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Four additional women have filed lawsuits against NorthShore University HealthSystem and a former obstetrician/gynecologist there, alleging the system failed to warn them that the doctor had been accused of sexual abuse.
The new lawsuits — filed by four women and the husbands of two of them — accuse Dr. Fabio Ortega, 72, of sexually assaulting them and follow two other lawsuits filed earlier this year against Ortega.
The women in the earlier lawsuits alleged that Ortega sexually assaulted them. One of those lawsuits has since been dismissed.
All the lawsuits were filed anonymously in Cook County Circuit Court, with the plaintiffs named as “Jane Does.” The new lawsuits also list NorthShore Medical Group as a defendant.
Attempts to reach Ortega and his attorney for comment were not successful.
NorthShore spokeswoman Julie Sznewajs noted in a statement Monday that Ortega no longer works for the system and said NorthShore couldn’t comment on the allegations because “this remains an active legal matter.”
“We take these accusations very seriously,” she said in the statement. “We find any professional misconduct of this nature to be deeply disturbing and not reflective of the high standards of care we stand for and that our patients expect from us.” She declined to comment on the circumstances of Ortega’s departure from NorthShore.
The new lawsuits allege that NorthShore “allowed Ortega to voluntarily, and quietly, retire.”
Ortega was arrested in September by Skokie police and charged with one count of criminal sexual assault in the case of a woman who alleged she was assaulted in 2017. Ortega pleaded not guilty to the criminal assault charge, and that case is still in discovery, said Ortega’s attorney in the matter Douglas Wexler. That woman also filed a civil lawsuit against Ortega earlier this year, but that lawsuit has since been dismissed.
Ortega's medical license was also suspended in September for "engaging in sexual misconduct with patient of his practice," according to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. That suspension was tied to the same alleged 2017 incident, according to the woman’s now-dismissed lawsuit.
At least three of the women in the new lawsuits came forward after seeing news reports of Ortega’s arrest and the earlier accusations, according to their lawsuits. All four new lawsuits were filed for the women by the same attorney, Tamara Holder.
In one of the four new lawsuits, filed Monday, a 35-year-old Chicago woman alleges that when she visited Ortega in 2013 at NorthShore’s Lincolnwood clinic to see if she had suffered a miscarriage, he asked her “deeply personal questions.” She was so upset with his behavior, that she refused to be seen by him for future appointments, the lawsuit alleges.
But shortly after she delivered a child in 2016 at Evanston Hospital, Ortega was the doctor on call and he touched her without medical need, sexually assaulting her, before she was discharged, the lawsuit alleges.
In another lawsuit filed Monday, a 40-year-old Chicago resident alleges that when she visited NorthShore’s Lincolnwood clinic in 2016, concerned that she was going through early menopause, Ortega sexually assaulted her.
A third woman, a 42-year-old Evanston resident, also alleges Ortega sexually assaulted her during a 2014 exam at the Lincolnwood clinic, in another lawsuit filed Monday.
And in a lawsuit first filed Thursday, a 34-year-old Skokie woman alleges that Ortega sexually assaulted her at Evanston Hospital, touching her unnecessarily after she gave birth to her third child in August 2017. The alleged incident occurred just days after Skokie police had questioned him about allegations of sexually assaulting a different patient, according to the lawsuit.
All four new lawsuits allege that NorthShore failed to warn patients about Ortega and protect them from him.
“Year after year, NorthShore dismissed and covered-up complaints about Ortega, allowed him to continue work with unfettered access to its female patients, and then billed them for his abuses masked as medically necessary care,” the lawsuits allege.
In their lawsuits, the women accuse Ortega and NorthShore of negligence and battery, among other things. They are each seeking more than $50,000.
Twitter @lschencker