Devil wore lab coat

Suit charges late doc in sex abuse of young patients

A Manhattan doctor disguised a sadistic routine of sexual abuse in 1992 as anorexia treatment, sending his vulnerable patient into a decadeslong downward spiral, a new lawsuit charges.

Susan Kryhoski, 40, claims Dr. Joseph Silverman raped her when she was 11 years old, during two months of in-patient treatment at Babies Hospital, which is now Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.

Silverman, a prominent early researcher of anorexia who died in 2012, claimed the sexual assaults would ensure she could later have children, according to Kryhoski’s lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“It was like the boogeyman coming out from the closet — but he was real, and he wore a lab coat,” Kryhoski told the Daily News.

“The level of indifference and audacity that he displayed, that haunts me as well. This was not somebody that was fearful of being held accountable. This was not someone who was fearful of being caught. Not someone who had remorse or even questioned his actions. This was truly evil personified.”

The doctor was allegedly surrounded by staff enablers, who at minimum ignored glaring red flags that Silverman was neglecting Kryhoski’s eating disorder, the suit states.

Kryhoski is the second woman to sue New York-Presbyterian, which oversaw the children’s hospital, for Silverman’s alleged abuse. Another accuser filed suit last year, claiming she contracted gonorrhea from the physician while being treated for anorexia when she was around 15 years old.

Silverman’s estate has filed papers in that case arguing it is not liable for his alleged abuse. The hospital has also denied wrongdoing.

Kryhoski described being lured into a “lion’s den.”

After just one consultation, Silverman recommended Kryhoski be immediately checked into in-patient treatment. The sixth-grader weighed only 86 pounds — but such a drastic measure was not yet necessary, she claims.

Once at the hospital, Kryhoski was kept under strict surveillance and isolation. There were no group therapy sessions and minimal interactions with other children, none of whom suffered from anorexia.

Proper nutrition seemed like an afterthought, Kryhoski said.

Instead, Silverman would order nurses to leave the room during examinations and pull a curtain for extra privacy. He then initiated a routine of escalating abuse, at one point telling Kryhoski he needed to “check her insides,” the suit states.

Communication with her parents was strictly monitored, according to the lawsuit. Nurses listened to her phone calls and quickly hung up the phone if Kryhoski became distressed. In-person visits only took place in a public lounge with nurses present.

Under surveillance and confused, Kryhoski said she decorated her room with drawings of Silverman as a monster with horns. The drawings included messages like, “devil,” “disgusting,” “monster,” “gross” and “evil.”

Nurses tore down the drawings and threatened to punish Kryhoski if she kept it up, the lawsuit alleges. They threatened to take her stuffed bunny and her mother’s bathrobe, which Kryhoski kept at the hospital, she recalled.

Her confinement only ended when Kryhoski’s parents removed her “against medical advice,” the legal papers say.

The abuse was followed by decades of mental illness, including dissociative personality, a recurring eating disorder, selfharm, multiple suicide attempts and inpatient treatment at psychiatric facilities, Kryhoski said.

Her lawyer predicted the doctor could have hundreds of victims.

Kryhoski filed suit under the state’s Child Victims Act as a way to regain control.

“My innocence, my productivity, my education, my career, everything was taken from me. But you know what? Not anymore,” she said.