Law&Crime Sidebar - Colorado Doctor Allegedly Drugged, Raped ‘60 or More’ Women, Lawyer Reveals

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

The attorney for victims of a Denver cardiologist accused of meeting women on dating apps, then drugging and raping them, says there could be upwards of 60 victims involved in a civil case against the doctor. Thirty-six-year-old Dr. Stephen Matthews faces 51 felony counts in connection with 13 victims, although their lawyer says there could be “60 or more” survivors. The Law&Crime Network’s Jesse Weber discusses the disturbing allegations with the victim’s attorney, Stephen J. Burg.HOSTS:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberAngenette Levy: https://twitter.com/Angenette5LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Dr. Stephen Matthews is the Denver cardiologist accused of drugging and date-raping women. Now we sit down with the attorney representing several of these accusers to understand what happened and the potential for a lawsuit against the dating app company that connected Matthews with these women. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Dr. Stephen Matthews, we haven't talked about him in a while. He is the 36-year-old Denver cardiologist who has just pled not guilty to charges related to

drugging and raping women faces 51 felony counts. He's accused. He's accused. of as early as 2019 matching with women on dating apps. And then he would meet them and allegedly slip something into their drinks. They would black out or become disoriented. Many become violently ill. And they wouldn't remember much of what happened. But some women have said that Matthews sexually assaulted them. So he was first arrested in March of 2023 with respect to one woman and then arrested again

after more accusers came forward to authorities. And now he is criminally charged. with respect to 13 women. He's being held in a $5 million bond, and his criminal trial is scheduled to begin March 4th, 2024. This comes after a judge determined that there was sufficient evidence to move forward with a trial against Matthews.

Also, interestingly, Matthews agreed with the Colorado Medical Board to suspend his medical license as his case makes its way through the criminal process. Right now, I want to bring on a very special guest. I'm joined by Stephen Berg. Stephen Berg is an attorney who is representing some of these women in civil court. Stevenberg, thank you so much for taking the time of coming here on Sidebar.

Thank you for having me. So let's first start out. Who exactly, obviously not identifying, but who do you represent in this case? I represent a number of survivors that have been assaulted by Stephen Matthews. And in the civil arena, which we're going to get into, not in the criminal arena. Correct. And, you know, we basically have put together a group of survivors that want to see some change here, that want to make sure that something like this can't happen moving forward. Yeah, and I want to get into the potential lawsuits that you might be filing on their behalf. But first, let's just, if you can, can you generally explain, because we are seeing a pattern in these allegations, but can you generally explain what their accounts are, what they say happened with them in Matthews? Yeah. Unfortunately, the scenario seemed to be very, very, very similar. He would build trust and then get them to have a drink, usually close to his home and drug them in that drink. And then they would be very, very impaired and not know what's going on and he would sexually assault.

And they had met him on different apps and then they would meet at a public place, then go back. back to his house. I mean, that was seemed to be, again, if he did this, the M.O., correct? Correct. Yeah. And he was, he was very savvy and able to build trust, say, let's go meet at a public place, talk about his dog, and then oftentimes use that an excuse to head back to his house or apartment. Did they like him? I mean, obviously, they must have liked him to a certain degree to go on a date with him. But what was happening during the course of those initial conversations where they felt, you know, at least comfortable to go back to his place? Well, look, I mean, He was a, he's able to be very charming.

He's a, he's a cardiologist, seemingly had, you know, no red flags for them. And, and, you know, just trying to find somebody they matched up with. And like many people on dating sites, you know, trying to find somebody that was a good fit for them. Hey there, everybody. I want to talk to you right now about Palm, which is the next generation of pepper spray. You see, Palm's formula provides you. with the necessary range and capacity that can give you and your loved ones some peace of mind. Now, if you're like, look, I don't want to mistakenly fire this.

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And if so, how did they find that out? Yeah, it varies from individual to individual. Some had flashes what was going on. And oftentimes, you know, it appeared he would try to blame them or getting too intoxicated or try to sow some doubt in their minds about their actions or what they did. And did they have, you know, were they administered sexual assault exams after some of these cases? Some were, and some were self-identifying of saying, I don't know what happened. I'm experienced drinker.

I've never had something like that happened. And they always have these questions. And then when they hear about the stories, more and more survivors have come forward and said, you know, they wanted to put this all behind them. But now they want to make sure and stand up and provide some change so this doesn't happen moving forward. Any idea what the alleged drug was that was used in these drinks? I'm not aware of what that is. Many of the drugs clear the system in short amount of time, and so have no idea what that would be.

What allowed them to go forward? Because obviously, it seems to me that when one account, when there was one woman who came forward, then others seemed to feel comfortable to say what happened to them. Is that the same situation for your clients? Yeah, you know, to take on a cardiologist and to stand up and, and, and, really have a credibility dispute on many of the occasions is very, very worrisome for many of these survivors of no one will believe me, and he'll be able to just ruin me. And so I think it was really powerful having the first survivor come forward and having everybody see it.

You know, quite frankly, every time a story is run about this, there are more and more survivors coming forward saying, oh, my gosh, I'm hearing about this for the first time. And I want to do my part to make sure this doesn't have to move forward. Do you know if they're planning or prepared to testify against Matthews? Yeah, certainly. There are the survivors in the first indictment, the 13, I would imagine they're all going to be testifying there or at least the vast majority of them and providing their account of what happened. And that's never easy because they will be facing cross-examination, which is, you know, by his side. And what are your thoughts on that? Because they're going to be faced with some, you know,

tough questions. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, you know, many of the survivors are going to to have to talk about some of the most personal, personal things of their life and in a public setting. And I just got to tell you, I am continually inspired by the strength of these survivors to come forward, to take action, to try to make this a better world move forward. Stephen, I wanted to ask your opinion about this. So Matthews lawyer said in court that all of these survivors, all of these alleged victims should be named, should be identified, so they're not afforded, quote, a cloak of anonymity. What are your thoughts on that? Well, what he says in court, I mean, I think if the lawyer believed in it, he should file

a motion saying such and having the judge rule on it. And, you know, it just seems to me, my opinion, a little grandstanding. If he feels it's accurate and he wants that to happen, then he should file the motion and have the court determine that. But to just talk about it in the media is a different avenue to go down, obviously. Have any of your clients give you an indication that they want to come forward publicly, speak about this publicly, or are they waiting for the conclusion of the criminal case? Yeah, you know, I think overall everybody's waiting for the conclusion of the criminal case. We feel like the evidence is going to come out that Stephen Matthews is a serial rapist.

And once that's included and determined, then there are several survival. that had said that at least at this point in time, they do anticipate that willing to be able to do that. And I just wanted your reaction as well to more of what we're hearing from Matthews Camp, who says, there's no forensic evidence the women were drugged, there was no proof that these women were helpless, that this is all consensual, because those are going to be things that I imagine his team is going to bring up at a criminal trial. What's your response to those kinds of arguments?

Yeah, you know, many of the circumstances and, uh, what Matthews was doing has not been released to the public. And I think we're going to hear that many, many, many of the survivors' account of what happened is very, very consistent with others. And it's a lot of evidence that I just don't know how the defense is going to be incredibly refuted. So I wanted to switch gears with you because, like I said, you're not representing these women with respect to the criminal case against Matthews, although I'm sure you're having conversations with them about that.

But it's our understanding that after the conclusion of the criminal case, you might be filing a lawsuit or lawsuits on their behalf. You talk to us about that? Yeah. So we're looking at filing lawsuits against match group, number one. And there may be others as we determine other responsible parties. And really looking at match groups in their failure. And match group is the owner, yeah, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So let me, Match Group owns, they have about 80% of the online dating market share. And they own a number of specific apps, including Hinge and Tinder. And so, you know, one of the, one of the failures of Match Group was when Matthews was reported as a rapist, he continued to be on their website for multiple years afterwards. And who reported him as a rapist, one of the, your clients, or how was it reported to the, the company? In writing, reported to Match Group by a survivor. Before the charges, before the criminal charges. Correct. And what was their response, if any? I'm really sorry to hear that.

He'll be removed. And he wasn't. No. And he remained on their platforms for multiple years after that. And, you know, I know that that Match Group made a statement regarding this. Yeah. Let me read it. Let me read it so everybody sees.

So I believe this is the statement you're referring to. This is the statement from Match Group. And it says, quote, that Match Group is committed to help keep our community safe and continuously work to improve our systems to help prevent bad actors from accessing our platform. What's been reported is horrible and has no place on our platform or anywhere. Our teams use a combination of automated tools and human moderation to help remove bad actors proactively. We have fully cooperated with law enforcement and will continue to provide any information to them that would be helpful for their investigation. What do you make of that statement?

Yeah, you know, were they keeping the community safe when they failed to take reasonable action and allowed somebody who had been reported as a rapist to continue to utilize their platform? and find additional victims for multiple years. Have you seen lawsuits like this filed against dating app companies in the past? Have they been successful? Yeah, you know, there's, some have been successful, some haven't. When they have explicit knowledge of, and somebody's been warning them, a majority of those has been successful. Now, there is a 230 immunity for internet platform companies, and there's an analysis on whether they're net neutral or not, and that's going to be, obviously, a fight in our case, and we're prepared to go down that route.

If Matthew should be found not guilty at his criminal trial, would you still bring this lawsuit against the match group? Yeah, I mean, I think that there's overwhelmingly, there's going to be an. overwhelming the amount of evidence that shows he is a serial rapist. And, you know, given that every time the media covers this story, there's more and more women self-identifying and coming forward. So I anticipate that there likely is a, there's going to be another group of victims coming forward. And there would be a second group of indictments is what I believe would likely take place, even if he was somehow found not guilty in the first one. Well, that's so interesting.

What would you say it would be your biggest challenge of trying to find match group liable in this case? I think the internet platform 230 immunity is of saying that they have, you know, that's, I think that's why they've failed to act on so many times is they just rely on that and say, really, we don't have to do anything. I mean, there's a number of... Because they can't be held liable for what their users are doing on the platform. Yeah.

And, you know, there's a number of prior instances in news reports where rapist has utilized their platform after being convicted as a rapist and even people utilizing their platform from jail, serving a sentence for rape. And that person was not removed. According to these news articles, this is a continue ongoing problem, and it just seems that Match Group has chosen not to do anything about it. Other than getting them to change their policies to make sure this doesn't happen, what would you be looking for in terms of damages?

You know, the best way to change corporate behavior is through a penalty, through compensation, so that next time when somebody reports somebody being a rapist and they say, you know what, I think financially our motive is to do the right thing here and remove the person so this doesn't be systemic. You know, the second aspect we're looking at is, are there additional protections that can be put in place through state law? Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. My understanding is you've spoken with Colorado lawmakers about this.

Yeah, so we've been having ongoing conversations about it and about the need to make significant changes in the law to provide the minimum protections for people using the apps. What kind of changes? Yeah, I mean, right now, the current legislations talks about, you know, removing somebody for fraud. Okay, well, that's helpful. They also talk about not automating, not having an auto renewal or for, for, the dating site charging something on an auto renewal and the process to protect people using it. But it's completely void of anything regarding safety. And so, you know, at this point in time, we think there needs to be minimum protections put in place that are mandating these dating

these dating apps to take action when someone is reported as a threat. I guess their response would be, you know, unless there was a criminal conviction. or even, I even suggest maybe a criminal charge is filed, it's one person's word against another and, you know, someone can make a false accusation against somebody of sexual assault or some sort of, you know, harassment. And they proactively remove them from the platform when they shouldn't have been. Yeah, I mean, look at the potential risk on each side, right? Like, so if somebody is wrongly accused of it, they lose access to a dating site or maybe a few people. months. But if on the flip side, if they fail to take any action, somebody like Matthews,

who's been alleged to be a serial rapist, continues to be shown in front of thousands of women and is able to really target his specific next victim. You know what's shocking to me as I was looking at this story is that, you know, again, look, from a legal point of view, he's innocent until proven guilty. It doesn't change the fact about these allegations. Having said that, If he really did do this and it shows this pattern of behavior, we see it sometimes where someone becomes emboldened, right? You would think that, you know, after allegedly committing a crime against one person, they don't get caught. Then they try against the second person. They don't get caught.

But it's interesting that it kept going on and never felt that he was going to be reported, never felt that someone was going to come after him. I mean, that I find to be such an interesting aspect of this and also an alarming aspect of this, the number of, you know, alleged victims of Mr. Matthews, of Dr. Matthews, that it's just, that's what's so shocking to me is that this kept going on and it wasn't like there wasn't any hesitation to stop himself from going forward. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. I mean, from what we've seen in the reports, you know, he seemed to be emboldened and, you know, at times he would be having multiple dates on the same night you would you know there oftentimes were women coming out when women were coming in and he had a lot of access to a lot of human beings in a short amount of time

and he was very very very active on on the different sites i mentioned the fact that his license has been suspended it hasn't been revoked his medical license could potentially be reinstated at a later date depending on the outcome of his case what do you make of that. Yeah, you know, I think one of the, one of the issues in Colorado is we need a little better oversight for medical license. You know, after he had been arrested on the first charge and was alleged to have drugged and raped an individual, he maintained, as far as we're aware, he had maintained access and privileges to the hospitals he had and able to continue to have one-on-one access with patients, which obviously is a huge concern for a cardiologist.

By the way, your clients, other than their own accounts, do they have corroborating evidence that they were attacked by Matthews? Yeah, I mean, many of them have, you know, text message, emails, things reaching out to loved ones right away, others, sane exams, others. you know, communications through the app as well. So on an individual basis, many have other collaborating evidence or to help prove up and justify what they're saying is to be accurate. Did they confront Matthews at any point about this?

Some of them did in a indirect way. You know, questions of what happened. Why did this happen? Why don't I remember this? those type of things yeah and look you know his team is uh fighting this but um you know it's it's it's really disturbing to say the least about what we're hearing and now my understanding is you have called on other potential victims to come forward if they have similar stories can you walk us through how that might be going or how you're encouraging other people if they have

similar accounts with mr with dr matthews yeah so so our group has come forward um obviously because we want to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. But in addition, we want others to feel like there's a safe space. They can come forward. They can use the example that others have done and shown the strength. And, you know, many of the survivors have a certain level of guilt, self-blame, and isolation that they're for this. And so getting the message out and getting the, you know, just people hearing about it has

been so inspiring for other survivors to share their stories. And it's truly humbling to be a part of that process. And look, I'll tell you, you know, we've covered a number of these types of cases here on law and crime. And I think people's understandings of sexual assault and the reactions from that and how someone should behave or what they should do or when they should come forward, that's changed. That's changed dramatically. Doesn't mean they're not going to face those tough questions during cross-examination or tough questions in a potential lawsuit. But I think our understanding of what sexual assault victims go through has changed as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, everybody's experience is individual, you know, anywhere from denying

that it happened to self-blame to then coming through the cycles. But you're right. You know, I think the public has learned a lot about sexual assault and how different individuals deal with it differently. And that's really helpful, I think, in this environment. Steven Berg, thank you so much for coming on, talking to us a little bit more about this case, and maybe what we can expect. Appreciate it. Thanks, Jesse. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus.

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