Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said he felt like a failure after his wife Evelyn told him that her doctor had sexually abused her while she was pregnant.
Yang appeared on Fox News Sunday with host Chris Wallace over the weekend and told his part of his wife’s sexual abuse story, which she revealed in an interview with CNN on Jan. 16. The former tech executive said he felt partially responsible because throughout his wife’s pregnancy, he had been away from home a lot.
“The fact is, I was away many of the times when she had these appointments with her doctor, and so, I felt like I’d failed her,” Yang, 45, said. “I felt like if I’d been there, then this would not have happened to her.”
Yang said that he and his wife have received a wave of support since she went public with her story. Yang also said that his wife’s story had a broader message for the public.
“What we have to do as a country is acknowledge that these situations happen more often than we’d like to believe and that institutions — instead of protecting the doctor, in this case — should be doing what they can to protect ourselves, our wives, our daughters, our mothers,” Yang said.
In her CNN interview, Evelyn Yang accused her then-OB-GYN, Dr. Robert Hadden of Columbia University, of sexually abusing her while she was pregnant. She said that Hadden asked too many personal questions and scheduled her for frequent and unnecessary appointments. During one appointment, she said he had her undress and then examined her internally without gloves on. Hadden has denied the accusations.
