The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma announced this month that ProPublica, New York Magazine and Wondery were finalists for the Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma.
“How Columbia Ignored Women, Undermined Prosecutors and Protected a Predator For More Than 20 Years” was published in collaboration with New York Magazine. Health care journalist Laura Beil and former ProPublica Abrams fellow Bianca Fortis found that Columbia University had failed to act on years of warnings as Robert Hadden, an OB-GYN, abused at least hundreds of patients during his 25-year career at the university. In 2012, administrators allowed Hadden to continue seeing patients even after he was arrested for assaulting a patient.
Reporters earned the trust of survivors, many of whom agreed to share their stories and underlying documents for the first time. They agreed to talk about their trauma in the hope that everyone who enabled Hadden would be held to account.
In November, Columbia announced a sweeping series of changes following outrage and protests. The university said it will create a $100 million survivors’ settlement fund and would commit to an external investigation to examine the systemic failures that allowed Hadden’s abuse to continue. Columbia also pledged to notify nearly 6,500 of Hadden’s former patients about his crimes.
