hoping to retrieve sperm cells that could later be used in fertility treatments.

His mother, who testified under the pseudonym Krista Bevin, said that her son’s behavior changed after his visits.

"He stopped smiling," she told the jury. "He had a really beautiful smile. He was just different."

Manhattan federal prosecutors showed the court chatty text messages from Paduch asking Bevin if he’s sexually active, what kind of partner he likes and if he masturbates frequently.

"This abuse lives with me today," Bevin said in a victim impact statement to the court. "I suffer from guilt, shame, and embarrassment surrounding what Dr. Paduch did to me as a child and as an adult. I have trust issues with doctors and feel betrayed by institutions that were supposed to help me heal. Instead, I am left with memories of the abuse that haunts me at night and replays in my head during the day. This sexual abuse has hindered my ability to start and maintain a serious, romantic relationship. My last relationship ended due in large part to the trauma from my sexual abuse."

Paduch’s victims were not limited to minors.

An unnamed special investigator with the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, who conducted inquiries into sexual abuse by Catholic priests, told Abrams that he too had been targeted by the doctor.

A sworn officer with nearly 45 years experience in law enforcement as an NYPD lieutenant, training in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and working as an investigator with the district attorney’s office for nearly half his career, the man said that his vast experience did not immunize him from the abuse he suffered as an adult.

"The irony of a person with my professional credentials and experience falling victim to Darius Paduch is, to say the least, outsized," he wrote in a letter to the court submitted this month.

"As he was quite interested in my law enforcement background, I’m quite sure that, on some unspeakable level, he found it particularly gratifying to be able to victimize me," the investigator said. "Keeping that in mind, his victims ranged from purely innocent children to the most jaded of law enforcement professionals. From my experience perspective, his stark boldness is as telling as it is intimidating. His predilections seem to defy boundaries, therefore, the breadth of his potential depredations in any future is limitless."

Protecting against future victims

The detective urged the judge to give Paduch the maximum sentence allowed under the federal guidelines, because "time will not change him."

The investigator seemed to tap into his profile training and years of experience in considering Paduch’s risk of future harm. 

"His ‘tastes’, if you will, are no more his choice than mine or your’s ...   His term of incarceration will only provide protection for his potential future victims. Because it warrants repeating, children deserve your extreme consideration in this arena," the detective said.

Paduch’s lawyer Michael Baldassare has twice tried to overturn his client’s conviction, first arguing unsuccessfully that the charges should have been brought in state court and were misdemeanor offenses.

In October, the lawyer again sought a retrial in the case because a computer hard drive with evidence that the prosecution presented at trial was withheld from the doctor until August, three months after his conviction. In that filing, Baldassare blamed the Metropolitan Detention Center, the beleaguered federal jail in Brooklyn where Paduch has been held since his arrest, for failing to turn over that evidence.

The judge denied that motion on Wednesday, saying that it was not based on newly discovered material and did not establish prejudice against the former doctor.

According to the prosecution's records, Paduch was born in Kolobrzeg, Poland, in 1967 and graduated college there with a biochemistry degree. He went to medical school in Lodz, Poland, getting his degree in 1993, according to his lawyer. After immigrating to the United States he did his residency in urology at Oregon Health and Science University between July 1996 and June 2003, according to a sentencing memo. 

Paduch  began teaching as an assistant professor at Cornell Institute’s Brady Urologic Health Center beginning in 2005. He continued to work at Weill Cornell, publishing over 100 scholarly articles and rising up through his research and treatment of Klinefelter syndrome. The former doctor also served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves in Oregon from 2001 to 2004, according to sentencing records.

Paduch joined Northwell in March 2020, working at the Smith Institute for Urology in Lake Success until 2023. He maintains his innocence and said that he only wanted to help his patients through his love of science and medicine.

"I also saw the pain in their families being misunderstood by the medical community and often marginalized," Paduch wrote to the judge about his patients. "I treated my patients and their families like my own family. I gave my cellphone number to every patient I operated on so they or their families had a way to contact me any time."

In a letter to the court, Paduch asked for no more than 10 years behind bars, citing his years of medical work and public service. Paduch, who has never been convicted of a crime prior to this, cited his family connections, his husband and adopted son, as another reason for shortening his sentence.

Manhattan prosecutor Marguerite Colson said that the former urologist's credentials were used as bait to lure patients and their parents desperate for treatment.

"He weaponized those accolades," she said. "He leveraged them to get closer to victims."

The parents of two of the victims spoke during the sentencing, telling the judge of the guilt and the anguish that they feel from delivering their sons to a sexual predator.

"I will forever, be haunted by the inescapable images of abuse that plague my mind, the abuse inflicted upon my son for years, behind my back. The doctor’s calculated manipulation of me as a parent, his skillful coercing and enticing me to entrust my son’s care to him, has left unimaginable, inescapable trauma and suffering for me on a daily basis," Krista Bevin told the judge.

Baldassare said that he plans to file an appeal on Paduch’s behalf on Thursday.

"Dr. Paduch maintains his innocence and we hope that he will one day be vindicated," he said.