Cornell Settles With Feds Over Sex Abuse Cases

Cornell’s long saga is coming to an end regarding Dr. Darius Paduch, a Polish-born Urologist on the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical School (WCM) in Manhattan. Cornell has agreed to pay $10 million per year for three years to upgrade its internal patient safety system (and share it with other healthcare providers) as part of a settlement agreement reached with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

This settlement comes after Dr. Paduch was sentenced on November 20, 2024, to life imprisonment for sexually assaulting male patients — including six minors — for more than a decade. He was convicted on May 8, 2024, of six counts of inducing a person to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity and five counts of inducing a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity for the years of abuse. He abused boys as young as 13 years old.

Since 1898, Cornell has operated a medical school in Manhattan and has been affiliated with New York Hospital since 1913. Under that arrangement, Cornell medical faculty staff the hospital as Cornell employees and collect medical fees through the university, while New York Hospital (now New York Presbyterian Hospital) operates the non-doctor aspects of the hospital using fees for specific hospital stays. Cornell medical faculty are supervised by their Department Chairmen who in turn report to the Dean of the Medical School.