Yang on his wife’s disclosure of sexual abuse: ‘I felt like I’d failed her’

Entrepreneur and presidential candidate Andrew Yang said Sunday that after he learned his wife Evelyn had been sexually assaulted by her doctor he “felt like I’d failed her.”

“It was extraordinarily painful, the fact is I was away many of the times she’d had these appointments, I felt like I’d failed her and it’s heartbreaking that this happened to Evelyn, it’s heartbreaking that it happened to anyone,” Yang told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

{mosads}“Evelyn’s story is not unique to her, we’ve had this outpouring of support and gratitude from many women who have been in similar situations,” Yang added.

“What we have to do as a country is acknowledge 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, we can do better than this as a country,” he said.

He added that the response to Evelyn Yang’s disclosure had made him believe such improvements were possible.

Evelyn Yang told CNN’s Dana Bash earlier this month that she was assaulted by Dr. Robert Hadden of Columbia University while pregnant with her first child. The assaults included subjecting her to medically unnecessary medical examinations, she said.

“I feel like I put up with some inappropriate behavior that I didn’t know at the time was straight-up sexual abuse slash sexual assault until much later,” she said.