Dr. Ricardo Cruciani
© APDr. Ricardo Cruciani
Seventeen women from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are accusing a prominent neurologist of using his sought-after treatments as leverage to extract sexual favors.

The women claim that Dr. Ricardo Cruciani, 63, former chairman of the neurology department at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, has abused his patients going back more than a decade.

He will appear in Philadelphia court Tuesday on charges he assaulted seven patients last year alone. The remaining women have filed separate police reports or hired lawyers for civil suits.

The victims, ages 31 to 55, described a pervy bedside manner that includes unwanted touching and kissing, as well as being coerced into oral sex. Another said he masturbated in front of her - even as she declined his advances.

Cruciani - a respected practitioner and researcher who worked at Drexel, Capital Health Medical Center in New Jersey and Beth Israel in New York - is one of few doctors with the expertise to treat rare, painful nerve conditions, and he exploited the fact, according to victim Hillary Tullin, who saw Cruciani at Beth Israel beginning in 2002.

"You have nowhere else to go, and you know that and he knows that," Tullin, 45, told the AP.

Tullin saw Cruciani for several years before he assaulted her, becoming dependant on the care he provided for her crippling regional pain disorder. But in 2005, he jammed his tongue down her throat during one of their sessions. She fled and stayed away for a few weeks, only returning once her pain became unbearable.

That's when Cruciani upped the pressure, eventually convincing the woman to perform oral sex on him and allow him to perform it on her, she said.

"There was nothing consensual about it," Tullin said. "When you're being held in a locked office with someone for three hours, and you know that that person holds your health in his hands, you make a decision. And my decision was that I wanted to be able to walk again, I wanted to be able to use my arms and legs."

A Dutchess County woman who saw Cruciani at Beth Israel, Drexel and Capital Health said the bad doctor also coerced her into oral sex and allowing him to put his fingers in her vagina.

She tried to bring a friend to her appointment as protection, but Cruciani withheld pain medication from her as a reprisal, she said.

"I felt so trapped," said the woman, who declined to be named. "This was a man who really knew about a rare condition that I had. I couldn't find anyone else with his level of knowledge or understanding, and he had my health and my medications over my head. I did what I did to survive."

A 40-year-old New York City woman says Cruciani repeatedly fondled her breasts and genitals over her clothes.

When she complained about it to her primary care doctor, he replied: "Well, you know, I've heard that he can be a little handsy. Just watch yourself," the woman recalled.

Drexel fired the doctor in March after an internal investigation.

Capital Health received no sexual-misconduct complaints about Cruciani, according to vice president Dennis Dooley.

Officials in New Jersey are investigating allegations involving Cruciani time at Capital health., according to cops and prosecutors.

Mount Sinai, which merged with Beth Israel in 2013 after Cruciani stopped practicing there, declined to comment

The NYPD opened and later closed a case on Cruciani after a 37-year-old woman told cops he tried to kiss and grope her, but it is unclear why the case was closed, the AP reported.