Two victims of a notorious Manhattan physician who sexually and emotionally assaulted them come up after discovering that the perpetrator hanged himself at Riker’s Island to escape serving a life sentence.
Jeffrey Fritz, whose Philadelphia legal firm Soloff & Zervanos, P.C., has represented 30 women who are all victims of the pain doctor, with abuse that extends back to 2002, talked to DailyMail on behalf of Terrie Phoenix, who gave a testimony last month against Ricardo Cruciano, 68.
I’m relieved that he will now stand before a different judge, the woman remarked.
Six of Cruciani’s former patients testified against him, and on July 29 a Manhattan jury convicted him guilty of seven charges of criminal sexual conduct, attempted rape, and predatory sexual assault.
Cruciani was discovered hanging in a shared shower room on Monday, over three weeks after his conviction, at approximately six in the morning at the Eric M. Taylor Center on Riker’s Island.
The Department of Corrections and sources told The New York Post that he had a sheet wrapped over his neck.
The New York Daily News was informed by sources that Cruciani hanged himself while standing on a chair.
It is “a terrible day for all of his victims,” Hillary Tullin, a former Cruciani patient who claimed to have been repeatedly abused by Cruciani, told DailyMail.com via her attorney.
“All of his victims will never have closure and never get the opportunity to meet the defendant to tell him personally how his actions significantly affected their lives,” Tullin stated, in part.
“I feel more fortunate than others since I was given the chance to testify in front of a jury and was supported by their finding of guilt.”
But there are other women in the criminal cases in New Jersey and the federal system who will never have that opportunity,’ Tullin said.
She said, “His action today was just an act of self preservation and in no way a display of sorrow or shame.
He just couldn’t handle the thought of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Fritz said to DailyMail a few hours after Cruciani passed away that “even if there is no criminal prosecution, we will still seek legal justice for the victims against his estate, Beth Israel, and the institutions.”
The person who answered the phone at Cruciani’s wife Nora Esteban-Philadelphia Cruciani’s paediatric clinics informed DailyMail that “Dr. Cruciani isn’t here today and we don’t know when she will be returning.”
Cruciani was due to get a sentencing on September 14 and might receive a life sentence. In addition, he was charged on federal grounds in Manhattan, as well as in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Throughout the seven-week trial, his wife Nora remained at his side every day.
According to a source, his three adult children were also there.
He was charged in Philadelphia in 2017, and New York and New Jersey in 2018. He paid the $1,000,000 bail.
The alleged ill treatment Cruciani employed on his patients over a fifteen-year period is described in an indictment that DailyMail.com has received.
The doctor, who formerly had a stellar reputation as a brilliant doctor who treated people with severe and persistent pain, deceived the patients he was treating for pain management.
Cruciani is accused of injecting ‘astounding’ dosages of opioids into scores of women before assaulting them sexually, and he was supposedly shielded by colleagues.
Amazing details are revealed about the punishment meted out to victims who tried or refused to perform sex activities with Cruciani.
The physician took retaliatory action by sending the patient to a different physician who would not provide the patient the same combinations or dosages of drugs as he had.
According to the affidavit, the method he used to sexually assault them “usually included prescribing pain medicine and creating a connection with the victims which drove them to depend on and trust him while he participated in a course of more abusive behaviour.”
Over time, the abuse became progressively worse.
The complaint states that despite not being a licenced obstetrician or gynaecologist, Cruciani “inserted his tongue into some victims’ mouths; performed alleged breast inspections and vaginal examinations of certain victims.”
Crucini urged several victims to touch, physically stimulate, and/or orally stimulate his penis, and he caressed and grabbed some victims’ breasts. Some of the victims’ genitalia were touched by Cruciani.
According to the affidavit, he digitally entered or tried to digitally penetrate the genitalia of some victims and mimicked vaginal and anal sexual encounters with others.
Cruciani engaged in masturbation in front of several victims. With a few of the victims, he engaged in vaginal sex, and during some of the aforementioned actions, Cruciani ejaculated. None of the aforementioned sexual actions had a bona fide medical purpose, according to court records.
In order to rape and molested his victims, the prosecution said that Cruciani was a skilled manipulator who preyed on their psyches and gave them large dosages of medications.
A handicapped lady who was one of his victims claimed that Cruciani threatened to commit suicide if anybody reported him.
According to a story, prosecutor Shannon Lucey referred to Cruciani as “Evil in a white coat.”
According to the affidavit, “he convinced, incited, seduced, and compelled some victims to go across state borders in order to submit them or try to subject them to criminal sexual abuse.”
In order to sexually assault the victims, he “exploited and leveraged his position of trust as a healthcare practitioner, the tremendous agony the victims experienced, and his power to prescribe for or withhold pain medicine, including highly addictive opiods from the victims.”
Between 2001 and around 2014, Cruciani was employed at Beth Israel, New York Medical Institution. He worked at the Hopewell, New Jersey-based New Jersey Medical Institution from 2013 to 2016, then the Pennsylvania Medical Institution from 2016 to 2017, until his medical licence was revoked in November 2017.