On Wednesday, almost 50 people who say they were victimized by a St. Francis Hospital doctor decades ago, filed a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford in the sex abuse scandal.
The 49 victims say the Archdiocese, which operated St. Francis for some of the 1960s to late 1980s, should have done more to protect them from abuse at the hands of the late Dr. George Reardon. He is accused of carrying on a hospital-sponsored "growth study", in which he allegedly photographed and abused children.
At the time, Dr. Reardon was the Chief of Endocrinology.
The law office Stratton Faxon of New Haven filed the suit in Waterbury Superior Court.
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"It's preposterous to suggest that the hospital didn't know, number two, they should have known because they had a research committee that was supposed to be in place to supervise it, and number two, many people there actually did know and nobody did anything about it," said Paul Edwards, Attorney at Stratton Faxon.
Lawyers went on to say they plan to leave no stone unturned and plan to find out what the Archdiocese knew during Reardon’s long reign at the hospital.
The abuse came into the spotlight after thousands of slides and videos of naked children were discovered in a wall inside the late doctor's West Hartford home in 2007.
Lawyers for the victims say the trial may not start until March 2011.
The archdiocese said they have no knowledge of the lawsuit and received no notification about it.
