Dr. David Newman during a Ted Talk. (YouTube)
A leading doctor at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital turned himself in to police Tuesday after a 22-year-old patient accused him of ejaculating on her face while she was immobilized by morphine last week.
Dr. David Newman, a 45-year-old Army veteran, emergency room physician and the director of clinical research at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is being investigated by the NYPD, sources told the New York Daily News.
According to the Daily News, a second woman has come forward to accuse Newman of groping her breast four months ago.
“We are aware of an allegation that has been made against one of our physicians,” Mount Sinai told the Daily News. “This is a matter under investigation and we are fully cooperating with the appropriate authorities. We take this matter very seriously and are conducting our own internal investigation.”
Newman, who has been barred from seeing patients while the investigation is completed, has not yet responded to requests for comment from Heavy.com and it is not clear if he has hired a lawyer. He surrendered to the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit and has not yet been charged.
Here’s what you need to know about Newman and the allegations:
1. The Woman Says She Heard ‘Someone Masturbating’ & ‘Then Felt a Liquid Substance on Her Face’
Dr. David Newman. (Facebook)
The patient came to Mount Sinai Hospital Monday night at about 10:30 p.m. with pain in her right shoulder, sources told the New York Daily News.
The woman was taken to a private room and given two pain pills, a shot for inflammation and morphine. She then changed into a gown for X-rays, removing her shirt and bra, but leaving her pants on under a gown, the Daily News reports. Dr. David Newman entered the room and told her “I’m going to give you a shot of morphine,” sources told the Daily News.
The patient said a nurse had already given her the drug, but she said he then felt a burning sensation in her arm. She believes he gave her another shot of morphine.
The source told the Daily News the woman said she was then sexually assaulted while she was unable to move:
While the doctor was examining the patient’s back, she told him she felt pain on the right side of her chest. Newman started fondling both of her breasts, sources said. The doctor then moved her bed away from the wall and positioned himself with his back toward the patient, sources said. The woman heard the sounds of someone masturbating — and then felt a liquid substance on her face, sources said.
The source told the newspaper Newman wiped “the substance from her face,” and left. The woman was found by a nurse in a “blacked-out state,” the Daily News reports, and was roused by another physician, Dr. Andrew Jagoda. The woman went to the bathroom and said she had semen on her face and chest, which she wiped off with her gown.
The woman left before police were called, but officers later responded.
According to the New York Post, the woman saved a DNA sample before leaving the hospital. According to the Post, the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit is investigating.
Here’s a look at Dr. David Newman, who is expected to be charged with lewd act on patient t.co/fTmP28ii5I
The second alleged victim told police she went to Mount Sinai on September 21, 2015, with a head cold. She said the “treatment” she received from Newman included him fondling her breast, a source told The Daily News on Tuesday.
2. Newman Is Considered a ‘Leading Voice in Calling for Reforms in Health Care’
Dr. David Newman is a “leading voice in calling for reforms in health care,” according to the Leigh Bureau, an agency that represents public speakers. Newman is a published author, has spoken around the country about health care and has been profiled in several publications, including by the Wall Street Journal, PBS and Wired.
“He questions ‘holding down costs’ as the primary objective in health care reform and he urges a much deeper respect for good science in a field that claims to be based in science,” according to the Leigh Bureau.
Newman created a website TheNNT.com, to share data among doctors.
“Started by David Newman, a director of clinical research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital, the site’s dozens of contributors analyze the available studies, crunch the numbers on benefits and harms, and then post the results,” Wired wrote in 2014, in a piece headlined “This Man’s Simple System Could Transform American Medicine.”
Newman studied at Binghamton University for undergrad, and earned his medical degree from the Albany Medical College. He completed his residency in emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
Before moving to Mount Sinai, Newman was the director of clinical research at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital.
3. He Was a Major in the Army Reserves & Did a Tour in Iraq
(Mount Sinai)
Newman is a former major in the U.S. Army Reserves. During his time serving in the military, he did one tour in Iraq, according to the Leigh Bureau. He was awarded a Army Commendation Metal.
During his tour, in 2005, he served at the 344th combat support hospital in Baghdad.
In January 2013, after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, comparing his experiences in a combat hospital to what he has seen in New York as a result of gun violence:
As an emergency room physician, an Army veteran who was deployed to a combat support hospital in Baghdad in 2005, and a biomedical researcher in the field of cardiac-arrest resuscitation, I have been and am, on a daily basis, a witness to grave misfortune. Ordinarily, though, except for medical purposes, I will not discuss what I have seen.
Last week a colleague asked me to make an exception. The father of two young children, he was moved by the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., to ask his professional circle to reconsider our silence. I am an expectant father, and his words resonated with me. They reminded me that we doctors are at the front lines of the scourge of gun violence, and that to remain silent as this threat to public health continues unabated would be no different than for an oncologist or a cardiologist to stay mum on the dangers of smoking.
Newman said “much of the gun violence I have seen, though, I have seen on home soil, here in the United States.”
4. Newman Is Married to a Fellow Doctor Who Also Teaches at Mount Sinai
(Facebook)
Newman is married to a fellow doctor, Ashley Shreves. They host a monthly podcast about healthcare called Smart EM. Shreves also teaches at Mount Sinai.
Newman and Shreves met when he was attending physician when she was completing her residency. They began dating one year after she graduated from the program, and married in 2010.
They now live in New Jersey with their two young sons.
5. He Wrote a Book About the ‘Disconnect’ Between Doctors & Their Patients
Newman is the author of Hippocrates’ Shadow: Secrets from the House of Medicine.
In the book, published in 2009, Newman explores the growing disconnect between doctors and patients,
“Every doctor takes the Hippocratic Oath, the famous invocation named after the so-called father of medicine, the Greek physician Hippocrates. However, many doctors do not follow Hippocrates’ own practice of listening carefully to the patient as part of a deep relationship that seeks to call out the patient’s own profound capacity for healing,” the Leigh Bureau writes.
