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11 Sue St. Francis Over Molestations

Eleven new plaintiffs have filed suits charging St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center with negligence for failing to prevent a prominent staff physician, the late Dr. George Reardon, from molesting them when they were children.

Over the past several weeks, dozens of individuals — many of them former patients of Reardon's — have filed actions in state Superior Court against the hospital because of Reardon's alleged conduct.

Reardon, who died in 1998, practiced medicine at St. Francis from 1963 to 1993, when he resigned in the face of accusations that he molested and inappropriately photographed children for decades, starting in the 1950s. A massive cache of slides and videos showing children in what police described as pornographic poses was discovered in November in Reardon's former West Hartford home.

In recent days, Avon lawyer Susan Smith filed complaints on behalf of six additional plaintiffs, including two 44-year-old men, identical twins who allege the doctor touched and photographed them inappropriately in 1972, when they were nine years old.

New Haven lawyer Joel Faxon on Wednesday filed a complaint on behalf of five new plaintiffs — bringing the total to 59.

By comparison, there were 43 accusers — some of whom did not file lawsuits — in the Hartford Archdiocese Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal that was settled in 2005 for $22 million.

"People continue to contact us by the score," Faxon said Wednesday. "It is unconscionable that St. Francis did nothing to police this man's vile behavior that occurred in its hospital over the course of decades."

Suits on behalf of the plaintiffs began to be filed not long after West Hartford police announced Nov. 28 that 50,000 photographic slides and more than 100 movie reels had been found hidden behind basement wall panels in Reardon's former home. The current homeowner discovered the material during renovations in May.

Hospital officials say they continue to gather and review information about what happened while Reardon, the former chief of endocrinology, was practicing there.

The first complaints to surface while Reardon was at the hospital were filed with state health authorities in 1987, by a brother and sister who alleged Reardon abused them between 1956 and 1961, starting when they were 5 and 7, respectively, and the doctor was practicing in Albany. State health officials did not pursue the accusations.

The hospital has said it did not know of the specific allegations against Reardon until 1993, when a fourth complaint was lodged by the county medical association on behalf of a woman who said Reardon molested her when she was 14. Reardon then resigned.

"We acknowledge there are additional lawsuits and as they continue to come in we will work on our end to deal with these lawsuits," said Barry Feldman, the hospital's general counsel and senior vice president.

The latest 11 plaintiffs include three women and eight men. The men include the identical twins, who now live in the Farmington Valley. They claim Reardon recruited them because their older brothers already were involved in Reardon's purported growth study.

Many of the people who have accused Reardon of abusing them say the doctor told them or their parents that they would be advancing science by participating in a childhood growth study. No such studies were presented during medical hearings in the early 1990s when Reardon's attorneys were fighting for his license.

Smith, who represents 25 of the plaintiffs, said that Reardon allegedly molested some children multiple times, in some cases over several years. "Assuming that the average number of abuse incidents per child is about 5, and now there are close to 60 plaintiffs, that's about 300 incidents" alleged against Reardon, she said.

"Is that a parade yet?" she asked, a reference to Feldman's comment in December, when he discounted a notion that the number of alleged victims would implicate the hospital.

"Let's say the number is 80 or that the number is 100," Feldman said at the time. "One hundred over 30 years is not a constant parade" to Reardon's hospital office, he said.

Feldman said through a spokeswoman Wednesday that he had nothing to say about Smith's comment.