Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
Former Brigham and Women’s doctor Derrick Todd pleads not guilty to 81 new sexual assault charges
Prosecutors say Todd manipulated vulnerable patients into unnecessary and sometimes invasive exams, often making “crude sexual remarks.”
Dr. Derrick Todd, the former Brigham and Women’s physician accused of performing medically unnecessary breast and pelvic exams, pleaded not guilty Thursday to 81 new sexual assault charges involving nearly two dozen patients.
A once-prominent rheumatologist and primary care physician, Todd already faces 22 counts of rape and indecent assault and battery combined out of Middlesex County, where he practiced at Framingham’s Charles River Medical Associates. The new Suffolk County charges stem from his conduct at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s and Faulkner hospitals.
Todd was released on personal recognizance Thursday with GPS monitoring and a nightly curfew. He remains free on bail in the Middlesex proceedings.
Advertisement:
Speaking in court Thursday, prosecutor Ashlee Mastrangelo accused Todd of preying on 22 patients — all women — between 2017 and 2023. Todd, she alleged, conducted improper and often invasive exams under the guise of breast cancer screenings or “general women’s wellness.”
Previously:
“He used their joint pain and chronic illness as a reason to do pelvic floor therapy or pelvic massage,” Mastrangelo charged. “What I expect a jury to hear in this case is that neither of the things that Derrick Todd did that provide the basis for these 81 indictments even remotely mirror a standard women’s wellness exam.”
Advertisement:
She said Todd coaxed and manipulated his patients into “these so-called ‘exams,’” fondling them and “often making crude sexual remarks while he was touching their breasts.”
According to Mastrangelo, some of the women reported that Todd walked away visibly aroused after conducting breast exams with his eyes closed and while breathing heavily. She further alleged Todd would text patients at night and on the weekends, often failing to note breast and pelvic exams in their medical records.
“These women went to Derrick Todd in a vulnerable place,” Mastrangelo said. “Each one of their individual circumstances was exploited.”
But defense attorney Ingrid Martin noted some of the women were Todd’s patients for years “and never raised a complaint to him or to anyone else at the hospital about his care.”
In fact, she suggested the allegations against Todd only escalated after an “avalanche” of media attention and pervasive advertising from civil litigation attorneys in the fall of 2023. Earlier that year, Todd parted ways with BWH and agreed to stop practicing medicine following complaints about his allegedly unnecessary exams. More than 200 former patients later signed on to a class action complaint against Todd.
Advertisement:
Acknowledging the “highly unusual” circumstances, Martin emphasized that her client remains innocent until proven guilty.
“This case will be about medicine, about what a rheumatologist or primary care physician should or can do during a medical encounter, and the commonwealth will have the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dr. Todd acted beyond that scope, and that he did so with the intent to sexually assault his patients,” she added.
According to Martin, Todd “has frankly been looking forward to the opportunity to challenge the allegations that have been made and to present evidence in his own defense.”
He is due back in Suffolk Superior Court June 8.
Be civil. Be kind.
Read our full community guidelines.To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address