ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis-area pediatrician who is facing federal charges of prescribing opioids to women in exchange for sex acts, and the hospital where attorneys allege he practiced, are facing a civil lawsuit on behalf of the women involved, according to noted civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump.
Crump, along with Kayla Onder, a lawyer specializing in sexual abuse cases, held a meeting Thursday to announce the suit on behalf of close to 30 women who said they were victims of Dr. Craig A. Spiegel. Spiegel was charged in March by federal prosecutors with 24 counts, including 17 counts of illegal distribution of controlled substances, in connection with a scheme that investigators believe started as early as 2014.
Crump and Onder say the civil suit alleges SSM Health knew about the allegations surrounding Spiegel and ignored them.
"This was a systemic failure," said Onder. "Repeated failures to act on warnings, ignored red flags and a conscious choice to put convenience above patient safety."
A hospital spokesperson issued a brief statement saying that the allegations against it are unfounded.
“Dr. Craig Spiegel was never employed by SSM Health," the statement said. "Dr. Spiegel leased space from a third-party organization known as Ventas in a medical office building adjacent to SSM Health DePaul Hospital.”
The spokesperson said that due to the potential litigation, the hospital could have no further comment at this time.
"I have heard those arguments," said Onder of Spiegel not being an SSM employee and not working in an SSM office. "We do know that he had staff privileges. Anyone who has been to SSM, you know when you pull up to the campus, you recognize it as the SSM building. Just because there's a doctor in a medical facility within their campus, are we gonna put it on the victims to understand private real estate contracts and whose office is what? They pulled up to the building, they saw SSM's name and they trusted that he was affiliated and he was a reputable doctor because of what they put out."
Crump and Onder said that most of the people they represent were women of color. He said some of them continued to see Spiegel, a pediatrician, into their 20s and 30s after being groomed.
They alleged that often there were people trying to report Spiegel but that they weren’t taken seriously.
One woman, who said she was a victim of Spiegel’s, appeared before the media and was visibly shaken. She said she was speaking for those who weren’t yet comfortable with coming forward.
“My childhood,” she answered, when asked what had been taken from her. “He changed the way I looked at doctors.”
Federal investigators said Spiegel knew many of the women because he was their treating pediatrician when they were children. He would prescribe them drugs like Adderall, Percocet and Xanax in exchange for sexually explicit photographs or sex acts. The indictment alleges he would pressure reluctant victims into sending him the photographs or agreeing to engage in sex acts at his office in Bridgeton or in the women's homes.
The indictment read based on the 25 women alone, the United States is aware of thousands of text messages to or from Spiegel, more than 1,200 individual prescriptions for controlled substances that should have not been issued, and more than 73,000 controlled substance pills were illegally distributed.