Ricardo Cruciani.
Photo: Philadelphia Police Department / Courtesy
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The trial began in Manhattan Supreme Court against Dr. Ricardo Cruciani, an Argentine neurologist accused of groping and sexually assaulting six female patients in New York, Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Cruciani, 67, faces charges of rape, sexual abuse and predatory sexual assaultmore than four years after his first arrest.
“Evil in a white coat” This is how Assistant District Attorney Shannon Lucey described Cruciani to the jury at the opening ceremony yesterday. She called him “a devious little man who could have used his highly intelligent ways for good instead of evil.”
The six alleged victims, “broken and complex” women, will testify in the trial, which is expected to last until the end of July, he said. New York Post.
“He built trust in each one of them. He pathologically knew his weaknesses, his vulnerabilities.”
Shannon Lucey, District Attorney
“Each one had a story, a behavior, a broken past that He made them his perfect victims.” Lucey said in her opening statement. “He built trust in each one of them. He pathologically knew his weaknesses, his vulnerabilities.”
Cruciani used his medical skills to obtain sexual favors from up to 17 women for more than a decade, the police said when he went arrested in February 2018 and again in October 2021. Before that he was a noted physician, serving as chairman of the department of neurology at the Drexel University, in Philadelphia.
In all, a federal indictment says Cruciani abused multiple patients over 15 years at his offices in New York City, Philadelphia, and Hopewell (NJ). According to the complaint, he targeted female patients who depended on him for care and prescriptions. addictive opioidsconverting the massages and hugs into gradually more invasive physical attacks and sexual demands.
If certain victims refused to engage in sexual acts, he retaliated by referring them to another medical provider who would not prescribe the same combinations or amounts of painkillers, according to the indictment.
“The sexually abusive conduct included, among other things, forced kissing, touching the victims’ breasts and genitalia, oral sexual acts, vaginal intercourse, and attempted anal intercourse,” the prosecution stated.
Lost his license to practice medicine and had to register as a sex offender after pleading guilty in Pennsylvania in 2018. Additionally, more than a dozen women were suing Cruciani and the health systems that employed him.
His wife, the Argentine pediatrician Nora V. EstebanHe has supported him at all times. Prosecutors in New York ask any other possible victim of Cruciani to report the case by calling (646) 372-0364.
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