Related: A Hardy Boston Globe Beginning to the Month of May
"Fertility doctor allegedly failed to report abuse" by Liz Kowalczyk | Globe Staff July 24, 2014
The founder of a popular fertility clinic failed to tell authorities more than 15 years ago that one of his star specialists, Dr. Roger Ian Hardy, was allegedly seen inappropriately touching a patient, according to a complaint by state regulators.
Hardy continued to treat women and was accused this year of having sexually molested several other patients, some while they were under anesthesia.
The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine charged that Dr. Vito Cardone, who opened the Fertility Centers of New England in 1993, was told by two employees that they saw Hardy put his hand on a patient’s breast and rub her nipple as she was waking from anesthesia.
Not funny, and I'm wide awake now. Don't like where this is going.
Instead of informing the board as the law requires, the board said, Cardone sent the two staff members to the clinic’s manager, who warned one “not to cause a stink or blow a whistle because she would be labeled as a disgruntled worker.’’
When a nurse supervisor approached Cardone about the incident, he told her “Hardy was a good doctor,’’ the board alleged.
The charges against Cardone, who has since sold the clinic, are described in a “statement of allegations” approved by the board on July 9 and obtained by the Globe Wednesday through a public records request. Cardone and his attorney, Ellen E. Cohen of Boston, did not return calls seeking a response to the allegations.
The medical board’s charges against Cardone are the first known fallout from accusations against an owner or supervisor at the chain of nine clinics in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine....
Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who has represented hundreds of victims sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests, said that in most cases of repeated molestation by an individual, supervisors failed to intervene. He represents a patient who said she was sexually abused by Hardy.
“Unfortunately we have seen a countless number of examples where supervisors are part of the cover-up,’’ he said....
Always depends on who is implicated.
--more--"
Just be glad he didn't give you any lip.
UPDATE:
"Two more patients who were treated at a popular Massachusetts fertility clinic are accusing Dr. Roger Ian Hardy, the clinic’s former longtime medical director, of sexually assaulting them during medical procedures. Hardy declined to be interviewed by a reporter who tracked him down at his new home in Thailand last year, as part of a Globe investigation into the long chain of allegations against him that go back decades."
Also see: Apparent gap stymies prosecution of doctors in sex cases
