A doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan was arraigned on Thursday on charges of sexually abusing four women who came into the emergency room there, touching their breasts for no medical reason and, in one case, drugging, groping and masturbating on a patient.
The physician, David H. Newman, pleaded not guilty before Justice Michael J. Obus in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to one count of first-degree sexual abuse and four counts of third-degree sexual abuse. He remains free on bail.
“Four young women who came to the hospital for medical treatment were sexually abused by the very doctor entrusted with their care,” the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement. “One was sedated to the point of being physically helpless — a nightmare scenario for any patient to endure.”
Susan R. Necheles, Dr. Newman’s lawyer, said he vigorously denied the charges and expected to prove at trial that they were false. “Mr. Newman obviously denies all these allegations,” she said. “They are not true. This case appears to be a case that will go to trial.”
Dr. Newman, 45, was arrested on Jan. 19 after two women complained to the police, and since then two more women have come forward, the authorities said. Before his arrest, Dr. Newman was a well-known proponent of reforms in emergency care who had written widely about improving doctor-patient relationships. He has been suspended from his job at Mount Sinai.
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In court, a prosecutor said Dr. Newman had made a target of young minority women. In one case, he is accused of taking advantage of a 29-year-old woman who had gone to the emergency room on Jan. 12 complaining of shoulder pain. He touched her breasts and then administered additional medication to further sedate her, the prosecutor, Eun-Ha Kim, said.
Once the woman was physically helpless, unable to open her eyes or speak, Dr. Newman masturbated at her bedside and ejaculated on her face, Ms. Kim told the court. DNA evidence from the woman’s eye and cheek matched the doctor’s DNA profile, she said.
The other three women — all between ages 18 and 21 — were treated by Dr. Newman in the pediatric area of the emergency room. The prosecutor said there was evidence he had touched one woman’s breasts while treating her for a cold. He is accused of doing the same thing to a woman who had complained of a rash on her eyebrows and to another who had complained of a headache after taking a pregnancy test.
Ms. Kim told the court that if Dr. Newman agreed to plead guilty to the top count and to register as a sex offender, the district attorney’s office was willing to accept a four-year prison sentence as punishment.
According to court documents, Dr. Newman told a detective that he had masturbated in a lounge before he treated the patient with shoulder pain and his semen may have been transferred to her face during the examination.
He also told the detective, who interviewed him in his Montclair, N.J., home on Jan. 12, that he had given the patient a second dose of morphine. He blamed that decision on “some confusion amongst the nurses regarding the morphine.”
The district attorney’s office has not released the names of the women because of the nature of the crime.
