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	Witness in St. Francis Case Says Reardon Took Him to Hotel, Shared Photos with Another Man By Edmund H. Mahony Hartford Courant April 8, 2011 http://www.courant.com/health/connecticut/hc-st-francis-day4-0409-20110408,0,933480.story WATERBURY — If there was anything left of Dr. George Reardon's medical reputation, it eroded further in court Friday when another of his victims described horrific abuse and time spent with Reardon in a New York hotel, where the doctor traded obscene photographs of his child research subjects. The portrait of Reardon and his discredited child growth study that is emerging in the first of 93 lawsuits against his longtime employer, St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, grew more disturbing. His study, once considered a significant component of the hospital's research effort, was described as scientifically irrelevant. Reardon was characterized as a pedophile who used his work as a means of gaining access to children. Two victims, now middle-aged men, told how Reardon gained the confidence of their parents to enroll them and their siblings in his study. They told how Reardon photographed them during research sessions in his office after hanging sheets over possessions that could lead to his identification. One of the victims said that Reardon repeatedly sodomized him with a measuring device. Earlier in the day, an authority on the growth of children and adolescents said that Reardon's study, underway at St. Francis from 1964 to the mid-1980s, was designed to collect data that had been repeatedly published beginning in 1945. What's more, the expert, Dr. Maria New, a pediatric endocrinologist and geneticist at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, contended that Reardon, the St. Francis chief of endocrinology, lacked the pediatric credentials to undertake such a study and used unacceptable research techniques. Among other things, she criticized Reardon's practice of using metal calipers to take boys' measurements. "I have never used them because they cause pain," New testified. "They are like pliers that you squeeze." She also testified that she never took more than one photo of a child unless there were unusual circumstances, such as a disease. Witnesses have testified that Reardon photographed his subjects as often as once a month. To prepare for her testimony, New said she was asked to review the 50,000 to 60,000 photographic slides of children that police found hidden in a basement wall at Reardon's West Hartford home after his death in 1998. Most, if not all, of the slides are believed to depict children who were subjects in Reardon's so-called study, nude and sometimes in sexually suggestive poses. "I felt that I had seen enough pictures by the tenth slide, that I didn't need to see more, because they were very shocking pictures," New said. "I have to conclude that this was not research." One of Friday's witnesses testified that after police reviewed the slides, he learned that more than 1,000 were photographs of him, taken by Reardon during so-called research sessions. New and the two male withesses testified for the first anonymous plaintiff in the succession of suits that accuse St. Francis of contributing to the abuse of as many as 500 children by failing to supervise Reardon.The man filing the first suit, a Connecticut firefighter, is identified in court as John Doe 2. Doe's lawyer, Michael Stratton, has presented evidence through earlier witnesses and those testifying Friday that Reardon abused children in his hospital office, that the hospital paid for his photographic supplies and that his research was not supervised in accordance with hospital policy. Hospital lawyers have sought to distance themselves from Reardon, calling him devious, manipulative and capable of going to great lengths to conceal his abusive behavior. Although they have yet to present a defense, they have implied in their cross-examinations that the hospital was deceived by Reardon, just as the parents of his victims were. One of the victims who testified Friday said he never told his parents of the abuse because "it would have killed them" to learn they had entrusted him and a brother to the care of a child abuser. He said his parents died after he stopped seeing Reardon. The other victim testifying Friday, identified as John Doe 32, said that Reardon agreed to act as a surrogate father to win the trust of his single mother. He said that he began seeing the doctor in the mid-1970s at age 12 or 13, because his mother had questions about his rate of growth. He said she was then raising two boys and three girls. "I was getting in trouble and my mom had asked him to talk to me about not getting in trouble and so forth," he testified. "And he befriended me and he befriended my family. … My mom had no idea whatsoever." By the second or third research session, the witness said that Reardon was picking him up at his home and driving to his hospital office — at 4:30 or 4:45 p.m., when the hospital was quiet and relatively empty. He said that Reardon would shoot as many as six rolls of film during so-called research sessions. "He would pick me up, take me to the office, take pictures of me for an hour and a half to two hours, take me to get something to eat, and take me home," the witness said. After some innocuous measurements, such as shoulder width, the victim said Reardon instructed him to undress, measured and photographed his genitalia and photographed him in a variety of poses. The victim described himself as particularly vulnerable. He said his father had been absent since he was 3 years old and he confided to Reardon that he was being molested by someone else. "I told him I was being sexually abused by another man, and he said, 'I'll take care of you.' From that day forward, I never saw that other person," the witness testified. "But I didn't realize I was serving myself on a platter to him." The witness also testified that Reardon had a stick about a foot long that he would insert in the boy's rectum. "He would tell me that he had to do an anal exam to check my glands. He had a stick that he had marked with different colored rings. And it would tell how long it was. And he sodomized me with it while in his office." The witness said his sister also was enlisted in Reardon's study. He testified that at one point Reardon told his sister to get undressed and run around his office naked while the doctor shot movie pictures. Reardon told him to lie on a bed while she jumped up and down on the bed. He said that Reardon ordered him to remove his clothes as well, but the witness, who said he was a teenager at the time, refused. He said that his visits with Reardon lasted three or four years, and grew to include camping trips, visits to a shooting range where he was allowed to fire a sidearm that Reardon wore during examination sessions, and to hotels, including the one in New York where he saw photographs being traded. The witness said that Reardon stopped abusing him when he was 17 — "because I reached puberty, and I was getting too old for the kind of children he wanted." He said he continued to maintain an ambiguous relationship with Reardon after the abuse ended. "We remained friends," he said. "It was a relationship where I cared about this person. But I hated him at the same time. " Under cross-examination by St. Francis attorney Ernest Mattei, John Doe 32 testified that Reardon helped him financially after the abusive relationship ended. The witness said that Reardon paid for three years of education at a private high school and bought him a car at graduation. Contact: emahony@courant.com
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