Prominent URMC professor Johan Blickman accused of drugging, raping resident

A former medical resident is accusing a prominent University of Rochester Medical Center faculty member of raping her repeatedly and attempting to involve her boyfriend in murdering his ex-wife, part of an explosive lawsuit in state Supreme Court.

The accuser, Katia Kaplan-List, was a medical resident doing a rotation in pediatric radiology at Strong Memorial Hospital, where she encountered Johan Blickman, vice chair of URMC's department of imaging sciences and a professor in pediatrics.

Her lawsuit includes a series of shocking claims:

Blickman invited her to his house in August 2014 to discuss a research project, then drugged and raped her.

He subsequently blackmailed her with nude photographs and said he would "humiliate her and ... destroy her life" if she reported his actions, and that he had done the same thing to someone in Boston, where he formerly worked.

He met several times with Kaplan-List's boyfriend and attempted to involve him in killing his (Blickman's) ex-wife, saying: " I want the problem to go away permanently. ... It is very easy. She rides her bicycle every morning without a helmet and takes the same course daily."

He continued to coerce Kaplan-List to have sex with him, including at least once in his office at Strong.

He made "bizarre requests" of her, including role-playing that she was a child patient and then molesting her, and having sexual contact with his dog.

After she became pregnant in January 2015, he continued to coerce her into having sex and ignored her request that he use a condom even though he had a urinary tract infection.

URMC said it first heard about an "inappropriate relationship" from Kaplan-List's lawyer in 2016, two years after she was last at UR, and subsequently "took action based on our findings."

"Last week the University received a complaint in which new and different allegations have been made against Dr. Blickman by Dr. Kaplan-List, some of which would be serious criminal offenses if proven true," URMC spokesman Chip Partner said in an email. "Dr. Blickman is on (paid) leave and we will review these new allegations as we prepare our response to the complaint, but we have not received a law-enforcement inquiry related to them."

Partner would not say what action URMC took in 2016. There were no allegations from other people against Blickman before the initial 2016 report, he said. He declined to say whether there have been any additional allegations by other women since then, calling it "a private personnel matter."

Blickman was put on leave in mid-January when the university first heard of the current complaint.

Blickman himself did not respond to a request for comment sent to his university email account.

A statement from Blickman's law firm Evans & Fox LLP issued Thursday said that the allegations "are patently untrue, vehemently denied, and appear to be an attempt to use the current social climate to gain a financial windfall. … Dr. Blickman will vigorously pursue the justice to which he is entitled … and is confident that he will be fully vindicated by actual evidence in a court of law."

Kaplan-List, now working as a radiologist in Boca Raton, Florida, declined to comment on the lawsuit. Her lawyer, Frank Housh, did not respond to phone and email messages.

Suit alleges duty to protect

The lawsuit leaves out a number of important pieces of information: whether Kaplan-List ever reported Blickman's actions to either URMC or law enforcement or sought to file criminal charges; when and how the alleged behavior ended; and what, if anything, came of the alleged murder conspiracy.

The lawsuit does not allege that URMC ignored any complaints, but states that it "had a duty to protect (Kaplan-List) from injury" while she was a resident there. It requests $30 million in damages.

The Rochester Police Department and Monroe County District Attorney's Office said they had no record of any contact from Kaplan-List.

As to the alleged murder conspiracy, Blickman's ex-wife did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit states that at one point Blickman asked to meet with Kaplan-List's boyfriend and admitted to him that he had drugged and raped her, but repeated his threat to "ruin her career" if either of them reported his actions.

Later, though, after Kaplan-List became pregnant, the lawsuit states that Blickman "continued to coerce (her) to have sex with him and added the threat of telling her boyfriend to the threat of ruining her career." It is not clear what new information would have been involved in that threat, if the boyfriend, whose name is not in the lawsuit, already knew what was happening.

In the lawsuit, Kaplan-List writes that she was in the URMC residency program, but according to both URMC and her licensure information filed with the Florida Department of Health, she was a resident at Rochester General Hospital. Partner said she was only at Strong for three one-month rotations in pediatric radiology, in 2013 and 2014.

Blickman previously in Boston

According to Blickman's profile on the URMC website, he has been in Rochester since 2009, with a main research emphasis on pediatric radiology.

Before arriving at URMC, he worked in the Netherlands and at Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his doctoral degree from Boston University in 1978.

According to the lawsuit, Blickman told Kaplan-List "that he had caused someone in Boston to be fired for making a similar claim and even got the police involved."

Neither Massachusetts General Hospital nor Boston Medical Center responded to requests for comment.

Kaplan-List's lawsuit was first filed Jan. 12 but was apparently withdrawn by Housh, her lawyer, then refiled Feb. 15. It then appeared on the state's online legal filings website Feb. 20.

The allegation against Blickman comes as the University of Rochester addresses the fallout from separate allegations of sexual misconduct involving Florian Jaeger, a professor in the brain and cognitive sciences department.

Those claims continue to be litigated, both in a university-commissioned investigation and, now, in federal court. They caused President Joel Seligman to resign and make way for new leadership.

A sentence in an earlier version of this story referred to Kaplan-List as a student. It should have said, resident.

JMURPHY7@Gannett.com