A Manhattan federal court has sentenced a former gynecologist who was convicted in January of sexually assaulting his patients to 20 years in prison.

Robert Hadden, 64, who has not practiced since 2012, was described as a “white-shirted predator” by federal prosecutor Damian Williams.

In reading out the verdict, Judge Richard Berman spoke of the “horrific attacks” that had come to light during the investigation.

After serving his sentence, Hadden will be placed on probation for the rest of his life, a prosecutor’s spokesman told AFP.

Robert Haden has been accused by dozens of his patients, some of them minors, of sexual assaults that took place between the early 1990s and 2012. Among the plaintiffs was the wife of businessman Andrew Young, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 election. Evelyn Young revealed in 2020 to CNN that she had been a victim of sexual assault in 2012, when she was seven months pregnant, something she had never confided in her husband.

In 2016, Robert Hadden pleaded guilty to two counts in a New York court. He was subsequently disqualified from practicing medicine and placed on the sex offenders’ register, but remained out of prison.

In 2022, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital announced that they would pay a total of $165 million in damages to 147 of Hadden’s former patients who accused him of misconduct and sexual assault. A year earlier, the two nursing institutions had announced the payment of damages totaling $71.5 million to another 79 former patients of the accused gynecologist.

Columbia University said that over the past decade, practices in the departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology have been reviewed to prevent similar offenses in the future.