Last Updated on August 23, 2019, 2:40 PM AST by Anthony Morris
Nearly 48 hours after news broke internationally that retired Yale University psychiatry professor, Dr Eugene Redmond, sexually assaulted five students at the St Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation and conducted sickening “medical exams” of three other students, the federation’s prime minister Dr the Hon Timothy Harris is yet to comment or issue a statement.
Redmond is a confidante, close associate and election campaign financer of the St Kitts and Nevis leader, multiple sources have confirmed. Prime Minister Harris’ nephew, Mr Alexis Nisbett is a manager of the St Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation and is chairman of the St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank.
The scathing report by a former United States federal prosecutor has been reported worldwide by over 42 news outlets including the Newsweek International, South China Morning Post, the Washington Post, Daily Beast, Patch.com, Yale Daily News, WFSB, Daily Voice, New York Post. Boston.com. SCMP.com, Insider.com, New Haven Register, The Harford Courant, NBC, Yale News, The Hill, CNN, Associated Press, Seattle Times, Chippewa Herald, The Boston Globe, The Scientist, The Bismark Tribune, Grand Island Independent and WCBV Boston.
A 54-page report commissioned by Yale released Tuesday found that Dr. D. Eugene Redmond — who retired from Yale School of Medicine last summer after 44 years at the university — assaulted five students at a research facility he operated in St. Kitts, beginning in the early 1990s.
“Each of these incidents occurred in a bedroom that Redmond required each student to share with him and after each of the students had been drinking with Redmond,” former US Attorney Deirdre Daly wrote. “We have also determined that Redmond conducted, in St. Kitts, three purported medical exams of students that included inappropriate genital and/or rectal exams.”
Redmond, who has not been criminally charged and declined the university’s request for an interview, is also accused of sexual misconduct involving at least eight other undergrads or recent graduates and one high school students in St. Kitts and New Haven, Connecticut, as well as other locations, the report found.
The allegations against Redmond span decades, as two of the assaults and two of the exams took place in the early 1990s, while the remaining assaults and a third exam occurred between 2010 and 2017, according to a six-month investigation that included interviews of 110 witnesses, including 38 current and former students, most of whom were Yale undergrads.
“Redmond’s actions, reported by the survivors who came forward, are reprehensible and antithetical to the educational mission of our university,” Yale president Peter Salovey said in a statement. “I state again in the strongest possible terms that sexual misconduct and sexual assault have no place in this university.”
Salovey called for an independent investigation into Redmond in January after an undergrad filed a complaint against him in March 2018, according to the report, which found Yale also failed to properly respond to complaints first brought to the university involving the professor in 1994.
“The behaviors in question violate every expectation we have of our faculty and the trust our students, and society, place in educators,” Salovey’s statement continued. “On behalf of Yale, I am deeply sorry Redmond’s behavior was not stopped once and for all when it was first reported.”
Redmond retired in July 2018 as he faced university disciplinary proceedings after accusations were reported by a group of students. His attorney told Yale that a Stamford law firm needed to disclose the names of his accusers and the firm’s notes of interviews with those students to interview Redmond — which the firm denied, according to the report.
“We found the students’ accounts to be highly credible,” the report stated. “When interviewed, the students were candid and straightforward; they neither embellished facts nor appeared vindictive.”
Some of the students said they “blocked out memories” of the assaults, but each incident was corroborated in part in writing or during interviews with relatives, friends or therapists of the students, the report found.
An attorney for Redmond — who has denied all of the allegations in previous reports — could not be reached Tuesday, the Yale Daily News reports.
University police and detectives in New Haven have reached out to police in St. Kitts regarding the allegations, Salovey said.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
