Long Island urologist Dr. Darius Paduch convicted of sexually abusing patients

A federal jury in Manhattan on Wednesday found Dr. Darius Paduch guilty of sexually abusing five minors and two adults after prosecutors said he used his status as a renowned urologist to convince his victims that his actions constituted medical treatment.

The doctor was convicted on six counts of inducement to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity and five counts of inducing a minor to engage in sex.

Paduch, 56, of North Bergen, New Jersey, who according to court documents worked for Northwell Health in Great Neck and Lake Success from 2019 until his April 2023 arrest, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

After the verdict was read and the jury left the courtroom, Paduch took a long swig from a water bottle, then took off his suit coat and handed it to his lawyers before being escorted back to the lockup area of the federal courthouse.

“As a unanimous jury has just found, Darius A. Paduch leveraged his position of trust as a medical doctor for his own perverse gratification,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said. “For years, patients seeking needed medical care, many of them children, left his office as victims.”

Paduch's lawyer, Michael Baldassare, said in a statement: "Dr. Darius Paduch has maintained his innocence since the start of this case. He maintains it to this day and we will continue to fight for him. We will be filing post trial motions and an appeal and will seek all available relief."

James O’Connell, who said Paduch began abusing him at a Northwell examination room in Great Neck in 2021 and filed a civil suit against the urologist, said Wednesday night that the conviction is a vindication for him and other victims.

“It kind of validates everyone, not just myself, but everyone who’s come forward, everyone who’s spoken up,” O'Connell said. “It takes away any doubt. He’s now going to face repercussions for what he did. And that does feel good, knowing that he’s going to pay for what he did.”

O’Connell, 37, of Maspeth, Queens, said that because Paduch abused minors, he deserves the maximum life sentence. “Anyone who does anything to a child deserves the most they can get,” said O’Connell, who is a fifth-grade teacher in Queens.

The urologist faces hundreds of lawsuits, which, in addition to Paduch name as defendants Northwell or Weill Cornell Medicine — where court documents state he worked from 2003 to 2019 — or both health systems. The six victims named in the criminal indictment were abused between 2007 and 2019.

Weill Cornell issued a statement assuring patients that they had installed safeguards to prevent the type of abuse that Paduch was convicted of.

“The acts described during this trial are deeply disturbing and we remain heartbroken for these survivors,” Martha E. Pollack, president of Cornell University, and Dr. Robert A. Harrington, dean of Weill Cornell Medicine, said in a joint statement. “We have implemented enhancements to our policies and training requirements and launched new patient safety programs to prevent such abhorrent conduct occurring in the future.”

Northwell Health released a statement saying: "We have been deeply disturbed by the information" revealed during Paduch's prosecution and trial, noting he has "not been affiliated with Northwell for some time," and that "Northwell cooperated fully with authorities."

Baldassare, a New Jersey-based defense attorney for Paduch, repeatedly suggested that what he called the “money lawyers” in the civil suits — and the advertisements some ran soliciting alleged Paduch victims as clients — influenced testimony. He reminded the jury that some ex-patients said they did not view themselves as victims until they learned of the civil suits or heard or saw the ads.

But in the prosecution’s closing statement Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa said Paduch’s victims were vulnerable, coming to him with problems such as erectile dysfunction and male infertility, and he made them believe what he was doing to them was “treatment.”

“They didn’t understand what the defendant did to them was abuse at the time, and that’s exactly what the defendant was taking advantage of,” she said.

Complaints about Paduch were made to Northwell, the NYPD and to one victim’s parents “years before there were any ‘money lawyers,’ ” she said.

Espinosa also pointed to text messages shown during the trial in which Paduch discussed inappropriately touching patients’ genitals and wanting to watch them masturbate.

“All there, in the defendant's own words,” she said.

One victim, who used a pseudonym, testified that a Paduch text about “practicing” with him referred to Paduch masturbating him — which Espinosa said the doctor did to victim after victim, year after year, while “manipulating them into thinking masturbating them was part of their medical treatment.”

Paduch also feigned “prostate exams” to sexually abuse patients, she said.

Anthony DiPietro, a Manhattan attorney who said he represents 225 alleged Paduch victims in civil cases, including two who were part of the criminal case, said in an interview that the similarity of the testimony of ex-patients who had “never spoken to each other” buttressed the prosecutors’ case.

“The idea that they’re spontaneously sharing their experiences and it matches up so closely to what everybody else is experiencing shows you this was the M.O. of a serial sexual predator,” he said. 

In his closing statement Tuesday, Baldassare displayed maps showing how ex-patients had traveled “back and forth, and back and forth” for years, returning to see Paduch even after the alleged abuse occurred.

He also said prosecutors had twisted well-meaning actions by Paduch into “grooming” them for sexual abuse.

“Mentoring can be grooming,” Baldassare said. “Texting, putting someone at ease” who had erectile dysfunction or other sensitive sexual problems was portrayed as grooming, even if the texts were “silly, even if they’re a little explicit.”

Espinosa said Paduch’s medical degree, his employment by well-respected health systems and his reputation as a leading expert in some of the problems for which patients were seeking help made the doctor think “he could get away with it.”

Even if patients concluded that they were being abused, Espinosa said, “who would take the word of a bunch of young men over a world-famous doctor?”

Paduch will return to court for sentencing on Aug. 19.