Starting within the Eighties, New York law enforcement and health officials fielded sexual abuse complaints from the young patients of a respected pediatrician who ran his practice out of a basement office in his home on Long Island.
But Stuart Copperman was never charged with any crime, and it was only as he approached retirement in 2000, on the age of 65, that he was stripped of his medical license over the complaints.
Now, 25 years later, greater than 100 of his former patients have some vindication of their yearslong fight: a court has ordered him to pay a complete of $1.6 billion.
The Rev. Debbi Rhodes, who was awarded $25 million, says the completion of the litigation in late March in state Supreme Court brought a combination of relief and frustration.
“I’m undecided if he’s facing justice. He form of got away with it for all these years,” the 63-year-old Episcopal priest in Las Vegas said by phone. “But to have a court say, definitively, ‘I think you.’ To hear that — that’s heavy medicine right there.”
A Manhattan lawyer who has represented Copperman over time didn’t reply to multiple messages in search of comment in recent days.
Copperman has steadfastly denied the allegations, suggesting he was simply being “thorough” in his examinations, which his former patients say were typically conducted after he had ushered their parents out of the room.
A lengthy history of complaints
Some of the ladies filed complaints with local police and medical boards over time, but no criminal charges or disciplinary actions were ever imposed, in accordance with Rhodes’ lawsuit and others. Then a state medical board revoked his license after hearing from six accusers.
Statute of limitations laws, nonetheless, prevented Copperman’s accusers from filing lawsuits until passage of New York’s Child Victims Act, a 2019 law that temporarily allowed people to file suits over sexual abuse they suffered way back as children.
The Catholic Church and other major institutions have reached huge settlements to resolve sexual misconduct claims, but lawyers for the ladies say their litigation has resulted in one in all the most important cumulative awards against a single individual within the U.S.
“For a long time, these women were silenced and dismissed,” said Kristen Gibbons Feden, a Philadelphia lawyer representing the ladies. “Now, they can’t be ignored.”
Copperman never responded to the litigation
The Long Island court ruled for the ladies because Copperman never responded to the litigation. But a number of the special referees, in assessing damages, said they believed the ladies.
“The psychological scars from the abuse suffered by Plaintiff are profound and everlasting,” wrote William Bodkin in awarding $27 million to a girl identified as “Jane Doe T.A.” in April 2024.
“Here, there can only be outrage at Copperman’s reprehensible conduct,” he wrote in Rhodes’ $25 million judgment in December 2024.
The last of the 104 awards were handed down March 28, with amounts starting from $500,000 to $32 million, in accordance with Michael Della, a Long Island-based attorney also representing the ladies.
The women also sued local hospitals and health care networks, but those claims were dismissed.
‘Nobody can grow in the event that they reside in shame’
Like most of the accusers, Rhodes says Copperman sexually abused her during routine visits at his home office in Merrick, some 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Manhattan. She says the abuse began in 1968 when she was 7 years old, and led to an eating disorder and alcohol and drug problems at an early age.
Rhodes says she speaks openly and infrequently about her childhood trauma as a part of her ministry, which incorporates working with prison inmates. She still wrestles with anxiety, depression and other mental health impacts.
“Nobody can grow in the event that they reside in shame. Nobody can really change,” said Rhodes, who has two now-grown children and whose husband can also be an Episcopal priest. “I’m not even sure you possibly can love in case you’re living in shame.”
The Associated Press typically doesn’t name individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted unless they arrive forward publicly, as Rhodes has.
Another woman who was awarded $27 million but declined to be named said revisiting childhood trauma during her deposition was painful but, in a way, healing.
“It feels good to know that somebody heard us,” the lady, identified within the litigation as “Jane Doe A.W.,” said in a phone interview. “People now understand the magnitude of what he did.”
Lawyers for the ladies say they’ve retained a collections specialist to start pursuing compensation from Copperman.
But Rhodes and other plaintiffs say they’ve accepted the chance they might never see much, if any. Copperman is now 89 years old and lives in South Florida.
“I’m undecided what justice looks like even when I got 1,000,000 dollars tomorrow,” Rhodes said. “For me, it’s about saying to other women who’re facing this that somebody will take heed to you. I wasn’t believed for a really very long time. Don’t stay silent. Speak your truth.”
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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.
