Parents, never leave your little one alone with the physician!

The arraignment for former Lewes pediatrician Dr. Earl Bradley lasted for about a minute or two as he pleaded “not guilty.”  Bradley was indicted last year by a Sussex County Grand Jury to 471 counts after his arrest for the sexual abuse of 103 young patients.  Worse, there may be many, many more victims.  The case is assigned to Superior Court Judge James Vaughn who this month set a trial date for Bradley remains at the VCC in default of $2.9-million bond.

“These were crimes committed against the most vulnerable among us, those without voices,”  Delaware Attorney General Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III said. “They were committed by someone in whom the community and parents had placed their trust.”

Police and prosecutors have accused Bradley of almost unspeakable depravity – holding toddlers upside down and yelling at them while committing sex acts; penetrating a girl’s vagina with his hand when she was brought in for a sore throat, according to previously released court documents. In one Dec. 13 recording made three days before his arrest, a 2- to 3-year-old girl was seen screaming and trying to run away from Bradley, police wrote.

Bradley's case stands out because of the depravity of his alleged crimes, said Dr. Eli Newberger, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a pediatrician who has studied child-abuse cases for almost 40 years. "It's the worst pediatrician abuse case I've ever heard of."

Some of Bradley's actions alleged by prosecutors -- videotaping himself forcing oral and vaginal sex on children as young as 3 months old -- were "incredibly traumatic" and violent, he said.

  

"The fact that the children tried to escape is an unassailable negative," said Newberger, who has agreed to testify in a civil case filed by families of Bradley's alleged victims.

"The fact that he caused children to lose consciousness during these acts -- these are profoundly hurtful acts, and frankly I've never heard of anything that's been so assiduously documented as it was here," Newberger said.

The attacks allegedly occurred at Bradley’s Disney-themed BayBees Pediatrics in a Pinocchio-themed examination room, a basement where he kept toys and other treats and an outbuilding Bradley was converting into a movie theater. 

By bonding with the children, the burly, bearded doctor earned their parents’ trust and permission to take them alone to get toys, candy and ice cream.

Bradley’s arrest in December came after two previous attempts to build cases against him collapsed – once in 2005, when prosecutors did not file offensive-touching charges against him for excessive kissing of a 3-year-old girl, authorities have said, and again in 2008 after three parents told state police about inappropriate vaginal exams, but a Superior Court judge would not authorize a search warrant for his office.