A group of prominent Manhattan hospitals is accused of covering up a neurologist’s repeated sexual assaults and malpractice for more than a decade, according to a recent lawsuit.

The Manhattan Supreme Court suit filed last week names Beth Israel Medical Center, Mount Sinai Health System, Mount Sinai Beth Israel and the estate of Ricardo Cruciani — who practiced at the hospitals and killed himself on Rikers Island last summer after being convicted of raping and sexually assaulting six patients.

“He took a measured step each time he met with you forward, and broke down your barriers and groomed you until you were in this place where you were like ‘what just happened,'” said Terrie Phoenix, a former patient of Cruciani’s and one of the 19 plaintiffs in the suit.

“It was a grooming process and slowly, and you question yourself,” she told The Post on Tuesday.

“For a long time I thought I was alone, and that’s exactly the way he wanted you to feel.”

Phoenix claims she suffered “insidious” psychological and physical manipulation at the hands of Cruciani over a period of 17 years, after she began seeing him at Mount Sinai Beth Israel to treat severe pain incurred by a rare severe stroke in her 30s, according to the suit.

“My medications were in excess of $3,700 a month while I was his patient,” Phoenix said, adding she was recklessly prescribed a “cocktail of medications” that included fentanyl-based opioids, morphine, methadone and psychiatric medications.

While she was “very drugged and complaint” under the powerful influence of the mind-numbing narcotics, Phoenix said Cruciani began a pattern of sexual abuse that started with forcible touching and led to rape.

But Phoenix was far from alone in her horrific ordeal — and hospital administrators and staffers allowed the wide-ranging abuse to continue unchecked for years, the suit alleges.

“He over-prescribed pain medications to get them to a level where they couldn’t go anywhere else and they were beholden to come back to him,” said Jeffrey Fitz, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Phoenix and the 18 other plaintiffs.

“A lot of these women tried to go to another doctor. If you’re on an extremely high level of opioids and pain medications — they don’t want to touch you,” Fitz said.

According to the suit, plaintiff Hillary Tullin told Beth Israel Medical Center psychologist E. Alessandra Strada that Cruciani had initiated “sexual contact” by grabbing her face and sticking his “tongue down her throat” in 2005 and 2006.

But the shrink and the hospital made no report to any authorities about the misconduct, the lawsuit claims.

In 2007, one of Cruciani’s patients told a nurse and hospital administrator that the doctor groped her under a blanket — only to have a staff member ignore the complaint and tell her that they needed to “go help people who really need it,” the suit states.

Several years later, Cruciani’s direct supervisor at Beth Israel, Dr. Russell Portenoy, told one of Cruciani’s former nurse practitioners that the doctor “had an impulse control problem” when it came to people he was attracted too, according to the filing.

However Portenoy failed to alert any authorities about his concerns, even after learning that Cruciani had locked an exam room while with a patient, the lawsuit alleges.

Portenoy also allegedly ignored two complaints from patients that Cruciani was sexually inappropriate with them, according to the complaint.

In 2010 or 2011, a nurse at Beth Israel walked into an exam room to find that Cruciani’s “penis was exposed during one of his multiple assaults” of plaintiff Tanisha Johnson, but failed to alert authorities, the lawsuit states.

On Jan. 8, 2013, plaintiff Nella Vinci says Cruciani sexually assaulted her during an appointment at Beth Israel as her boyfriend sat in the reception area.

He alerted the doctor’s secretary Cynthia Rodriguez — who banged on the door and called out Cruciani and Vinci’s names, according to the suit.

About 10 or 15 minutes later, Vinci emerged looking “visibly upset.” Rodriguez did not alert state health officials of the incident, the suit alleges.

Later that year, another patient told Rodriguez she was the victim of inappropriate conduct, according to the filing.

“We know,” the nurse allegedly responded, adding “he’ll be gone soon” or “he’s about to leave,” the filing states.

Around the same time, another nurse indicated to a patient that she was aware Cruciani had been abusing her in a locked exam room, but failed to offer the woman any protection or tell officials, according to the suit.

Mount Sinai Beth Israel pain management physician Mila Mogilevsky also allegedly failed to alert authorities when a patient confided in her in 2014 that she was repeatedly sexually attacked by Cruciani — instead telling her friend, nurse practitioner Irina Shendrik, the lawsuit states.

Shendrik also allegedly sat on the information, and later warned another victim that Cruciani “can get very handsy, so watch yourself,” according to the complaint.

When contacted by The Post Tuesday, Shendrik said she had been told by Mogilevsky about an accusation against Cruciani, but said she believed it was unfounded, due to her history with the doctor.

She said she had referred a patient to Cruciani for ketamine treatment of depression but “flatly denied” that she warned her about sexual abuse.

“The picture that you are all trying to believe is that we all knew it [about the sex abuse]. We didn’t,” Shendrik said.

“Because if we did we would have intervened. What we knew about Cruciani was one thing — he was excessively prescribing opioids. We did not agree with his practice [of prescribing the drugs].”

Mogilevsky, Rodriquez, Portenoy and Strada could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Neither the Beth Israel hospital group nor the administrator for Cruciano’s estate responded to inquiries from The Post.

Five years before his Manhattan conviction on 12 counts, Cruciani pleaded guilty to seven sexual assault charges in Philadelphia.

He was facing up to 25 years to life in prison when he was found dead at Rikers on Aug. 15, 2022 — a week before his scheduled sentencing hearing.

When she learned of Cruciani’s jailhouse suicide, Phoenix had mixed feelings.

“I felt relieved on one hand that he could no longer hurt anyone or manipulate anyone but then I also felt extremely angry that he was such a coward that he wouldn’t face the justice he deserved,” she said.

“The only thing that gave me any sort of comfort was I knew he was going to face the ultimate judge.”

The divorced mother and lifelong New Yorker said she now lives in Florida, said she and came forward to prevent a similar evil from happening to her daughter.

“How dare you?” Phoenix said when asked what she would say to the alleged enablers.

“You go there to be healed, to be helped, assuming that these people are going to have your best interest in mind and you allow this to happen to me, to others,” she said, growing increasingly emotional.

“How dare you!”