A now-deceased endocrinologist, Dr. Reginald Archibald, who practiced medicine for many decades at New York City’s prominent Rockefeller University Hospital, has been accused of sexually abusing young patients while he treated and studied children who were deemed young for their age. According to the New York Times, “Dr. Archibald worked as a doctor, researcher and professor at The Rockefeller University Hospital from 1941 to 1946 and again from 1948 to 1980. He kept his affiliation with the institution, as an emeritus, until 1987.”
In September 2018, the hospital sent a letter to Archibald’s former patients asking for information about their contact with him while they were patients at Rockefeller University Hospital, and then the hospital posted a statement online in early October saying it had evidence of Archibald’s inappropriate behavior with his young patients and that the first credible allegations came to the hospital’s attention back in 2004.
Recently, however, the hospital acknowledged it knew of the allegations against Archibald for decades prior to this becoming public, with at least two allegations being made by former patients in the 1990’s. At the time of this writing, it appears there are conflicting reports over when the allegations against this doctor first came to light and when the hospital reported the allegations to the District Attorney.
Heinous Crimes Against Children
The allegations have been turned over to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and the Rockefeller University Hospital says it is “appalled” by the allegations and is working to provide counseling and support to possible victims of Archibald’s horrific crimes.
Men describe that when they were young patients of Archibald’s, he would often have them disrobe and would ask them to masturbate or he would masturbate them. He would measure their erect and flaccid penises, and some of his former patients went to him over the course of many years as subject of his studies of adolescent growth.
Archibald took pictures of his young victims (for his studies and for the “advancement of science”, according to paperwork he had parents sign), and in a time when there were few, if any, safeguards against this type of behavior from a person with authority, many parents brought their children back to Archibald’s practice year after year for his “growth and development of adolescents” research. Archibald explained to parents that in order to study and understand children’s growth and development, he needed a control group, so he was able to have several siblings from the same family come to his clinic. It’s unclear at this time whether all of his alleged victims were males and if any of the sexual abuse took place outside the medical facility.
Unsuspecting Parents
Many parents brought their small children to this “esteemed” doctor because they were concerned about their child’s small size and feared their children would be picked on at school. They desperately wanted their children to be in line with their peers when it came to reaching puberty, and they sought out the expertise of this highly regarded endocrinologist who was employed by one of the most respected medical facilities in New York City.
With exact details of when the abuse started and ended, there is information coming to light that Archibald may have started victimizing young male patients as early as the 1950’s and continued doing so for decades. Early reports indicate the age range of his possible victims to be from six to seventeen years old.
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