Suspended Columbia University doctor sentenced for abusing former patient
CBSN
A now-suspended Columbia University doctor and professor of pediatrics was sentenced Friday to a year of conditional discharge, and counseling, for sexually abusing a former patient.
A jury found Joel Lavine guilty in December of two counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse in the third degree. Lavine, a former vice chair of the university's department of pediatrics, was accused of abusing a young woman in 2019 who for years as a teenager had been his patient. The Columbia Spectator first reported Lavine's conviction.
The former patient addressed Lavine in court Friday, saying, "In hindsight I see how you groomed me for years since I was a minor in your care."
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.