Ricardo Cruciani committed suicide in prison last month following what the victim said were years of sexual abuse and rape, crimes for which he was convicted in July. On Wednesday, six of those victims pleaded with a judge in a Manhattan courtroom not to clear his criminal record.
Cruciani’s sentencing was supposed to take place at a Manhattan Criminal Court hearing, but his death on August 15 turned the case over. Instead, the six women read victim impact statements they wrote to a crowded courtroom and an empty chair where their attacker would sit.
And they urged the judge, Justice Michele S. Rodney, not to overturn Cruciani’s conviction, as is standard under New York State law when a person dies before they run out of appeal. The judge declined to rule on Wednesday and did not say when she would do so.
Hillary Tullin, who says Mr Cruciani raped her in 12 of the 17 years he was her medical provider, said that dismissing his conviction would hit her like “a child”. dagger to the heart.”
“I’m not sure how much more I can take,” she said as she read her statement Wednesday. “What do you say to a dead man who takes away your justice? The best I can do is imagine him sitting here.”
One woman sobbed recounting her statement, saying the doctor “turned me into a drug addict and sexually assaulted me for many years”. In the years since the abuse ended, she says she has stopped taking care of her health and appearance and has largely withdrawn from society.
“I’m not alive,” she said through tears. “I am just surviving. I am just existing”.
Fred Sosinsky, Cruciani’s defense attorney, told the judge that legal precedent required her to drop his client’s sentence “not because anyone believes it’s the fairest thing to happen, but because because in the State of New York the law has existed and has been for 55 years. five, that’s the law. “
Over the course of his medical career, Mr. Cruciani has built a reputation as a compassionate neurologist who listens to his patients and possesses a rare ability to treat cases of chronic pain. .
But dozens of patients accuse his reputation of masking a dark pattern of over-prescribing pain medication that leaves them addicted to powerful drugs and dependent on the whims of a sadist doctor, who exploit their vulnerability to demand sex in exchange for drugs.
In 2017, Cruciani pleaded guilty to sexual assault in Pennsylvania and had to resubmit his medical license and register as a sex offender, but he never served time in prison until two weeks on Rikers Island last month. Eight.
His month-long trial centered on the allegations of six women he treated around 2012 at Beth Israel Medical Center, now known as Mount Sinai Beth Israel, in Manhattan, and at facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The jury convicts him in July, and he died two weeks later. He is 68 years old.
The women who spoke in court Wednesday, only two of whom provided their names to the news media, described a similar experience with the doctor. First, there was a period of years where he won their trust and affection and prescribed very high doses of drugs, including opioids.
His patients regularly experience years of pain caused by complex neurological conditions, and many have also been questioned or downplayed by doctors in the past. Some say they are grateful to Mr. Cruciani for belittling them and providing relief.
But once they became dependent on the drug, he became emotionally and verbally abusive, they said, and began demanding sex in exchange for renewing their prescription. If they resisted, he would deny them their medication, sending them back to chronic pain along with severe symptoms of opioid withdrawal.
Terrie Phoenix said Cruciani used his prescription sheet to trap her for more than a decade of sexual abuse.
“I thought if I could find another doctor to take care of me, I would be free,” she said. But Mr. Cruciani made that impossible: Ms. Phoenix said over her years of abuse, more than 30 other doctors looked at her chart, with many of the drugs he prescribed, and refused to accept it. she is a patient.
“I lived in fear of the man who took my life in his hands, and even from the grave he continued to disrupt my life,” she said.
Ms Tullin testified in court that her years of abuse at the hands of Mr Cruciani had triggered a “tsunami of trauma” that included depression, anxiety, suicide attempts, nightmares and flashbacks, fear of rejection. doctor and cannot trust others. .
“I guess I am the exact definition of complex PTSD,” she says.
Another woman, speaking to all five victims standing next to her, their arms linked, said she didn’t realize the doctor had prescribed the medicine for her until it was too late.
She became physically dependent and began to have withdrawal symptoms. She said she went to him to get a prescription changed, and that was the first time he demanded sex.
“I really think he’s very sweet and I trust him a lot and am grateful to him,” she said. “I couldn’t believe he saw me shaking and sweating and so sick and he made me do everything to get a prescription.”
