Dr. Nikita Levy, a Jamaican-born obstetrician/ gynecologist Graduated from the Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan, Dr. Levy, 54, completed his internship and residency at Kings County Hospital Center.
He began working at Hopkins in 1988.During his 25-year tenure, he saw approximately 12,600 patients.
He worked at Johns Hopkins’ East Baltimore Medical Center—a center that mainly serves low-income African-American women—was accused of secretly recording patients during exams when a co-worker alerted hospital department about her suspicions.
More than 8,000 women bodies have been videotaped or photographed by him using a pen-like camera during pelvic exams.
Investigators discovered almost 1,200 videos and 140 images stored on a series of servers in his home but found no evidence that he was sharing the images online.
When the allegations became public, Levy committed suicide in February 2013 amid the investigation, which was spurred by a colleague’s allegations and stretched out for nearly a year.
‘All of these women were brutalized by this,’said the women’s lead attorney, Jonathan Schochor. ‘Some of these women needed counseling, they were sleepless, they were dysfunctional in the workplace, they were dysfunctional at home, and they were dysfunctional with their mates. This breach of trust, this betrayal — this is how they felt.’
As per lawyers, thousands of women were traumatized, even if their faces were not visible in the images and it could not be established with certainty which patients were documented or how many.
The settlement is one of the largest settlements on record in the U.S. involving sexual delinquency by a physician.
And lastly the Hopkins comes to an agreement to gives insurance that will cover the settlement, which ‘properly balances the concerns of thousands of plaintiffs with obligations the Health System has to provide ongoing and superior care to the community.
‘It is our hope that this settlement and findings by law enforcement that images were not shared helps those affected achieve a measure of closure,’ the hospital statement said, adding that ‘one individual does not define Johns Hopkins’.
Johns Hopkins Health System will pay $190 million to more than 8,000 women whose bodies may have been photographed or videotaped by Dr Levy.