Former Brigham and Women’s Doctor Indicted on Two Rape Counts

Ex-Brigham and Women’s rheumatologist and former Harvard postdoctoral student Derrick J. Todd, accused of sexually assaulting more than 200 former patients, was indicted by a grand jury Thursday on two counts of rape.

Two women allege Todd sexually assaulted them in medical examinations at Charles River Medical Associates in Framingham in December 2022 and June 2023, according to a Middlesex County District Attorney press release. At Todd’s arraignment Friday morning, he pleaded not guilty to all criminal charges.

Todd turned himself in to Framingham police Thursday night, The Boston Globe reported. Middlesex County Judge Michael A. Sullivan set a $10,000 cash bail and ordered Todd to “relinquish all medical licenses,” according to court records.

The indictment Thursday follows a slew of lawsuits, beginning in 2023, by more than 200 former patients who accuse Todd of sexually assaulting them while Todd was practicing at multiple locations including Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital.

Brigham and Women’s suspended Todd and later terminated him in July 2023 after conducting an internal investigation into two anonymous complaints by fellow doctors. Todd signed an agreement with the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine in September 2023 confirming that he would voluntarily cease practicing medicine.

The plaintiffs allege that Todd performed unnecessary breast, pelvic, and testicular examinations, contacted patients from his personal phone at multiple hours of the day, and repeatedly offered to act as their primary care physician. One young female plaintiff accused Todd of “asking invasive questions about her sexual encounters and other personal matters with no relation to the medical care and treatment being provided,” according to a motion filed in September 2023.

The accusations date back to 2010, a year after Todd — a Yale and University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School graduate — began working as an associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and treating patients as young as 12 years old.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Todd was also an instructor at Harvard Medical School from 2009 to 2023. He was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health from 2006 to 2009.

Ingrid S. Martin, Todd’s attorney and Harvard Law School graduate, told The Boston Globe that Todd “is eager to come to court and finally have a forum through which he can see the evidence against him and to challenge that evidence.”

Martin did not respond to multiple requests for comment Friday.

Todd’s next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 11.

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.

—Staff writer Sheerea X. Yu can be reached at sheerea.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @_shuhree_.