A California doctor was arrested last month after a hidden camera was reportedly found in the bathroom of his clinic. Several families who say they were harmed by this are now suing him.
Nicholas Vanderhyde, 40, was arrested in June after a hidden camera was found in the bathroom of his clinic in Santa Clarita, California. At the time, KHTS, NBC Los Angeles, and KTLA reported that the police were looking into the case.
A criminal complaint told Eyewitness News and The Santa Clarita Valley Signal that he was arrested on a charge of having child pornography on him.
Eyewitness News claimed that 11 families have now sued him and the Joint Chiropractic clinic. They said this at a press conference.
On May 8, an employee at the clinic reportedly found a camera hidden in a cabinet and hooked up to a power bank in the bathroom. At the time, she told Eyewitness News that this was the start of the investigation.
The worker, who did not want to be named, told the news outlet that she found the camera when she went to get her phone from the cabinet after using the bathroom.
She told KTLA, “It was pointed right at the toilet, so they were trying to record people using the bathroom and their private parts.”
The police found Vanderhyde and nabbed him on June 4, according to a statement from the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station at the time. KTLA says that he has been freed on bail since then. It’s not clear if he has hired a lawyer to speak for him.
Now, on July 29, 17 people who say they used to be patients, including four minors, filed a lawsuit against Vanderhyde. They say he invaded their privacy by “purposefully, strategically, and clandestinely placing” the camera in the bathroom “to record patients, including young children, in states of undress.”
People got a copy of the lawsuit, which also says that the clinic didn’t help the patients figure out “whether or not their nude or partially nude body was retained in images on Dr. Vanderhyde’s technology devices or if their image was distributed electronically in some way.”
The claim also says that The Joint knew Vanderhyde was a “predator” who “used treatment measures not within the scope of services offered generally by The Joint,” but they “allowed” him to keep doing what he was doing without looking into it.
“Dr. Vanderhyde was allowed to continue treating patients in his shady way,” says part of the claim. “He insisted on upper, inner thigh massage touching at least one patient’s vagina.”
Joint Chiropractic said in a statement that they would not talk about “ongoing legal matters” but that “the safety of our patients and staff, and the integrity of the service we provide, are always our highest priorities.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, call the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 and text “STRENGTH” to get in touch with a trained crisis counselor.