The Manhattan District Attorney’s office’s handling of sex crimes and the victims of those violent assaults is criminal — according to women and advocates who rallied near the downtown courthouse Wednesday.
“We demand an independent review of the sex crimes unit’s personnel, and polices and procedures,” Marissa Hoechstetter said in Foley Square. “We demand a district attorney and unit free from undue influence and corruption.”
Hoechstetter claims she was blown off by District Attorney Cy Vance’s prosecutors after divulging that she was sexually assaulted by freaky former physician Robert Hadden.
Hadden pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2016. He had to register as a sex offender but prosecutors recommended the lowest level, which means he is not part of the public database. His victims say his jail-free plea deal was a cakewalk for the disgraced women’s health specialist at Columbia University.
Hoechstetter, who is one of 29 women now suing Hadden, claims she was touched inappropriately and wondered at the time if had really happened.
Her fears were confirmed in 2011 when she allegedly felt the demented doctor’s tongue and beard on her vagina, a moment she said that scarred her forever.
Vance’s office faced renewed criticism when another high-profile sex offender, the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges. Epstein committed suicide Aug. 10.
Epstein was in a Manhattan courtroom in 2011 when the same DA’s office recommended the lowest-level sex offender status for the notorious abuser of underage girls. The office later said it was a mistake on behalf of a prosecutor and backpedaled on their recommendation.
State assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, (D-Manhattan) said the outcome of the Hadden case is a reason victims “fear coming forward.”
“This is not who we are as a state, this is not who were are as a people, this is not who we are as allies of survivors,”said an emotional Niou, who admitted that she too was a victim of sexual violence.
Vance’s office has high profile sex crimes cases pending against Harvey Weinstein and Cuba Gooding Jr.
The DA was criticized for giving a pass to Weinstein in 2015 when an Italian model reported he groped her breasts and in several other headline-making sex crime investigations.
The office has defended its record on sex crimes and in the handling of the Hadden, saying it was a difficult case to prove with no guarantee of a conviction. Prosecutors were happy they won a felony conviction and that Hadden lost his medical license.
