While 2009 dragged on, records show 47 assaulted

In December 2008, an investigation into alleged sex crimes by Lewes pediatrician Earl B. Bradley was blocked when a Sussex County Superior Court judge rejected the state’s attempt to raid the doctor’s office.

Dealt a setback, Delaware authorities never took further steps that could have stopped the suspected pedophile.

While the doctor continued to treat hundreds of children a week, police and prosecutors didn’t present the search warrant to another judge, or bolster it with new evidence. They didn’t seek an arrest warrant. They didn’t ask federal authorities for help. They didn’t report Bradley to the state medical board, which could have suspended or revoked his license.

Over the next 12 months, a stretch during which a state police spokesman said detectives "didn’t have anything to work with," Bradley raped or sexually assaulted 47 young girls in the Disney-themed office and filmed the attacks, last month’s indictment said.

The fact that so many children were allegedly abused after the search warrant was rejected has led some to question whether prosecutors and police did enough. While Attorney General Beau Biden said prosecutors decided not to report Bradley to the Board of Medical Practice and risk damaging their case, some legal and medical experts said officials needed to do everything they could to keep the doctor away from more children.

"It’s incomprehensible that a prosecutor would not try to stop the further abuse of children for fear of jeopardizing the investigation," said Colm F. Connolly, U.S. attorney for Delaware from September 2001 until January 2009. "This is inexcusable and too many people have paid a horrible price for the lack of judgment."

Biden, who has touted his get-tough approach with sex criminals who prey on children, insists authorities took "affirmative steps and that work resulted in Bradley’s arrest" in December. But Biden and police have refused to provide a single example of how they furthered the investigation in the year leading to Bradley’s arrest.

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Some official statements, however, belie Biden’s contention that his office ran a successful investigation while Bradley was abusing roughly one new girl a week at BayBees Pediatrics.

State police spokesman Sgt. Walter Newton said troopers "had exhausted all their leads" and were stymied until police were contacted by the parents of a 2-year-old girl who said Bradley abused her Dec. 7. "It was the critical piece of information that allowed us to go forward" with an arrest on Dec. 16, Newton said.

Compounding the lack of new leads was the fact that the initial lead detective on the Bradley case, Lawrence Corrigan, retired in early 2009 and case files were turned over to Detective Thomas Elliott.

After The News Journal reported in January that criminal investigations of Bradley in 2005 and 2008 failed to result in charges — a revelation that angered parents and the public — Biden initiated an investigation into why no one in law enforcement or the medical community reported the doctor to the Board of Medical Practice, as required by law.

Biden, however, is reviewing only the 2005 investigation of Bradley overseen by the office of Attorney General M. Jane Brady. Biden said the 2008 case during his tenure is not subject to his inquiry because the investigation was "active" and "ongoing" — relieving prosecutors and police of the obligation to report Bradley to the medical board.

If they had reported Bradley, Biden said, the board would have been required to notify the doctor and he could have destroyed evidence — "a risk prosecutors were unwilling to take," Biden said.

But Connolly’s opinion that the medical board should have been notified is shared by James T. Collins, director of the Delaware Division of Professional Regulation that oversees the board.

"We work with law enforcement. We get an idea of what they have done and what their plan is, and we will collectively move together on a path forward," he said. According to the law, state police and the Attorney General’s Office are among agencies that must file a written report "within 30 days of becoming aware" of a doctor’s misconduct.

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Biden also stressed that while the enormity of Bradley’s alleged crimes is now known, in 2008, investigators suspected only that the doctor was doing inappropriate exams in the presence of a parent.

While Biden says preventing child sex abuse is a focus of his administration, the attorney general acknowledges he knew nothing about the Bradley investigation until sometime after returning to work in October after a one-year stint in Iraq with his National Guard unit. Biden would not say whether he knew of the Bradley case before the doctor’s arrest.

While Biden was away, chief deputy Richard S. Gebelein was acting attorney general. Now working in Europe, Gebelein said by e-mail last week that he never knew about the Bradley investigation. Gebelein resigned after Biden returned in October.

A slew of allegations

The crimes Bradley is accused of committing would rank him among the worst pedophiles in U.S. history.

In 2009 alone, Bradley forced dozens of patients as young as 3 months old to engage in intercourse and oral sex, authorities said. Tapes seized from his office once authorities were able to search it after the doctor’s arrest show girls crying, screaming and running from Bradley, who yelled at some to obey his commands, his face contorted in rage, detectives wrote in court papers. Five girls appeared to lose consciousness or stop breathing during attacks, according to the February indictment.

Bradley faces 471 charges relating to the taped rapes and sexual abuse of 102 girls and one boy from December 1998 through December 2010, and Biden expects to file more charges based on interviews with parents and patients. Bradley, 56, who is being held at the state prison near Smyrna in lieu of $2.9 million bail, will pursue a mental-illness defense, defense attorney Gene Maurer said.

More than a year before his arrest, police received three abuse reports, between September and December of 2008, when parents of three girls complained that Bradley conducted inappropriate vaginal exams, Elliott, the detective, wrote.

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One complaint occurred after a 12-year-old went to Bradley for a sore throat and pink eye. Bradley did not take her temperature, a throat culture or urine specimen. Instead, he performed a vaginal exam, penetrating her "for two minutes," then gave her a toy fit for a toddler.

Another mother said Bradley gave her daughter a four-minute vaginal exam when she went to be tested for attention deficit disorder, then kissed her and asked, "Is the wetness on your cheek from my kiss or from your tears?" He later kissed her again and "asked if she wanted to stay with him for the night," Elliott wrote.

Finally, an 8-year-old who went to Bradley for excessive urination received a vaginal exam, and was told to come back two more times with a urine specimen — appointments at which Bradley again conducted vaginal exams. The girl said Bradley wore no gloves and kissed her on the lips. After Bradley told the girl to repeat the process a fourth time, her grandfather took her to another doctor who did not have her remove her clothes.

On Dec. 17, 2008, a former employee of Bradley’s told police the doctor installed surveillance cameras around his office that he could access from his home computer.

During the course of the 2008 investigation, state police also learned of the 2005 investigation by Milford police, who tried to charge Bradley with offensive touching after a girl complained that he kissed her too much. Police could not arrest him because prosecutors decided they could not prove their case.

Police reviewed Milford’s files, including interviews with employees who said Bradley took antidepressants from office samples and that parents told of improper touching of patients, such as putting "his hand under their clothing."

Milford police interviewed three pediatricians who had worked with Bradley. One saw him hold and kiss girls. Another said patients transferred to him because Bradley forced girls "to get undressed" or took them away from parents.

In addition, Dr. Lowell Scott told police he called Bradley a "pedophile when talking to colleagues" — a remark Scott told a reporter was "taken out of context."

Search warrant rejected

Armed with what they thought was ammunition to raid Bradley’s office, authorities took a search warrant application to a judge in Georgetown. To get a warrant approved, authorities must convince a judge there is "probable cause" a crime had been committed and evidence would be found there.

While probable cause is a nebulous term, Delaware defense attorney Michael W. Modica defined it as "more likely than not" that evidence would be found.

The judge ruled that police had not met the legal standard to conduct the search, Biden said. Neither he nor police would identify the judge. None of Sussex’s three Superior Court judges at the time — T. Henley Graves, Richard Stokes or E. Scott Bradley — would say whether he rejected the warrant application.

Failure to get the warrant meant police would not discover the trove of evidence in computer files at the doctor’s Coastal Highway office.

The warrant’s contents remain a mystery. Police, prosecutors and judges would not release a copy, saying it is not a public document. Nor would they reveal the date it was rejected. Asked why the date was secret, Biden spokesman Jason Miller said, "We are not going to comment about evidence." Asked how a date constitutes evidence, he said, "You have our answer."

‘Content to sit and wait’

Only police, prosecutors and the judge know if the warrant had critical weaknesses or could have been strengthened. But Modica said that because authorities had evidence that Bradley could be continuing to abuse children, they needed to do whatever they legally could to "dress up the warrant" and establish probable cause.

Knowing the date that the judge reviewed the warrant also would help others understand the evidence police had at the time, legal experts said. Court records say that on Dec. 17, police were told Bradley had installed cameras inside his office, cameras he could view from home. If authorities knew about the cameras when they sought the warrant, that information should have been included, experts said. If they omitted the cameras or learned about them after the warrant was denied, they should have added those facts to the warrant and taken it back to the judge.

Connolly called the cameras "a critical fact" that could have nudged the judge to approve the warrant.

Modica agreed: "It would raise a red flag."

Ferris W. Wharton, Delaware’s former chief deputy attorney general and Biden’s Republican opponent in the 2006 election, said prosecutors faced hard choices. "You’ve got a guy you know is molesting children and has got access to children on a daily basis. What do you do?" he said.

One possible move, Wharton said, would have been to ask a judge to sign an arrest warrant. Though they couldn’t persuade the judge that evidence of molestation would be found in the office, the statements of parents who witnessed abuse, coupled with the children’s accounts, could have justified an arrest.

"They had probable cause that he was doing these pelvic exams on children in the presence of parents and there was no medical basis for that," Wharton said. "That could be probable cause that he committed a crime."

If Bradley was arrested at the office, police might have seen evidence or Bradley might have made an incriminating statement that could have persuaded the judge to allow a search, Wharton said.

Connolly also said prosecutors could have tried other methods, such as taking the warrant to a new judge or reporting Bradley to the medical board or child protection officials.

"They didn’t try, though. They were content to sit and wait until other victims came forward as opposed to doing something proactive to prevent more kids from being victimized," Connolly said.

Connolly said Biden’s office also could have sought help from federal authorities, who have more resources. Federal officials were not contacted until after Bradley’s arrest, to help decrypt video files, said Connolly’s successor, David C. Weiss.

Though political pundits have called Wharton and Connolly potential GOP foes against Democrat Biden in his bid for re-election this year, both said they were not running.

Eli H. Newberger, a renowned Boston pediatrician and author who has written extensively about child abuse, said he suspects that what happens elsewhere occurred in Delaware — investigators were not aggressive enough when pursuing a prominent person — in this case, a doctor.

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"The protection of children is a paramount value," Newberger said. "Compromising it suggests a higher priority to protecting a doctor and the image of medical professionals over the protection of children. It raises serious questions about the ethics and intentions of these so-called investigators."

‘Nothing was being done’

The vast majority of the rapes with which Bradley has been charged occurred after January 2007, when Biden took office after promising to start a child-predator unit.

The seven-employee Child Predator Task Force includes a prosecutor and three state troopers and gets input from other law enforcement agencies. The unit’s primary focus is tracking those who view and share child pornography online, and it also assists in cases that involve digital images, text messages or other computer files.

There is no evidence in the public record that Bradley shared images of the sex acts he is charged with filming.

Biden said the task force has worked on the Bradley case since the 2008 reports surfaced, but would not say what was done.

Though Biden will not talk about specific steps he said investigators took after the warrant was rejected in December 2008, he and aides defended the decision not to take it to a different judge or to report Bradley to the board.

Steven P. Wood, who served as state prosecutor before Biden took office, said that while it’s legal to take a denied warrant to another judge, in 25 years as a prosecutor in Delaware, he doesn’t recall it ever being done here.

"It’s a practice called judge shopping and it’s grossly inappropriate. I’m sure the court would not look kindly on the practice," Wood said.

Wood and Jennifer D. Oliva, deputy state solicitor, also said Delaware case law has established a right for police investigations to remain secret, and both said they know of no Delaware cases where information about an ongoing investigation was shared with the medical board..

"The only way to protect all of Delaware’s children from the doctor was to get a conviction with incarceration," Oliva said.

The bottom line, Biden said, is that "Dr. Bradley is in a place where he cannot hurt any of our children." Biden said his "laser" focus on the case led him to seek re-election in November instead of the U.S. Senate seat his father, Joe Biden, left in 2009 to become vice president.

But the fact that Bradley allegedly attacked dozens of children during the year the case languished has infuriated some parents.

"It’s an absolute disgrace," said one mother who believes her daughter was abused in the late 1990s and expects her attack to be included in subsequent charges filed against Bradley. "You don’t keep exposing children to this predator while you are trying to build your case. But it seems like nothing was being done.."

Modica said investigators must be second-guessing themselves. "Somebody has got to be having trouble sleeping," he said, "knowing all those kids got abused."