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Mount Sinai Doctor Who Sexually Abused Patients Indicted: Manhattan DA

By Shaye Weaver | March 24, 2016 5:49pm
 Dr. David Newman has been charged by police with sexually assaulting a Mount Sinai patient on two separate occasions.
Dr. David Newman has been charged by police with sexually assaulting a Mount Sinai patient on two separate occasions.
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EAST HARLEM — The Mount Sinai Hospital doctor accused of masturbating on a female patient and fondling another was indicted on sexual abuse charges Thursday after two more women came forward saying that he abused them.

Dr. David Newman, the former Director of Clinical Research at the hospital's emergency department, preyed on four women between the ages of 19 and 29 who came to the emergency room for illnesses including a headache, a cold, a rash and shoulder pain, according to court documents.

The visits happened between August 2015 and January 2016.

The 29-year-old woman with shoulder pain told the NYPD Special Victims Unit in January that she was told to change out of her clothes and into a hospital gown in order for an X-ray to be taken, she said.

After a technician took her X-ray photos, Newman entered the room and told her he was going to give her a shot of morphine, even though she told him she had already been given one.

She said she felt a burning pain in her arm similar to the one when the morphine was first administered, and said Newman began fondling her chest, sources said.

As she moved in and out of grogginess, she said Newman moved the examination bed and began to masturbate over her, wiped her with a blanket and moved the bed back to its original position.

When she woke up from her morphine daze, she said she went into the bathroom, where she saved her stained gown as evidence, then returned to the examination room where she notified a new doctor who came in to check on her, sources said.

In a voluntary disclosure given to police on Jan. 12, Newman, 45, admitted to giving the patient a second dose of morphine but denied ejaculating on her.

He told authorities that there was some confusion among the nurses regarding the administration of the morphine and that he gave a second dose. He also claimed he had masturbated in a break room and that the semen from his hands got onto the woman's blanket.

From August to October last year, Newman fondled three other women, ages 18, 19 and 21, according to authorities.

Newman touched their breasts while treating one for a cold, another for a rash and another for an unexpected pregnancy, according to Eun-Han Kim, the assistant district attorney.

Police charged Newman with the abuse of two of them in January and the two other cases of abuse were found during the DA's investigation.

"It is nearly impossible to envision any other scenario whereby a stranger would grant such immediate and complete trust to another person, other than a doctor to a patient,"  Kim said in court.

"Dr. Newman abused that privilege to prey upon vulnerable young, minority women."

The extra morphine he gave the 29-year-old patient was undocumented on her medical chart and is "an absolute violation of hospital protocol" which requires that nurses, not doctors administer medication, Kim said.

The breast exams given to the other three patients, which were not needed, were also not documented, Kim said.

The District Attorney's office charged Newman on Thursday with five counts of sexual abuse.

The DA recommended four years in prison, registration as a sex offender and 10 years post-release supervision, which is similar to parole but violators receive more prison time.

Newman, who paid bail on Jan. 20, has plead "not guilty" and is due back in court on June 23. His attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.

Mount Sinai Hospital spokesman said Newman is no longer employed at the hospital and continues to cooperate fully with authorities.

District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. asked that any other potential victims call the NYPD's Sex Crimes Hotline at 212-335-9373.