making
headlines

St. Francis Hospital Wants Reardon Sex-Abuse Plaintiffs Publicly Identified

Attorneys for St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford are asking the court to require that the plaintiffs in the George Reardon sex-abuse case be named in court documents and at trial.

In a motion filed Tuesday at Superior Court in Waterbury, the attorneys assert that the use of pseudonyms for the 135 plaintiffs would "deprive St. Francis its constitutional right to voir dire and would inevitably produce so much confusion that St. Francis would be denied a fair trial. The use of pseudonyms would also create a logistical nightmare that would impede the trial process."

Voir dire in Connecticut refers to the process by which each prospective juror can be questioned in depth by the attorneys and the judge in a case.

Reardon, the hospital's former chief of the endocrinology, died in 1998. For decades, he sexually abused hundreds of children and adolescents who were his patients at the time. Evidence of the crimes was found in 2007 when a homeowner renovating Reardon's former house in West Hartford discovered a cache of pornographic slides involving Reardon's former child patients.

More than 135 people have since sued St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, charging that that the hospital was negligent when it failed to stop the abuse. Officials for St. Francis counter that the allegations against Reardon were unknown until state health officials tried to revoke his license in 1993.

Joel T. Faxon, a New Haven attorney who is representing about 70 plaintiffs in the case, said the hospital's motion goes against policy in the state that protects of the identity of children in sex abuse cases.

"My response is that it is very unfortunate that the hospital is attempting to re-victimize the plaintiffs who were attacked by George Reardon as children. There are ways to protect the identity of these plaintiffs and still give all parties a fair trial," Faxon said. "I'm not going to ascribe any motives as to what they're doing but I want to make it clear that we will oppose any efforts of the hospital to disclose the identities publicly."