Delaware pediatrician's alleged victims may surpass 103
A Delaware grand jury returned a sweeping indictment Monday against Dr. Earl Bradley, seen Dec. 23., a pediatrician accused of serial molestation.
By Cris Barrish, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal
Delaware authorities who have charged a pediatrician with sexually abusing 103 children say the number may go higher.
Attorney General Beau Biden said police are still conducting interviews with parents and children to identify those seen on videos seized from the Lewes home and office of Earl Bradley.
Bradley, 56, had been charged in December with raping nine girls. A 471-count indictment handed down Monday says he fondled children and forced them to engage in oral sex and intercourse. All but one, a 3-month-old boy, were girls, according to court records.
The indictment says the videos show crimes occurring from 1998 through Dec. 13, three days before he was arrested.
Bradley is awaiting arraignment while being held at the state prison near Smyrna in lieu of $2.9 million bail. He will pursue a mental-illness defense, said his lawyer, Gene Maurer.
Bradley's medical license was revoked last week.
Before his arrest, prosecutors had investigated him in 2005 and 2008 on allegations of improper behavior with patients — excessive kissing and improper vaginal exams — but neither probe led to an arrest or a report to the Delaware Board of Medical Practice, which disciplines doctors.
Videotaping by child predators "is not a one-time act," said Patricia Tedford, director of Contact Lifeline, a group that helps abuse victims and families. "They continue to do it until they get caught," she said.
"There is no sense of right and wrong or the harm they are doing to their victim."
She said of the Bradley case, "The scope of it is so unbelievable."
Biden said he had never heard of a pedophilia case with so many victims.
Seth Goldstein, a lawyer and former police officer who heads the non-profit Child Abuse Forensic Institute in California, said Bradley fits the profile of an abuser who chooses an occupation "where he had ready access to victims."
As the investigation continues and Delaware braces for the possibility of more revelations, Tedford said, "you don't want to believe it, and there's a natural human reaction at first that it can't be."
"Nobody wants to believe that it's been going on," she said.