A Brooklyn hospital affected person has filed a lawsuit towards the house owners of Brookdale Hospital, alleging a male nurse drugged and molested her throughout an in a single day shift late final 12 months.
This isn’t the primary time the nurse has been accused of improper touching.
“I used to be assaulted,” mentioned the feminine affected person. “He groped my breasts. He groped my decrease physique. He caught his fingers elsewhere.”
NBC New York will not be figuring out the affected person due to the delicate nature of her allegations.
In response to her lawsuit, filed this week, the alleged sexual abuse occurred on the evening of December 5, 2025, whereas she was inside Brookdale Hospital receiving therapy for an autoimmune dysfunction. On that in a single day shift, the go well with says a nurse named Kuriakose Poulose administered an IV drug that bodily paralyzed the affected person.
“After injecting Plaintiff with the drug that triggered her to develop into incapacitated,” the lawsuit reads, “Defendant Poulose then started rubbing and fondling Plaintiff’s uncovered physique, together with her breasts and vagina, with ungloved arms.”
Poulose didn’t reply when the I-Workforce knocked on the door of his Lengthy Island residence. The I-Workforce was unable to achieve him by cellphone, and his lawyer didn’t return a request for remark.
Within the affected person’s medical chart, Poulose wrote that she’d develop into “verbally abusive,” and commenced “yelling, shouting, and loudly craving” increased doses of painkillers round 10 p.m., about an hour earlier than she alleged the sexual abuse occurred.”
However the lawsuit accuses Poulose of “backdating” that notation the next morning, an effort it says to discredit the affected person earlier than she was in a position to report the incident to police.
A spokesperson for One Brooklyn Well being, the proprietor of Brookdale Hospital, mentioned the hospital couldn’t touch upon the incident as a result of it concerned an open legal investigation.
In response to the NYPD, on the morning of December 6, 2025, a feminine affected person reported to a responding officer that she’d been sexually abused by a person contained in the hospital the prior evening round 11 p.m.
“NYPD investigators proceed to work with Brookdale Hospital concerning this incident,” a police spokesperson wrote to the I-Workforce, including that no arrests have been made.
Now, greater than seven months later, the Brooklyn affected person is suing the hospital, arguing it was negligent to offer Poulose entry to sufferers as a result of a search of his nursing file in neighboring New Jersey would have revealed he had been the topic of prior improper touching allegations there.
“He shouldn’t have any sort of license in any respect,” the lady mentioned. “He ought to by no means have gotten employed.”
In March of 2025, the NJ Board of Nursing reprimanded Poulose in a “Consent order of Self-discipline,” which concluded he dedicated skilled misconduct by failing to reveal three incidents through which he was accused of groping ladies in 2020 and 2021. Two of the improper touching allegations got here from sufferers; one got here from a co-worker. Poulose denied the allegations, however he was ordered to attend a monitoring program as a result of state coverage requires nurses to report incidents involving “boundary violations.”
Nicholas Liakas, the lawyer who represents the Brooklyn affected person, mentioned Brookdale Hospital ought to proactively notify all sufferers who’ve come into contact with Poulose, in mild of his file of allegations in two states.
“He’s had prior points properly up to now that they need to have identified about,” Liakas mentioned. “That’s why we need to get this story out, in order that different victims know that you just’re not simply hallucinating. You’re not dreaming. If this has occurred to you, in case you’re suspicious that this has occurred to you, you have to converse up.”
Directors for Brookdale Hospital declined to debate their background verify course of or whether or not the medical facility does periodic checks of NURSYS, a nationwide database that compiles disciplinary actions towards nurses in states throughout the nation.
As of June 25, 2026, Kuriakose Poulose’s New Jersey nursing license was listed as “inactive” with a file of Board Motion.
In the meantime, his New York State nursing license was listed as “lively” with “no enforcement actions.”
New York’s Division of Schooling Workplace of the Professions, which administers nursing licenses, mentioned state legislation prohibits the workplace from commenting on any particular allegation of misconduct. The workplace did affirm that regulators in Albany obtain notifications from NURSYS about licensees with out-of-state disciplinary findings. Nonetheless, critiques of these disciplinary actions usually happen throughout the re-registration course of.
Kuriakose Poulose’s New York nursing license is listed as registered by means of March 2028.
New York, in contrast to New Jersey and most different states, will not be a part of the Nursing License Compact (NLC), an inter-state settlement that promotes data sharing and permits a nurse licensed in a single member state to follow in different member states with out making use of for dozens of particular person licenses.
Daybreak Kappel, a spokesperson for the Nationwide Council of State Boards of Nursing, mentioned nursing licenses could be restricted based mostly on investigations that occurred in different states, even when the states don’t share membership within the NLC.
“A state Board of Nursing usually has the authority to take motion towards a licensee on the idea of one other state’s licensure disciplinary motion that implicates the person’s ongoing capability and chance to follow professionally and safely when that disciplined violation constitutes a violation in that state as properly,” Kappel wrote to the I-Workforce.
