BishopAccountability.org
	In Painful Retrospect Hartford Courant February 26, 2008 http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-reardon.artfeb26,0,1044381.story With excruciating hindsight, it is now clear that the state Department of Public Health should have trusted the victims rather than the forensic experts who said, two decades ago, that Dr. George Reardon was not a pedophile. The Courant reported on Sunday that a psychologist and psychiatrist from the Institute of Living in Hartford concluded in 1988 and again in 1991, after examinations spanning weeks, that the doctor could safely continue practicing medicine even though victims kept coming forward. Dr. Reardon was stopped two years later when one of the Institute's experts, given additional evidence, changed his mind and testified against him. The discovery last year of a huge cache of child pornography hidden in the former home of the late doctor appears to validate claims that he fondled and filmed children in suggestive poses for decades. The experts now look so wrong. But so does the Department of Public Health, which decided against pursuing the complaints. And St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, which defended Dr. Reardon in 1993 as "a respected member of the medical staff ... for 30 years" and said his "expertise in treating sexual precocity and sexual development problems" placed him "at greater risk for allegations of this nature." And the state Medical Examining Board, which, to their shame, dropped disciplinary hearings against him in 1995 in exchange for his agreement never to practice medicine again, although 14 former patients had filed complaints or lawsuits against him by then. He died in 1998. Now some 60 people are suing St. Francis Hospital, alleging that it failed to protect them from Dr. Reardon when they were young. That's at least a dozen more accusers than came forward in the Hartford Archdiocese sex-abuse scandal, settled in 2005 for $22 million. Yes, two decades ago society was more trusting of such authority figures as doctors and priests, and more apt to dismiss the claims of children often targeted by cunning perpetrators — children with problems, emotional and medical. Dr. Reardon, an endocrinologist, claimed he was photographing the children for a growth study. But it's hard not to wonder why St. Francis defended the doctor so vigorously after the first complaints were filed in 1987 by a brother and sister. Six people say they were abused between then and 1993, when the doctor resigned. It's also hard not to wonder whether Institute of Living experts were perhaps too close to St. Francis, collegially, to make a clear-headed analysis of the hospital's chief endocrinologist. The same could be said of the Connecticut Medical Examining Board, which has a history of lenient treatment of errant physicians. It inexplicably restored Dr. Reardon's license in 1993 after the Institute of Living expert decided he could not be trusted. In bitter retrospect, it appears victims have been wronged twice — first by a depraved doctor, then by those who could have stopped him but choose to believe him for far too long.
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