CHICAGO — A lawsuit against two top Chicago hospitals accuses an OB-GYN of sexually abusing more than 300 women, most of them Latina and Spanish speakers, and alleges that the hospitals ignored the women’s complaints.
The complaint is the latest chapter in the legal saga against Fabio Ortega, 77, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to sexually abusing two patients. The suit, filed on behalf of one woman, alleges staff members at NorthShore Medical Group and Swedish Covenant Hospital, now both operated by Endeavor Health, concealed complaints about the former doctor’s behavior for years leading up to his conviction and “knowingly gave him a platform to sexually abuse” hundreds more patients.
“Women reported. They reported again and again and again,” attorney Symone Shinton said at a news conference Tuesday announcing the suit. “They were told to question their very experiences as women. They were told that the very abuse that they complained about was medically necessary and normal.”
The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of a woman identified only as “Jane Doe 300,” described the alleged experiences of several unnamed patients dating as far back as 1989, saying Ortega performed “unnecessary pelvic exams” and asked “patients intrusive questions about their sex life.”
Stinar Gould Grieco & Hensley, the Chicago-based law firm representing the plaintiff, said it came to the number of more than 300 alleged victims after it put out legal ads about Ortega and received responses.
In the case of Jane Doe 300, who the suit stated saw Ortega twice in 2017 when she was 22 and pregnant, Ortega assaulted her “under the guise of performing ‘vaginal examinations.’”
She was one of Ortega’s last patients before he was arrested, according to the complaint. When Jane Doe 300’s husband asked why they were getting a new doctor in the middle of the pregnancy, NorthShore hospital’s employees…
Read the full article here
