This is one of those fraud stories that you just have to read to believe.
Intrepid Gizmodo reporter Jennings Brown exposed a well-known, highly sought after young man who claimed to be a doctor that researched taboo sex topics such as necrophilia and zoophilia as a fraud.
“Dr.” Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler has appeared as a sex expert on the pages of media outlets such as Playboy, the Huffington post, Women’s Health, and Bustle. He claimed to have an MD and PhD Harvard Medical School, that he was elected to the American Psychiatric Association, and that President Barack Obama gave him a “Gold Service Award for humanitarian work.”
Sendler has published multiple studies of dubious merit, including the not-safe-for-work “Similar mechanisms of traumatic rectal injuries in patients who had anal sex with animals to those who were butt-fisted by human sexual partners.”
Brown details Sendler’s interviews in various media outlets:
Huffington Post tapped Sendler’s expertise on millennials’ relationship with their parents. Insider used Sendler as a source for several articles, including “11 myths you should stop believing about sperm,” “12 G-spot myths you need to stop believing,” and“7 common infections that can be caused by sex.”
Sendler talked to Women’s Health about the “7 Ways To Make Missionary Position So Much Hotter” and the “12 Orgasms Every Woman Should Have.” He provided Men’s Health with his opinion on “how to treat male menopause” and “how barre can improve your sex life.”
But Sendler has no expertise on these subjects, and is not an actual doctor.
Harvard Medical School told Brown that Sendler was never a student nor did he receive a degree from the school. Harvard University said the same thing. A Harvard professor, whom Sendler claimed gushed to him about his accomplishments, told Brown that Sendler wasn’t his student and only worked in his lab in 2014, but talked more than he worked. Sendler uses a photo of himself and the rest of this professor’s lab as evidence of his “graduate studies” at Harvard.
Sendler also claimed to have started college at 16. While he did receive a Bachelor’s degree in independent studies at New York University, he started when he was 18, like almost everyone else.
Sendler claims to have “completed rigorous thesis research at the Institute of Cancer Genetics,” but he was merely a volunteer lab technician listed as one of many authors of a study from the lab. He claims to have been a thesis candidate at Columbia, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even a Columbia student.
He is now a Master of Liberal Arts degree candidate at the Harvard Extension School, a spokesperson told Brown.
As to his claims to be a member of various mental health organizations, Brown reports those are lies as well.
“A representative of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law told me Sendler was in their database as a student, but he is not listed as a member. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) could not share membership information and couldn’t tell me if he is in the database,” Brown wrote.
An APA representative told him he could be a member since he has an MD from Columbia and Harvard, but then said he couldn’t be a member when informed he had no such degrees, as his website claimed.
On to his “awards.” There is no such thing as a “Gold Service Award” from the U.S. president, which Sendler claims to have received.
Sendler also lists his employer as the Felnett Health Research Foundation, which seems to only exist in articles where Sendler is interviewed, according to Brown.
“When I asked him about this discrepancy, Sendler said Felnett is registered in Germany. I could not verify this and he would not show me proof—but regardless, it is not disclosed on his website. The address that he lists for the foundation belongs to a condominium in Staten Island, New York,” Brown wrote.
It also appears as though the names of staff members for Felnett are completely made up, except for one, who is Sendler’s mother.
When Brown asked Sendler about all these discrepancies, he claimed his publicist was responsible for the framing. But it looks like the man named as his publicist doesn’t exist.
Finally, despite claiming to see patients in New York, Sendler does not appear to be licensed to do so.
The harm of Sendler’s alleged fabulism is the marginalized groups he claims to champion. He has used harmful language when talking about suicides, though he claims to help suicidal people. He also smiled and treated one alleged patient’s suicide as a joke as he spoke to Brown.