'Who's going to believe me?': Survivors of sexual assault by a New York gynecologist talk about the long road to justice

It was just six weeks after giving birth that Laurie Kanyok visited her gynecologist Robert Hadden at Columbia University for a post-partum checkup in 2012. When a nurse working with Hadden left the room, he assaulted Kanyok.

“There was no one else in the room. I was naked in a paper gown. And here’s a man that had the guts to orally assault me,” Kanyok told NBC News. “All these things go through your mind. Who do I speak to? How do I get out of here? Who’s going to believe me? It’s my word against his.”

Kanyok contacted the police, triggering a decadeslong struggle for justice for hundreds of patients who said they were abused by Hadden over his career at Columbia. In an exclusive group interview, NBC News spoke with five of the women who said their lives were changed after they were sexually assaulted by Hadden.

Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance launched an investigation and brought charges in 2014, alleging Hadden sexually abused his patients. Hadden reached an agreement with Vance in 2016 and pled guilty to one felony count of a criminal sex act in the third degree and one misdemeanor count of forcible touching. He surrendered his medical license as part of the agreement but served no jail time.

Hadden was later federally indicted in 2020 on eight criminal counts of bringing female patients across state lines for the purpose of sexual abuse from 1993 to 2012. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year after federal prosecutors proved he had abused patients at Columbia University and its affiliated hospitals.

Hadden’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

Dian Monson — assaulted by Hadden during her second pregnancy — wrote a letter of complaint to Columbia University in 1994 detailing