Johns Hopkins Hospital has agreed to play $190 million to more than 8,000 patients of a gynecologist who secretly photographed and videotaped women in the examining room with a pen-like camera he wore around his neck, lawyers said Monday. Dr. Nikita Levy was fired in February 2013, days after an employee alerted hospital authorities about her suspicions. Baltimore police and federal investigators discovered roughly 1,200 videos and 140 images in a search of his home but said there was no evidence he shared the material with others. Ten days after the initial report, Levy committed suicide. In his 25-year tenure at Johns Hopkins, he saw roughly 12,600 patients.
The agreement, announced Monday, is one of the largest settlements on record in the U.S. involving sexual misconduct by a physician. It all but closes a case that never produced criminal charges but threatened the reputation of one of the world's leading medical institutions and, according to lawyers, traumatized thousands of women, even though their faces were not visible in the images and it could not be established with certainty which patients were recorded or how many. "All of these women were brutalized by this," said the women's lead attorney, Jonathan Schochor.
— The Associated Press