It Took Me Decades to Realize My Doctor Was a Predator
A chance dinner conversation, a TV commercial, and a call from a lawyer finally opened my eyes.
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Editor’s Note: This piece contains references to sexual assault, which may be distressing to some readers. If you or someone you know has been affected, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or visit rainn.org for confidential support.
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My name is Gwen Whiting. I am a serial entrepreneur, exited founder, mentor, and advisor. And I am Jane Doe #443.
I found out I was molested by my gynecologist from a TV commercial.You may like
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It was a Saturday afternoon in January 2023. I was lying in bed, nursing a pounding headache, the news murmuring in the background, when a commercial cut through: “If you were a patient of Dr. Robert Hadden, Columbia University is liable for knowingly employing him. Call this number.” I opened one eye, grabbed my phone, and snapped a photo before the number disappeared.
A few days later, I called. I hadn’t rehearsed what to say—I just told the woman on the line that I’d been a patient. She took my information. Another woman called back, brash but kind, and laid out the legal landscape: Hadden had pleaded guilty in 2016 to a felony sex crime and misdemeanor of forcible touching, surrendering his medical license but serving no prison time. A federal case for inducing patients to travel for sexual abuse was still pending. Columbia had already paid more than $236 million to settle claims from over 200 women, and more women were coming forward under the new Adult Survivors Act.
That call pushed me to become Jane Doe #443, one of many women in a third wave of lawsuits.
The truth, however, had been trickling in for years. Ever since the first articles about him surfaced in 2014, I’d been exchanging shocked, horrified texts with other women I knew who also saw Hadden. Every exchange ended the same way: with us silently reassuring ourselves we were lucky not to be “one of those women” in the stories. We kept believing we’d had upstanding care—until we couldn’t anymore. Today, the words “my gynecologist was a sex offender” are part of my medical intake form for every new provider I see—a permanent entry on my record, both medical and emotional.
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And yet, even now, I hear the same dismissive line from other women: Ew, I would never go to a male doctor, as if that choice makes all the difference. It’s a way to dodge discomfort, but it keeps shame and blame in place. I was in a place I was supposed to trust, under the care of a respected professional. Why would I question the protocol? That’s the point: none of us are taught to. This can happen to anyone. My silence all these years didn’t help; I hope my voice now will.
My silence all these years didn’t help; I hope my voice now will.
Misplaced Trust
For ten years, I saw Hadden. He was my first real adult doctor. I’d found him myself, through co-workers, and proudly used my own insurance card from the job I’d worked so hard to get.
Hadden was particularly convenient because his office was in the same building as mine. The commute was efficient; the waiting room was not. He was always wildly behind schedule. Now we all know why our appointments were so long. He’d take an extra half hour to perform what I’ve come to think of as his “abuse dance”—a finely orchestrated routine disguised as care.You may like
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At each visit, he moved in and out of the room while nurses and assistants came and went. Paper gowns and privacy sheets came on and off, as he maneuvered the naked patient from stirrups, to standing, to bending. The final act was always in his office, where I could see his framed degrees and photos of his kids—including his young daughter in a ballerina outfit. Then came the invasive questions about my sex life, bikini wax, and partners; unsolicited “feedback”; and, as I left, a three-month supply of birth control from his candy drawer.
He had me and my colleagues coming in four times a year, an unusually frequent schedule I never thought to question. At the time, I believed his diligent style of examination meant I was being well taken care of.
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My final appointment with him was in May 2012, when he performed a D&C procedure after a miscarriage. After that, he vanished. No follow-up, no message from the hospital or the OB/GYN practice, just silence. For years, I didn’t understand why.
When the first major stories broke—Evelyn Yang’s 2020 CNN interview, the lawsuits, the Columbia settlements—I recognized the name, the charges, the scale of it. But I kept my distance from the details, holding them at arm’s length as if they belonged to someone else’s story.
That changed in May 2022, at a hiking retreat in Malibu. Over dinner, I mentioned, almost offhand, that my gynecologist had turned out to be a sex offender. A woman across the table looked at me: “Yeah, Hadden? Me too. He delivered my first child. And did you get the full-body skin checks, ‘since you’re fair’?”
“Yes,” I said. “Every time.”
She told me her new doctor said those checks were completely inappropriate. That conversation unlocked something. Without it, I don’t know if I would have recognized what he’d done—or picked up the phone when I saw that ad months later.
That conversation unlocked something. Without it, I don’t know if I would have recognized what he’d done.
Reckoning
After my call with the lawyer, I found the manila envelope of medical records I’d requested after Hadden vanished in 2012. The records showed the pattern in black and white. Confronting it on paper made it impossible to ignore.
I spent the rest of that week leaving voicemails for my other Hadden-patient girlfriends: “So the bad news is we were molested. The good news? At least we can get paid for it.” Crass, maybe, but humor was how I mustered the courage to break the news. I continued to make the hard calls, share the difficult details, liaise with the legal team, and report back to my friends who had also experienced Hadden’s abuse.
I’m now one of 576 former patients included in the latest settlement over Hadden’s abuse, bringing the total paid by Columbia and its affiliates to more than $1 billion. This is a privilege. So many survivors never receive acknowledgement, let alone justice. We were only heard because of our numbers, and I hope this settlement serves as a warning to both the predators who hide behind power and to the institutions that protect them. Still, I wish Columbia could have spent that money on something better—research, education, access—not atonement.
Once the settlement was finalized, we received a document outlining the “tiers” of abuse, itemizing the various acts in each. It was the first time any of us had seen the full list of Hadden’s crimes, and it was excruciating to read. Until then, my husband had clung to the notion that Hadden merely did “creepy things.” This was the first time he learned the exact details of my experiences, in stark legal language, and fully grasped the magnitude of what I and so many others had endured.
Meanwhile, I was confronted with a disturbing new possibility: what I’d once considered a gift from Hadden—his fast-tracking me to a D&C—was also my last appointment with him, under anesthesia. While I was unconscious, he could have committed any of the acts listed in the settlement.
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This is a privilege. So many survivors never receive acknowledgement, let alone justice.
Reverberations
I was unprepared for how difficult this whole process would be. None of the Jane Does in my friend group had any idea of the emotional toll that revisiting this chapter would take. Gradually, we began sharing stories from our twenties, trusting in the safe space we created together, yet still avoiding memories too disturbing to say out loud. Now, two and a half years on from becoming Jane Does, our conversations blend humor and tears.
As I move forward, I think about all the earlier instances of sexual abuse I’d simply filed away as “just another day in the female experience.” In 1994, at 18, the older man next to me on a plane slid his hand toward my leg and later tried to pin me in the bathroom. In 1998, at 22 in Egypt, a tour guide pushed me against a wall and tried to kiss me. In 2004, at 28, a prominent New York investor invited me to what I thought was a business meeting, only for it to turn into an appraisal of my breasts and whether I’d consider augmentation surgery. In each situation, I walked away in disbelief, angry at myself for staying quiet and not protecting myself better.
There are so many stories like this, stories rarely shared with mothers, sisters, and friends, let alone brothers, boyfriends, and husbands. No woman seems exempt from this club.
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There are so many stories like this, stories rarely shared with mothers, sisters, and friends, let alone brothers, boyfriends, and husbands. No woman seems exempt from this club.
When this is published, it will be the first time my own mother learns of my experiences. When one of my oldest friends read a draft of this essay, it was the first time she’d learned of my experience. She, in turn, shared hers. We’ve been friends since we were four years old, and had never spoken a word of our experiences to each other until now.
I can’t claim satisfaction. I can’t claim justice, redemption, or closure. I can only claim gratitude for the friends with whom I can share this pain. I think of all the other Jane Does in the world, now and then, and I know there is power in speaking our different, but similar, stories. The more we speak out, the more power we have.
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I hope you’ll share this article with the women in your life, and use it as a catalyst to harness our collective power.
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50 Years Ago, A Sexual Predator Roamed My Town. It Was Only Recently That I Realized How Intimately I Knew Him.
“I have a sense memory of moving slowly, deliberately, aware not to draw suspicion or attention to myself in any way.”
Oct 21, 2025, 07:55 AM EDT
|Updated Oct 21, 2025110 COMMENTS
In the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg’s ”Jaws” hunted in the shallow waters off the fictional New England town of Amity while a sexual predator, pastor and father roamed undetected in my small town using his daughter, my friend, as bait.
My friend, let’s call her Gwen, was soft-spoken and pretty. I was hyper and dorky. We became close in the summer between fifth and sixth grade over our love of all things scary, so when “Jaws” came out, we were obsessed and inseparable. We sat in the air-conditioned theater and stuffed ourselves with Milk Duds, popcorn and Tab, and every time the shark attacked, we roared with laughter.
The night I slept over at Gwen’s, we watched a “Jaws” double-feature and I was too amped to sleep. At 2 a.m., Gwen and I were doing gymnastics in her living room when her mother appeared, furious about her “wild friend.”
I felt guilty.
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Everyone knows you make up for bad sleepover behavior by playing with your friend’s younger siblings, so the next morning, I offered to play bucking bronco with Gwen’s little brother, Chuck. Chuck, like Gwen, is a fake name for a real person. All of the people’s names in this story are fake, even the villain because, if I name the villain, I name his innocent kids, and haven’t they suffered enough?
“Chuck, you get on my back and hold on, and I give you a ride like I’m a wild bronco,” I told him.
Chuck climbed on, squeezing my waist with his legs, holding tight onto my shoulders. I whinnied and reared up.
Chuck’s dad came into the room. I’ll call him Mr. D. Pravity for reasons that will become obvious. He worked at the local church. He ran a youth group where a lot of kids in my grade went.
“Hey Mr. Pravity,” I said, pausing on all fours, Chuck still on my back. “I’m just playing bucking bronco with Chuck.”
I smiled, wanting him to forgive me for my late-night shenanigans.
“What fun!” he said, “But Chuck, you’re doing it wrong.”
I was surprised that Mr. Pravity knew how to play bucking broncos since I had made it up. He dropped to one knee beside me.
“You put your foot here.”
He grabbed Chuck’s foot and moved it from my waist to my armpit. “Here,” he said, sliding his hand under me, the weight of my emerging breasts dragging along his wrist, his forearm. I pinned his arm between my upper arm and ribs to stop him because he couldn’t have meant to do that.
“No Chuck,” he said again for no reason. “Right here.”
He reached underneath me, not even pretending to adjust Chuck’s foot. He rubbed his hand, his wrist, his forearm back and forth along my chest. He cupped my brand new breasts.
At 11, I was still very much a child — climbing trees, wrestling my brothers, riding my Stingray bike with the tassels in the handlebars. I wore cut-offs, tube socks and Converse All-Stars. I wore my hair long, parted on the left, and didn’t brush it. I slouched. And though my breasts were growing, it would be two years before I got my period.
I don’t remember shedding Chuck off my back, packing my things, and leaving that house, but I do have a sense memory of moving slowly, deliberately, aware not to draw suspicion or attention to myself in any way. I had experienced something unnamed and wrong, and I felt marked.
I didn’t tell anyone — I wasn’t sure what there was to tell — was it an accident? I knew it wasn’t. But what was it? We all learned about “stranger danger” — men who would tempt you into their car with candy or a puppy and then you’d end up on a five-cent milk carton. But those were bad men. Mr. Pravity wasn’t a bad man. He was a dad. A pastor. He led the youth group that my religious friends attended.
My friendship with Gwen died swiftly and silently, though at the time, I couldn’t have told you why. The details of that morning were inaccessible to me, filed in the far reaches of my brain under Bad and cross-referenced with Shame, but not so far that I didn’t notice the hair on the back of my neck stand up when Mr. Pravity appeared at the community pool in his red Speedo.
One day, that memory came out.
In 1982, I was a senior in high school hosting a slumber party of eight friends. We sat on the floor in my bedroom telling funny stories when someone mentioned Mr. Pravity.
“He’s a pedophile!” my friend Amy said. “He showed me his thing when our family went with the Pravitys to the beach.”
She rolled backward and covered her eyes.
“He said, ‘Come look at my tan line,’ so like an idiot I went over and he pulled the front of his Speedo down!”
Everyone awkward-laughed except for me. I sat staring, the world around me shrinking to a pinhole. Was I not the only one?
“When I was at their house, he tried to put his hand down my pants by ‘helping me tuck in my shirt,’” my friend Alison said.
“My older sister wouldn’t babysit the Pravitys after he grabbed her hand and put it on his boner.” Sarah covered her mouth and screamed.
One by one, all eight of us shared our Mr. Pravity story — we had all been sexually harassed or molested by him. We were shocked. We were appalled. We were bonded by a common experience.
What we weren’t, however, was alarmed.
We were just kids connected through our mutual friendship with Gwen. Not once did we think that the eight of us were symptomatic of something broader and even more sinister.
In 2017, 35 years after the slumber party at my house, long after I graduated high school, went to college, married and had three kids, Ashley Judd publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. My Facebook page blew up with #MeToo, and it seemed like everyone I knew had a story.
I thought about my experience. Did it count if you were only 11 and your friend’s dad rubbed your boobs? I didn’t think my story worthy, so I didn’t type #MeToo. But Beth Miller did. She was the younger sister of a guy in my grade. In the comments under her #MeToo post, people spoke of her bravery, of how sorry they were, of how revolted they were by Mr. Pravity.
I wrote her.
“I just wanted to say hello and to let you know we share something from our past: nasty old Mr. Pravity.”
I wanted her to know she was not alone. She wrote me back.
“Kathy, I’m afraid I’m not surprised at this; it was clearly an open secret to some degree. I’m so sorry you were victimized as well.”
Victimized. Was I victimized? I didn’t think so. And what did she mean by “open secret”?
I Googled Mr. Pravity’s name. I saw the grainy photo — thinning blond wisps over a tanned skull, a slit of a mouth. It was him, all right.
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Below that, there were several articles discussing his arrest following an investigation after 12 women in a nearby town contacted police to say he had raped or sexually assaulted them.
I called my old slumber party friend Amy, the one he flashed with his red Speedo. I shared the article and the information about Beth Miller and asked if, back in our day, anyone had told their parents. She said she had, in fact, told her mother the night it happened and was told simply to avoid him. She said, “He was sort of a flasher. There were streakers back in the day. Everyone thought that he was disgusting and harmless. A dirty old man.”
I called another friend to ask what she knew. She said her mother had heard about Beth Miller when it happened and immediately confronted Mrs. Pravity. Mrs. Pravity, apparently, already knew about her husband’s proclivities.
In the movie “Jaws,” Mrs. Kintner, the grieving mother of the boy who is attacked and killed by the shark while on his raft, walks up to Chief Brody in her mourning clothes: a black dress with netting in front of her face. She slaps him and says, “You knew it. … You knew there was a shark out there. You knew it was dangerous, but you let people go swimming anyway ….”
Enter a woman I’ll call Nicole Marie, the hero of our story. I learned that it was she who eventually brought Mr. Pravity to justice.
I wrote her through LinkedIn, and she called me back.
She was gracious, candid and brutally honest. She told me she had grown up in the adjacent town, attended his church, was active in the youth group. In 1975, while Mr. Pravity was fondling and flashing me and my friends, he was raping 13-year-old Nicole in his church office, the back of his Volvo station wagon, his marital bed.
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Though he threatened Nicole if she told anyone, she told anyway. She told her friend, her friend’s mother. She told church leaders. She told a deacon of the church, a lawyer specializing in child abuse who said, “I’m going to tell you what they tell you in the Army when you see horrible things. FIDO — forget it and drive on.” She told everyone she knew.
She told enough people that eventually the church exported Mr. Pravity to another state. His circle of assault grew wider until, five years later, he was forced to resign after allegations of sexual misconduct. Nearly two decades after he first molested me and raped Nicole, the church revoked his ordination credentials.
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Nicole Marie never stopped telling people about Mr. Pravity, and 30 years after he first attacked her, she was finally believed. A new pastor arrived at the church and heard rumblings of a former pastor’s sexual misconduct. He sent an inquiry to all congregants asking if they had had experiences with Pastor Pravity. Twelve women responded, four spoke to police, and, due to a serendipitous glitch in the state law, 15 charges were brought against him. He pleaded to two counts and was sentenced to a decade of probation, a year of house arrest, hours of community service, and pocket change in restitution for Nicole’s therapy — a paltry sentence for the scale of his crimes — but he was old and sickly, unlikely to be on this earth for long, so they settled to end the agony of retelling. At the sentencing, the judge asked those affected by Mr. Pravity directly or indirectly to stand. An ocean of women, their families and their friends, inside the courtroom and flowing out into the halls, stood up.
When you’re young, you think monsters look like giant, man-eating sharks, grotesque and frightening, but no one ever mentions that these monsters can be disguised as someone you know, like Mr. Pravity, the cool dad, the amiable pastor who works with the church youth group. And when you do have a brush with one, like I did, you might tell yourself it’s not that big of a deal, or maybe you were the only one, so you carry your shame like an ulcer until you hear about someone else, and then a few more. And still you think that’s all it is. But it never is. There’s no such thing as a “harmless” dirty old man. These predators, they never attack just one. They keep going until they are stopped.
It’s been 50 years since “Jaws” came out — half a century since sweet Gwen and I laughed at the fake danger of a mechanical shark lurking beneath the ocean’s surface. We were innocent and naive, never fully understanding how the real danger lived among us, how quietly it moved and how long it stayed hidden in plain sight.
Note: Names and some identifying details in this essay have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned.
Kathryn Smith has published fiction and creative nonfiction in Philadelphia Stories, poetry in Apiary, and twice won an honorable mention from Glimmer Train. She graduated with a B.S. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently working on a memoir, “Stories of an Uncouth Girl.” You can reach her on Instagram @KathrynSmithStories.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
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