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  Hospital Wants Plaintiffs in Reardon Sex Abuse Case to Use Real Names

By Susan Campbell
Hartford Courant
February 3, 2011

http://articles.courant.com/2011-02-02/news/hc-reardon-st-francis-victims-campbell-link-0202_1_sexual-abuse-george-reardon-plaintiffs

In a motion filed yesterday in Waterbury, St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center attorneys have asked that the court require plaintiffs in a long-running sexual abuse case to use their own names, as, says the motion, pseudonyms would be too confusing.

The motion says, in part, that the hospital recognizes the plaintiffs' right to privacy, but that interest: cannot be allowed to override Defendant's constitutionally protected rights fully to explore the suitability of potential jurors and to be judged in a proceeding that is not suffused with juror and witness confusion.

St. Francis is currently embroiled in a series of sexual abuse cases stemming from the actions of George Reardon, the hospital's former chief of the endocrinology who over the course of decades sexually abused hundreds of patients he had lured into bogus research studies.

That Reardon sexually abused children and adolescents is not in question. That the hospital should be held accountable is -- though I maintain that documents such as this make the hospital's argument that they were unaware of Reardon's actions extremely difficult to prove in court.

Reardon died in '98. A cache of pornographic slides involving former child patients was found in his former home in 2007.

Here and here are just a few examples of the hospital's legal maneuverings of the past few years.

 
 

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