Marissa Hoechstetter: “Vance’s office has a pervasive culture of discounting survivors. What does he plan to do about that?”
Victim advocate and sexual assault survivor Marissa Hoechstetter on her case and how the Manhattan District Attorney’s office needs to reform the way it handles sexual assault cases
Marissa Hoechstetter is a development professional who works in higher education, but in recent months, the 39-year-old has emerged as a powerful advocate for survivors of sexual assault after speaking out about her own experiences as the victim of a serial predator who worked as a gynecologist at Columbia University in Manhattan, and her subsequent attempts to get justice for herself and others who were abused. Hoechstetter was one of 19 known victims of Dr. Robert Hadden, who sexually exploited and assaulted many of his patients during the course of routine gynecological examinations at his office.
When Hoechstetter reported her experience to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office, she was told, incorrectly, that her own case was outside of the criminal statute of limitations. Hadden ultimately pleaded guilty to two charges and received no jail time, an outcome Hoechstetter and other survivors believe was woefully insufficient and a direct result of the DA’s handling of the case.
As Hoechstetter put it in an email, “In my experience, Manhattan DA staff discriminated against and intimidated me by: providing a misleading statement as to whether my accusations were within prosecutable statutes of limitations (they were); failing to utilize our statements as Molineaux evidence when they had a strong opportunity to do so; openly mocking my claim that a part of my perpetrator’s plea agreement purposefully excluded me and other victims who came forward by telling me it was ‘meaningless;’ and refusing to allow each of the survivors to present a victim impact statement at the sentencing which would have allowed the Judge to fully assess the extent of the abuse that was inflicted upon so many women.”
We discussed Hoechstetter’s experience with the DA’s office, what can be done to protect victims in cases like this, and why she feels that it’s important to speak out.
Hoechstetter also reports that she had a phone call with Vance after the Buzzfeed story came out, and that Vance had called to apologize for the doctor’s actions. But, Hoechstetter says, “That abuse is not his to apologize for, and he completely missed the point of my advocacy. His office has a pervasive culture of discounting survivors. What does he plan to do about that?”
Hoechstetter is also advocating for a series of policy reforms that she believes will better serve survivors: First, the elimination of criminal and civil statutes of limitation, because traumatized people need more time to come forward. It also often takes years to understand the true reach of a serial predator’s crimes. Second, she believes rules of admissible evidence are far too restrictive. Juries should not be prevented from learning the full extent of a predator’s prior or related offenses. And finally, district attorneys must commit to seeking meaningful penalties against sexual criminals independent of the perpetrator’s race or tax bracket. If, by most estimates, at least 90% of cases end in plea agreements, their scope must be broadened to appreciate serial victimization by sexual criminals.
She is also calling for broad reforms to the way the Manhattan DA’s office deals with victims of sexual violence, including greater transparency about a process where money and network connections can and do influence the outcomes of specific cases. We discussed Hoechstetter’s case in particular, and what she’s learned from her experiences with the DA’s office.
So to start with, can you tell me about your experience with Dr. Hadden?
MARISSA HOECHSTETTER: Sure, so for a quick summary, I started seeing Dr. Hadden in 2009. He’s the uncle of a good friend of mine, and I knew that he had been really helpful to her with some family health issues, and so after having gone to a few doctor’s offices that I didn’t really like in New York, I went to him. We were ready to start a family and the idea of being with a doctor who knew me was comforting.
I actually only saw him once before I was pregnant, and then continued to see him during the pregnancy. Looking back, here are a number of red flags. There were odd questions, lots of touching, and at most visits, there was nobody else in the room. Throughout it all, we would talk about my friend, his niece. I always had a reason why I thought what was happening was somehow fine, because we knew each other.
What happened to me was so outside of the realm of something I ever thought possible that I couldn’t process it. The last time I went there and I felt him lick me, I was just so shocked. I never went back.
I didn’t report it. I didn’t do anything with it. I just put it away. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I didn’t do anything with that information, particularly because I’m someone who thinks of myself as someone who speaks up, but that’s part of the effect that this kind of sexual abuse has on you. It’s really hard to reconcile that, but now that I have, I’m not going back. It took me a long time to find my voice, but now that I have, I’m not going to stop using it.
When did you decide to come forward?
Over the summer of 2015, the stuff about [Bill] Cosby had started coming out in a bigger way and there were a lot of discussions about how there were so many women that he had assaulted. I had followed the news coverage of Hadden’s trial, but it was very New York Post, very sort of salacious.
I really had a revelation that there had to be other people out there. This was someone who had worked for over 20 years and it dawned on me that I was not alone in this. I felt an obligation to speak up.
So that fall, I reached out to the A.D.A., Laura Millendorf, who had been quoted in the media. I connected with her, went to the special victims unit and made a statement. She told me that my accusation was outside of the criminal statute of limitations. I know now that what she told me was an outright lie because at that point it had only been three years since the assault and the statute is five.
I thought that my conversation with her and helping the trial through Molineaux was the only way that I could contribute. I know now that they could have reacted differently to what I said and potentially gotten a second indictment.
Do you have a sense of why they would have tried to eliminate your testimony?
Looking back on it and knowing what I know now, they were already negotiating the plea. There were political and social pressures on the DA to resolve it in favor of Hadden. I think the ADA was motivated to take Hadden to trial and put him in jail. I came in right at this moment where the defense attorney was going above the ADA and other people were negotiating this ridiculous plea. My allegation was inconvenient for them and they effectively threw me away.
Did you have a sense at that point of the scope of Hadden’s crimes and how many other victims there were?
They told me that I was one of 19 people who had come forward. That was amazing for me to learn; deeply depressing but also encouraging that I was doing the right thing.
And it also reinforced for me how many more people there probably were. Since my article came out, I’ve spoken with other women assaulted by Hadden but I’m still the only one who has spoken publicly.
As this was happening, what did you learn about the way the DA’s office approaches these cases that surprised you?
What I know now is very different from what I knew then. At the time I was pretty naive about it and the DA used that to their advantage. I knew the statistics about how few people come forward and how few people ever get to see their perpetrator charged, let alone face disciplinary action. o at the time, even though I knew he should have gone to jail, I felt satisfaction sitting in court and watching him plead guilty. That was more than most survivors get.
But you fast forward a couple years and obviously so much has changed. I just kept coming back to how disappointing it was; how I’d been working with someone in one direction and then all the sudden it was just over with this plea. He’s free to retire and we’re left to deal with our trauma. I thought a lot more about what was happening around the case, and then of course all the stuff with [Harvey] Weinstein. There were so many parallels with the same attorneys, the campaign contributions, the friendships, the privilege. It was suddenly so obvious that I couldn’t not talk about it.
If this happened to you again, what would you do differently if you’re dealing with the same DA’s office?
Well, I’d probably have an attorney with me! I live in Massachusetts now, although my husband still works in New York City. I went and met with the DA’s office for my region recently just to learn about their policies and procedures. It’s an uncontested race this fall but I wanted to know how they approach sex crimes. It was so interesting to hear how transparent they are with victims; how they tell them exactly where they are in their case, if they’re negotiating a plea, and what that entails. The Manhattan DA did none of that for me or any of the other victims I’ve connected with. Is it that hard to be kind?
I would be much more direct about my expectations of transparency. Lawyers and politicians use their deeper understanding of the legal system against you. They use that to keep you out of the details. But you have a right to ask questions and you have to hold them accountable to work in your best interest, not in their self interest.
What do people need to do to hold the DA accountable in situations like this?
You have to vote. I read recently that in Massachusetts only 38% of registered voters even know DAs are elected. The Massachusetts ACLU has been doing this project called “What A Difference A DA Makes”to educate people about the contested races. People need to understand the incredible power that these offices have. They’re not all doing bad things, but we need to hold them accountable by voting.
It’s not just about the elected person at the top, though. In any way possible, inform yourself about the staff team and office protocol.
And unfortunately, you don’t really have that opportunity until you’ve had some horrible experience. That’s why I’m sharing what happened to me.
There also needs to be some budgetary oversight. You have these huge black holes of money, so even if the public doesn’t have access to that, somebody in state government should. As the Manhattan DA, Cy Vance has a $125 million budget under his authority and is only accountable to voters every four years.
DAs should have a community liaison or public advocate, somebody internally who’s actually really working for the people.
The biggest change though is that we need progressive prosecutors willing to look through an intersectional lens that acknowledges both the over-prosecution of non-violent crimes disproportionately affecting low-income people of color and the under prosecution of crime against women, which also disproportionately affects low-income people of color.
You have this paradox where they’re over prosecuting and under prosecuting, and I think that’s really dangerous. We need prosecutors holding people accountable, but they’re focused on the wrong things. They’re only focused on their winning record.
“We need progressive prosecutors willing to look through an intersectional lens that acknowledges both the over-prosecution of non-violent crimes disproportionately affecting low-income people of color and the under prosecution of crime against women, which also disproportionately affects low-income people of color.”
To go back to the money issue, there’s a pattern with some of these cases the Manhattan DA’s office has, especially the high profile ones against powerful wealthy white men where there are campaign contributions made simultaneously or shortly after the DA begins investigating. Did you get a sense that might be a factor here?
I’ve read the reporting about those issues. I don’t think that a single $250 contribution from Hadden’s lawyer to Vance got him this plea. But when you add up all the contributions made by a criminal defense lawyer over time, it becomes a more visible sign of a network of friendships which in turn gets favorable treatment.
When Vance called me, I asked him directly about this issue. He said you can’t deny that people know each other from college or law school or from other social networks. It’s these networks that lead to bias. Rather than deny that bias exists, they should talk about what they’re going to do to put in place measures to protect against that.
So even when Vance says, ‘I’m not going to take campaign contributions from people with cases before me,” and he’s proud of this study that Columbia University did for him, he’s blind to the conflict of interest his connection with Columbia brings. The report didn’t make any mention of the Hadden case! Jonathan Schiller, chair of Columbia’s board and partner of the famed Boies Schiller Flexner firm, has donated heavily to Vance’s campaigns. It doesn’t make me feel better about any of this. If anything, it brings into question why the Manhattan DA didn’t investigate Columbia. If you have this many women who come to you about a perpetrator who assaulted people using his professional authority in a workplace setting, don’t you have a responsibility to look into that employer and their practices that enabled this person? They have responsibility here too and the DA breezed past that.
They’re ignoring these biases and it flows to everybody down the line on his team. You have people like [Vance’s chief assistant] Karen Agnifilo. Her husband works at a big law firm, so she might recuse herself from a case, but everybody else in the room knows the deal. They know this is her husband, so even if you’re not consciously making that choice, it’s still there.
When Eric Schneiderman resigned, I saw an article that he hired Isabelle Kirshner, the same lawyer that represented Hadden. That really confirmed my fears about the network of privilege at play. The fact that my loser doctor had this same attorney says a lot about her, and what Schneiderman, ostensibly the top lawyer in the state, perceives as her cache and ability. I fell out of my chair on that one.
They argue that who else besides these defense attorneys will give to these races. Okay, fine, but why not have all the defense attorneys put money into a general pot that’s evenly distributed in the contest? And if it’s uncontested, they don’t get any of the money.
My interest is in using my experience to get people to talk about these issues. Any time we can get people in a political contest talking about issues affecting women or survivors is a plus. It’s going to put them on record to be able to hold them accountable. When you have uncontested races, like when no one runs against Vance, there’s no opportunity to even talk about these things. A survivor like me has to put themselves and their personal experience out there.
When you talked to Vance, how did he justify the plea deal and the reason it happened?
He didn’t. How could he? He was responding to my advocacy asking for answers, but all he said was, “I’m sorry for what that doctor did to you.” It was interesting because in the course of the call Vance told me that they are bringing in some group to work with the prosecutors on how they handle victims. I thought to myself, you don’t even know how to talk to me! He couldn’t find a way to acknowledge my disappointment or my pain. I certainly didn’t expect him to say they did the wrong thing. But it was so awkward. He probably thought it didn’t cost him anything to call me — he’d make me feel special and then I’d go away. But, I’m not going to go away until the problem is solved, and the problem is not solved. There were questions I asked that he could not answer. He told me that he was not involved in Hadden’s plea and that I was wrong to think a donation from his lawyer, Isabelle Kirshner, got him the deal. He said he wasn’t even aware of the agreement when it was made
“In the course of the call, Vance told me that they are bringing in some group to work with the prosecutors on how they handle victims. I thought to myself, you don’t even know how to talk to me!”
That was a high profile case. It’s crazy, if it’s true he didn’t know about it.
He really couldn’t justify it. I looked at my notes from the call again this morning before talking to you, and he really didn’t. It was a hard 45 minute call. Imagine what that was like for me to call him a liar. At one point I pointed out that I’m not the one being investigated by the state, he is. People seem to have forgotten that already.
The part of plea deal I take the most issue with is the last part where the DA agreed to never charge Hadden again for anything they’d learned about in the course of their investigation up until that day. That, to me, is so personally offensive because I know I was within the statute, and that also says to me that the defense knew there were potentially actionable victims that had come forward in the DA’s investigation. This is not a common clause.
I said, Mr. Vance, is this a common clause you add to pleas? Because with people I’ve talked to, it’s not. He was silent, he could not answer that. Then this other woman on the call said, no, but it’s really meaningless, and that I was too focused on it. That is so offensive to me, because they’re basically telling me that I’m meaningless.
The call showed me how disconnected they are from the reality of what it’s like to be someone who comes forward seeking help from their office. Vance is so unaware of what that experience was like for me as as a survivor.
I’m not sure he had empathy for me. Since I told my story publicly, I’ve been met with so much support from those both known and unknown to me. His response, or lack thereof, really reaffirmed for me that I need to keep going with this and I need to keep talking about these things, because it’s not okay.
I’ve talked to other advocate groups that confirmed that my experience is not unique in being misled about the statute or the stuff about bias. I told Vance that he’s looking at me in the wrong way. I know we can’t go back to my case and change that. I’m saying, what can we learn from it, and what can we do differently in the future? And rather than be willing to have that conversation with me, they’re denying the impact of bias and are telling me to get over it.
I’m trying to use my experience to have a conversation about what we can do differently. I’m not just trying to complain about what happened to me. The criminal case is now over and that’s a hard loss, but I learned a lot from it. I’m not interested in whining about it, I’m interested in what can we do, knowing what we know now about what happened. That’s how I approach it. I’m not looking for pity, I’m trying to be productive.
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