Sexual Assault, Leon Black, & Jeffrey Epstein’s Beautiful People
“It’s better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a lamb”. -John Gotti
New York City has had a vacancy for a numero uno Teflon Don for a while now. This time around these new school goons and thugs will not be running numbers or jumping rival families outside around the block. Nope, these questionable characters have fancy titles, degrees, run billion-dollar corporations, and have reach beyond what any average Joe or Jane could imagine.
In big business, the consensus is that organizational culture is often reflective of the ideologies from the top of the house. Billionaire, Leon Black was yet again accused in a lawsuit of raping a woman in Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. Several New York based publications have recently reported on the matter. Although he has previously stepped down from his role as CEO of Apollo Global Management, none of these outlets mention other positions Leon Black has not stepped down from. He is on the Board of Trustees for Mount Sinai Health System.
Mount Sinai is a hospital network within New York City that has branded itself as an elite world class institution. This is the same hospital where an ER doctor was proven via DNA evidence to have drugged, molested, and ejaculated on an unsuspecting woman who had entered the emergency room with an issue regarding shoulder pain. Despite concrete proof of the sexual abuse, Mount Sinai has evaded offering the victim any form of restorative justice for years. Earlier reports about the ER sexual abuse case reveal that the semen sample that would later be used in court proceedings was taken from the woman’s eyelid.
Another associate of Jeffrey Epstein that was accused of sexual assault, Glenn Dubin, is also on the Board of Trustees of Mount Sinai Health System along with his wife, Eva Andersson Dubin. The New York Post reported that Eva is an ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, they are said to have been together for 11 years.
Is it a coincidence that two people with high-ranking leadership positions at this institution have been accused of rape while the executives underneath them have concurrently evaded taking responsibility for female patients that have been harmed while seeking care? Perhaps there should be an investigation into how many other women complained about this ER doctor, David Newman, prior to the case involving DNA evidence.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s sexual assault testimony involving Prince Andrew was enough to have the royal removed from Buckingham Palace. In contrast, both Black and Dubin remain on the board of Mount Sinai. Meanwhile organizations, such as The Museum of Modern Art have simply played a game of musical chairs, Leon Black stepped down as chairman of their board, but he remains a trustee.
Large hospitals like Mount Sinai take advantage of their size and clout to sweep infractions under the rug and operate in a manner that suggests very little moral conscience. For example, former medical resident, Douglas Moss and hospital staffer Jerald H. Tedeschi allegedly earned approximately $9000 by selling their fresh semen to four New York City doctors to use in IVF treatment of women. The unregulated and untested semen resulted in several pregnancies. Michael Brodman, MD was charged as one of the doctors who bought the illegal sperm and used it during treatment of female patients. Dr. Brodman is now a Professor and the Chair Emeritus in the Raquel and Jaime Gilinski Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Brodman also holds the title of Senior Vice President for Professional Excellence at the institution, a role that overseas mistreatment protocols.
Were all the women notified about the risk to their lives and given an opportunity to hold Mount Sinai accountable? Dr. Brodman was rewarded with leadership roles and responsibility of the OB/GYN department, an area of medicine that explicitly focuses on the bodies of women. Why was a doctor that showed an egregious blemish on his record of medical ethics then promoted within the institution? There are so many unanswered questions that from a public health perspective should be addressed in an open forum.
“Culture is the tacit social order of an organization: It shapes attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and durable ways. Cultural norms define what is encouraged, discouraged, accepted, or rejected within a group.” — Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng | Harvard Business Review Jan-Feb 2018
As consumers, we have the power to demand a better culture within many health care institutions. Patients are people and not disposable commodities.
These are actors with no ethics that believe their privilege and clout can absolve them from ever being held accountable.
If you are based in the New York City Tristate area and have a story where you experienced mistreatment within Mount Sinai Health System or another local institution, then send your story to theironbit.com.
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