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Former Brigham doc facing another class action lawsuit over alleged sexual abuse
Dozens of Dr. Derrick Todd's former patients have come forward to accuse the rheumatologist of inappropriate breast, pelvic, and rectal exams.
Dr. Derrick Todd is facing a new class action lawsuit filed by patients who allege that the former Brigham and Women’s Hospital physician “sexually assaulted patients under the auspices of providing medical care.”
As in three previous lawsuits, the new complaint alleges that Todd “performed inappropriate pelvic examinations, breast examinations, and rectal examinations on patients … for his own sexual gratification.”
These “horrifying, traumatizing, and deplorable acts” date back to at least 2011, according to the lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court Friday. According to the complaint, the alleged abuse continued up to July 2023, when Todd left Brigham and Women’s.
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Brigham and Women’s previously said that the rheumatologist opted to resign after the hospital investigated him and decided to terminate his employment. Todd left another practice, Charles River Medical Associates, around the same time and signed an agreement last month to stop practicing medicine. However, the voluntary agreement does not admit to or acknowledge any wrongdoing on his part.
Several of Todd’s former patients have since come forward with allegations of sexual abuse, and Friday’s complaint is the fourth lawsuit filed against Todd in recent weeks. A similar class action lawsuit filed by the firm Lubin & Meyer is now up to 110 plaintiffs.
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The latest lawsuit alleges that Todd “breached his duty of care when he performed inappropriate bodily examinations, practiced gynecological medicine in an unauthorized manner, and sexually assaulted patients under the auspices of providing medical care.”
The complaint also names the institutions where Todd practiced medicine, claiming that they “had a duty to hire, train, supervise, manage, oversee, and retain competent medical providers who refrained from assault and inappropriate examinations of patients.”
The lead plaintiff in the new class action is “Jane Doe,” a Sherborn woman who alleges that Todd sexually abused her for more than a decade, according to Keches Law Group, the firm behind the lawsuit.
In a news release, Keches Law said it hopes to collect monetary compensation for Todd’s alleged victims and also aims to hold the medical institutions accountable.
“Medical institutions have a responsibility to protect their patients from harm, yet Todd was allegedly able to continue abusing his patients for nearly 15 years while working for some of the most prominent medical institutions in New England,” the firm explained.
Todd’s attorney, Ingrid Martin, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. However, she told The Boston Globe in a statement that Todd “is confident that when all the facts are considered — or even litigated — these allegations will be proven to be without merit.”
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Martin also noted that “over the course of his twenty year career in medicine, Dr. Derrick Todd has been recognized as a skilled and accomplished rheumatologist, internist, and primary care physician. He has been fully cooperative with all investigations,” according to the Globe.
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The newspaper spoke with six women who said they had been Todd’s patients at Brigham and Women’s and at Charles River Medical Associates, all of whom spoke similarly of a doctor who won their trust and then persuaded them to undergo intimate exams.
One patient, a nurse who worked at Brigham and Women’s, saw Todd in March 2020 for help with persistent shoulder pain. She told the Globe that Todd ultimately determined that her problems were not rheumatological and suggested she become a patient in his primary care practice.
He allegedly pushed for a breast exam on her first primary care visit, despite the nurse telling him she’d seen her gynecologist three months prior and didn’t need one, according to the Globe.
“But it was not a normal breast exam,” she told the newspaper, adding, “All I can remember is his breathing.” Heavy breathing, she clarified.
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Lana Ryder started seeing Todd in 2022 and agreed to join his primary care practice, seeking help for hypermobility syndrome, according to the Globe.
“Every time I saw him he was asking me about my sex life,” she told the newspaper. “He would tell me to call him after I had relations with my boyfriend and tell him how it went.”
Todd reportedly convinced her that she had pelvic floor dysfunction, a condition marked by difficulty relaxing and coordinating pelvic floor muscles. According to the Globe, he allegedly conducted a “pelvic floor massage” on Ryder in May, an experience so traumatic that it left her bleeding and weeping.
Now, “I can’t trust people in the medical field any more,” Ryder told the Globe. “I felt super violated. … I felt like a fool, too, because I believed it.”
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