Rockefeller University Hospital 'covered up sex abuse by doctor'

Dr. Reginald Archibald abused hundreds of children between 1940 and 1982. He died in 2007, before his abuse became public 

Dr. Reginald Archibald abused hundreds of children between 1940 and 1982. He died in 2007, before his abuse became public 

Rockefeller University Hospital has been accused of covering up abhorrent sexual abuse carried out by one of its doctors and storing the nude photographs he took of children after asking them to masturbate for him, claiming that he needed semen samples to predict how tall they would grow to be. 

The allegations are laid bare In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Manhattan Federal Court by Jeffrey Poppel, a Florida-based lawyer who is one of Dr. Archibald's hundreds of victims. He agreed to be named on Thursday through his lawyers.  

Poppel, now 54, alleges that the hospital not only ignored allegations against Dr. Reginald Archibald for years but held on to the images he took of child patients he was treating for decades. 

Poppel fears the hospital still has a photograph of him that Archibald took in 1975 when he was 11 during his first visit. It shows him in the fetal position, struggling to masturbate because his arms were so short they could not reach his penis. 

The hospital was made aware of allegations against Archibald in the 1990s and again in 2004 but did not take any action against him, instead claiming to have reported its findings to the Manhattan District Attorney to no avail. 

Archibald died in 2007 without ever having been questioned or prosecuted. He stopped working at the hospital in 1982. 

In 2018, the hospital contacted his victims for the first time about the abuse and admitted that it had found evidence of it when went back to the 1990s. 

It did not, however, turn over the photographs. 

Instead, it asked the victims to send any information they had to a law firm it had hired, without explaining why. 

Poppel argues in his lawsuit that it was a move carried out in anticipation of the Child Victim's Act, a recently-passed New York law which banishes the statute of limitations that would ordinarily prevent historic sex abuse victims from seeking damages in civil court. 

The hospital, it is alleged, wanted to get in front of any potential litigation by gathering information about the people who may file lawsuits. 

Rockefeller University Hospital (pictured) is accused of storing the photographs Archibald took and not giving them to patients even years later 

Rockefeller University Hospital (pictured) is accused of storing the photographs Archibald took and not giving them to patients even years later 

The letter went to more than 1,000 former patients and was also posted online. 

It read: 'Our records indicate that some decades ago, you may have been a patient at the Rockefeller University Hospital and seen by Dr. Reginald Archibald.

'Based on reports from several former patients regarding Dr. Archibald's interactions with them, we are reaching out to as many of his patients as we can locate.

'If you have information you would like to share regarding your interactions with Dr. Archibald, please contact Helen at [phone number]...Thank you for your consideration.'

Poppel replied demanding to know what the university planned to do with his information and asking for his medical files including the photographs Archibald took. 

He never heard back and was re-traumatized by the letter which reminded him of the abuse he'd suffered decades earlier, he said. 

In a harrowing account of his first visit to the doctor in 1975, he told how Archibald told his mother that she was not allowed to sit in on the appointment. 

Poppel, who lived in northern New Jersey at the time, had 'congenital deformities of the upper extremities'. 

This is the letter the victims were sent in October last year, out of the blue, after decades of silence from the hospital. Poppel claims in his lawsuit it was a fishing expedition to gain information on potential plaintiffs in anticipation of a change in the law which has opened the hospital up to lawsuits

This is the letter the victims were sent in October last year, out of the blue, after decades of silence from the hospital. Poppel claims in his lawsuit it was a fishing expedition to gain information on potential plaintiffs in anticipation of a change in the law which has opened the hospital up to lawsuits

'[He was born with] short arms, club forearms, small hands, four fingers on each hand, no kneecaps and coloboma of the eyes,' the lawsuit reads. 

The child was 'extremely short for his age' and was often bullied.

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