The Boys Who Went to the Doctor

Tucker Coburn entered Darius Paduch’s care while he was still young, and his April 2023 lawsuit describes a medical relationship that he says became sexual abuse. By 2016, when Coburn was eighteen, he had begun recording appointments, and he later went to police in 2020 after years of trying to understand what had happened inside a medical setting that was supposed to protect him. His complaint also describes a January 2017 encounter in which a NewYork-Presbyterian nurse asked Coburn to speak with another Paduch patient who was also being abused because the nurse believed Coburn had been abused as well.

Paduch was a Weill Cornell urologist specializing in male reproductive and sexual medicine, where examinations, fertility treatment and semen collection routinely involved the most private parts of a patient’s body and medical history, and his patients included both adults and minors. In July 2026, the federal government said investigators found that Paduch sexually abused male patients at Weill Cornell from at least 2009 through 2019, including boys as young as thirteen, and identified more than fifty victims during the investigation.

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Adolescent care was already part of Paduch’s public medical profile

Weill Cornell was publicly presenting adolescent male care as part of Paduch’s work years before his abuse became public. A 2006 men’s-health publication said Paduch worked with many adolescents and included guidance for boys ages fifteen through seventeen, while also identifying Paduch among physicians who believed high-school athletic physicals should be used to teach young men monthly testicular self-examination. The publication placed Paduch directly inside Weill Cornell’s adolescent urology work more than a decade before the institution publicly confronted the scale of his abuse.

Paduch’s research record also included children and adolescents receiving fertility-related care at Weill Cornell. A 2014 Journal of Urology paper coauthored by Paduch reviewed 151 adolescents with Klinefelter syndrome who had been evaluated at Weill Cornell between 2007 and 2012, with a mean age at presentation of 11.6 years. Another Weill Cornell study involved ten Klinefelter patients ages fourteen through twenty-two who underwent microsurgical sperm retrieval and tissue cryopreservation after hormone treatment, while a separate paper from Paduch’s research group examined when clinicians might begin discussing semen collection with adolescent males for fertility preservation.

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Warnings were accumulating inside Weill Cornell

Complaints and warnings were reaching Weill Cornell while Paduch was treating those patients. The July 2026 federal agreement says staff reported inappropriate sexual language and conduct by Paduch to the department chair and Human Resources between 2012 and 2014, while later court reporting describes a 2006 patient complaint, a December 2007 internal email from a clinical technician and a 2012 Human Resources letter from a male nurse. The federal agreement classifies the 2012 through 2014 reports as workplace concerns rather than patient-sexual-abuse complaints, but the reports were already accumulating around the same physician.

In 2015, another urologist brought a patient complaint directly to the then-chair of Urology. The federal agreement says the reporting physician and the chair agreed that the conduct described fell outside the standard of care, while Paduch denied the allegation. The chair responded with an unwritten chaperone rule instead of escalating the complaint through the institution, and the agreement says the rule was not communicated broadly and Paduch did not follow it.

A second patient-related concern reached the chair in December 2016. A physician relayed concerns from a patient’s husband about what Paduch had directed the patient to do during an examination, and the chair also learned that Paduch had been using examination rooms instead of designated private collection rooms for semen collection. The allegation was not escalated, leaving multiple patient-related warnings inside a system that the federal government later said lacked centralized investigative resources, specialized training and a standard method for documenting findings.

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The 2018 medical-board complaint

The next major complaint came through the New York State medical board in March 2018. A former patient described conduct dating back to around 2007, and Weill Cornell assigned the matter to an employee who, according to the federal agreement, had no training or experience investigating sexual-abuse allegations. The earlier patient-related complaints were not disclosed to that investigator, even though Weill Cornell had already received years of concerns involving Paduch.

What the Epstein files show about Paduch’s practice

The released Epstein files contain a longer trail through Paduch’s Weill Cornell practice than a single calendar entry. On September 18, 2018, physician Woodson Merrell’s office faxed Epstein a partial laboratory report, and another packet from the same office followed on September 21. Five days later, Epstein’s schedule placed him at Weill Cornell Urology for an 8:00 a.m. appointment with Paduch and specifically noted that Merrell had recommended him.

The September 26 appointment appears in several released schedule records rather than one isolated page. EFTA00285597 preserves it inside Epstein’s longer September calendar, while EFTA00481869 records the same 8:00 a.m. appointment in a schedule covering September 22 through September 30. The latter document says “Dr. Merrell recommended” Paduch and gives detailed directions to Weill Cornell’s urology offices, including the floor, room number and departmental contact.

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After the appointment, the released correspondence shows continuing efforts to obtain results and communicate with Paduch’s office. On October 2, Epstein asked whether Paduch had received the blood results, and an assistant replied that she kept calling Paduch’s office, had emailed about the results and had left another message for a nurse named Jessica. A separate message sent later that day asks for blood results from Epstein’s September 26 visit with Paduch and says that Epstein wanted them sent to him.

By October 3, the correspondence had moved to arranging direct communication with Paduch and access to Weill Cornell’s patient portal. Lesley Groff wrote to Jessica Collazos that Epstein was available to speak, that Paduch could call him that day and that Epstein wanted the information needed to set up a Weill Cornell Connect account. The quoted reply explains that the account would allow Epstein to see laboratory results and communicate securely with his physician, nurse and the office.

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Another adult male patient complained about Paduch in November 2018, while Epstein’s follow-up communications were still recent. The federal agreement says the patient reported that Paduch had developed an inappropriate personal relationship with him, invited him on trips and onto Paduch’s boat, sent lewd messages and engaged in sexual conduct in front of him on the boat in 2013. Weill Cornell assigned that complaint to the same employee who had investigated the March matter, while the chair disclosed that earlier complaints existed but did not disclose their nature or substance.

That investigation also found that Paduch had written off more than $50,000 in the patient’s medical bills. Paduch denied sexual misconduct but acknowledged other parts of the relationship, including inviting the patient to his boat and home. Court-record reporting later described a December 2018 internal communication referring to multiple events involving Paduch over roughly the preceding decade and to several patient comments or complaints.

Paduch stopped seeing patients at Weill Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian on April 8, 2019. Eleven days later, Weill Cornell Urology sent Epstein a four-page letter in St. Thomas telling him that Paduch had stopped seeing patients and offering continued care in sexual medicine, male reproductive medicine, Klinefelter syndrome and endocrinology. The letter identifies replacement clinicians, says Epstein’s medical records remained available in Weill Cornell’s electronic medical record system and offers assistance with continuing care or transferring records.

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Peter N. Schlegel’s name appears on the April letter with his title as chairman of the Department of Urology and urologist-in-chief, and Weill Cornell records say Schlegel served as chair from 2004 until fall 2020. The released Epstein files trace a September referral into Paduch’s practice, repeated schedule entries, post-visit laboratory follow-up, efforts to reach Paduch and his nurse, access to Weill Cornell Connect and the April 2019 transition letter. By the time that sequence began, the 2015 patient complaint, the December 2016 patient-related concern and the March 2018 medical-board complaint described in the federal agreement were already inside Weill Cornell.

What the next hospital was told

After Paduch left patient care at Weill Cornell, another medical institution asked for information about him. The federal agreement says the former Urology chair completed a reference form and recommended Paduch with “some reservation,” but did not disclose why Paduch’s faculty appointment had not been renewed and did not disclose the patient complaints. Federal criminal records place Paduch at the Long Island institution “in or about 2019,” and a July 2020 medical publication listed him at Northwell Health’s Arthur Smith Institute for Urology with a Northwell email address.

Coburn then tried to report Paduch again after learning that he was practicing at Northwell. Coburn’s civil complaint says that around September 2020 he wrote NewYork-Presbyterian to report that Paduch had sexually abused him and that he had already gone to police, while separate reporting based on Northwell records says Coburn also sent Northwell a handwritten warning and met with hospital personnel. That reporting says Northwell investigated and produced a September 2020 memo that considered both Coburn and Paduch credible while concluding that the allegation could not be substantiated.

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Northwell received more warnings

Warnings continued after Paduch moved into the Northwell system, including a concern raised by ultrasound technician Katie Price later in 2020. NBC’s review of the federal trial transcript reports that Price testified that she saw conduct during a patient examination that alarmed her, left the room and reported it, while a federal trial juror questionnaire independently lists “Katelyn Price” among people who might be mentioned during trial or testify. Court-record reporting also describes a March 2021 Northwell memo that did not substantiate one reported act but did substantiate inappropriate and sexual language around staff and patients.

Paduch remained in practice after those internal warnings, and James O’Connell later put his own name into the public record as one of his Northwell patients. O’Connell has described going to North Shore University Hospital with severe testicular pain and later alleged that Paduch engaged in inappropriate conduct during his treatment. He also described the distress he experienced after learning that Paduch had been involved in his care while he was under general anesthesia, allegations he later brought into the civil record under his own name.

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The lawsuits changed what became public

As civil cases multiplied, more of the internal record began appearing in court filings. On December 12, 2022, an anonymous former patient filed what the plaintiff’s law firm identifies as its first Paduch lawsuit, saying that the abuse began while he was still a minor and continued while he was both a patient and a high-school intern. The complaint says the internship gave Paduch additional access to him, while the federal agreement separately says Weill Cornell’s board and executive leadership first learned of patient-abuse allegations through a lawsuit filed publicly in December 2022.

Coburn filed his own named complaint in April 2023, and other pseudonymous plaintiffs followed. The litigation eventually reached hospital credentialing records, including a June 24, 2024 order requiring production of Paduch’s credentialing file over privilege objections. NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell appealed, obtained a temporary stay in February 2025 and later withdrew those appeals by stipulation, while Northwell’s credentialing records became the subject of a separate discovery dispute in 2025.

The criminal case, the federal investigation and the civil claims

Federal prosecutors arrested Paduch in April 2023, and a later indictment charged conduct involving eight victims, six of whom were minors during part of the charged period. After a two-week trial, a jury convicted him in May 2024 on eleven counts involving seven victims, including five minor victims. Eleven victims testified at trial, dozens more submitted victim-impact statements before sentencing, and Paduch received a life sentence in November 2024.

The federal investigation reached beyond the victims named in the indictment and conviction counts. The government says it identified more than fifty victims during its investigation of Weill Cornell, while a plaintiff-side law firm profile citing Newsday has reported at least 800 lawsuits against Weill Cornell and Northwell concerning Paduch. By July 2026, Weill Cornell had paid or agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle civil claims brought by victims.

Paduch appealed his conviction and life sentence, and the Second Circuit heard oral argument on September 23, 2026 in Nos. 24-3116 and 25-1208. One issue raised on appeal concerns the trial judge’s decision to allow testimony from four additional patients beyond the seven tied to the conviction counts. The oral argument is publicly available through the Second Circuit and is included below with the appeal dockets.

The 2026 federal agreement put the institutional failures in writing

In July 2026, the United States Attorney’s Office announced a resolution with Weill Cornell after a yearslong criminal investigation into the institution’s handling of Paduch. The agreement says Weill Cornell’s policies and programs during Paduch’s tenure were inadequate to detect, prevent and sufficiently respond to his abuse. It reconstructs complaints that were not escalated, investigations conducted without earlier information and a later medical institution that was not told about the patient complaints or the reason Paduch’s faculty appointment had not been renewed.

Weill Cornell agreed to maintain and expand patient-safety changes that include stronger chaperone rules, centralized complaint procedures and reporting requirements, and it committed $30 million to an Institute for Safe Patient Care and Patient Empowerment. The United States Attorney’s Office said it declined criminal charges against Weill Cornell at that time in light of the institution’s civil settlements, cooperation, compliance agreement and remediation. The agreement put years of internal complaint handling, missed escalation and the later reference to another institution into a single federal record.

Cornell is under scrutiny again in 2026

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