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	11 More Sue Hospital Allege Endocrinologist at St. Francis Sexually Abused Them As Children By Daniel P. Jones Hartford Courant December 22, 2007 http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-reardon1222.artdec22,0,4931383.story Eleven more people filed suit against St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford Friday, alleging that Dr. George Reardon sexually abused them when they were children in the 1960s and 1970s. The latest complaints, four suits filed by individual plaintiffs and one suit with seven plaintiffs, bring the number of plaintiffs to 45 who have filed recent claims alleging that the hospital was negligent because it failed to prevent the prominent endocrinologist from molesting and photographing them naked. The newest plaintiffs are 10 men and a woman, according to Paul Edwards and Susan Smith, two of the attorneys involved in the St. Francis litigation. "The significance of these complaints is that people continue to come forward," Edwards said Friday after filing the complaint in Superior Court in Hartford. One of the plaintiffs alleges in Friday's consolidated lawsuit that Reardon directed him to molest another boy while both were patients in Reardon's hospital office. More plaintiffs are expected to file lawsuits in the coming weeks, according to lawyers who have been contacted by people who say Reardon molested them as children when they were patients of his or after he recruited them from hospital beds or the community to participate in purported research studies on child growth and development. Reardon, who died in 1998, resigned from the hospital in 1993 in the face of allegations that he sexually abused and took degrading pictures of children over decades, starting in the 1950s. In the few civil complaints that attorneys brought against Reardon at the time, plaintiffs were left to wonder where all of the photographs Reardon allegedly took ended up. Then, last month, West Hartford police said that during renovations in May, the current owner of Reardon's former Griswold Drive home discovered a huge cache of child pornography — 50,000 photographic slides and more than 100 movie reels — hidden behind basement wall panels. Edwards said one common theme that has emerged from alleged victims' accounts of abuse by Reardon is that the doctor, who rose to chief of endocrinology at the hospital, preyed on siblings. Several of the plaintiffs are siblings. Hospital officials say St. Francis was not aware of any specific allegations that Reardon molested children until the early 1990s, when Reardon resigned and medical board hearings began. The hospital is gathering and reviewing information about what happened while Reardon was practicing, hospital officials have said previously. "As new reports continue to emerge, our thoughts remain with the victims who may have endured such incomprehensible acts," Barry Feldman, the hospital's general counsel and senior vice president, said in a statement on Friday. West Hartford detectives continue to be contacted by people who say Reardon abused them, and the investigators are still in the early stages of trying to identify victims pictured in the images that were found in Reardon's former home, according to police. Contact Daniel P. Jones at dpjones@courant.com
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