A lawsuit has been filed against a doctor, who is said to have sexually assaulted and done exams that were not required.
When Kristin Fritz went to see Dr. Derrick Todd more than ten years ago for back pain, he “aggressively groped her breasts” to the point where he “seemed to like it,” Fritz says. When the hospital called her last year about Todd and the case, she knew something was wrong and that she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“This hurts me so much,” she said. “I’m so ashamed of myself that I didn’t know what to do at the time — that I should have known this felt wrong and told someone.”
For the case, Fritz is one of almost 200 people who have said that Dr. Todd sexually assaulted them. The lawsuit says that Todd did pelvic floor therapy, breast exams, testicular exams, and rectal exams on patients that were not required.
It said that Dr. Todd had been beating patients since 2010 and that other people, including the hospital where he worked, knew about the abuse but did nothing about it.
“An amazing number of people put their trust in Dr. Todd and that trust was broken just for his own selfish pleasure,” said William Thompson of Lubin & Meyer, whose company is representing most of the defendants.
“Another thing that seems strange to me about this case is how this could have been going on at the hospital and the practice group for so long without anyone noticing that something was wrong,” he said. Still, they let him keep doing this to more and more people week after week, month after month, year after year.
Two anonymous reports about Dr. Todd were sent to the hospital in April of last year. As a result, he had to oversee exams and was soon fired. The hospital then told the police and all of its present and former patients what was going on.
