USC failed to stop gynaecologist’s abuse, federal inquiry says

The University of Southern California repeatedly failed to protect thousands of its students from a campus gynaecologist who was sexually abusing them over three decades, a federal inquiry has concluded.

USC did not investigate or sanction the gynaecologist, George Tyndall, despite being warned about his behaviour by at least five patients between 2000 and 2009 and finding extensive photographic evidence in his office suggesting the abuse, the US Education Department said in a report.

The university withheld such information from the Education Department as late as 2018, even as the department was concluding a years-long probe of sexual discrimination violations at USC that avoided discovery of Dr Tyndall’s actions.

“This total and complete failure to protect students is heartbreaking and inexcusable,” the US secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, said in a statement announcing her department’s findings.

The case only became public following a 2018 investigation by the LA Times. The newspaper’s reporting helped spur nearly 400 complaints from women who saw Dr Tyndall during his employment at USC from 1989 to 2016. He was charged last year with sexually abusing 16 patients and has pleaded not guilty.

The scandal prompted the 2018 resignation of USC’s president, C.L. Max Nikias, and a class-action settlement this past week in which USC has agreed to pay $215 million (£170 million) to more than 18,000 women seen by Dr Tyndall.

Following its 21-month investigation, the Education Department added to those penalties by ordering USC to overhaul its methods of handling sexual harassment complaints and to accept three years of federal monitoring of those practices.

USC issued a statement affirming its intention to abide by the terms, which it reached in agreement with the Education Department. Many of the promised steps − including a commitment to establish independence for the USC office responsible for equal rights protections − are already under way, USC said.

Kenneth Marcus, the assistant US secretary of education for civil rights, said in a conference call with reporters that USC is among a number of universities where the institution’s legal counsel appeared to have posed a risk of interfering with offices charged with protecting students.

“The university is confronting its past and implementing changes necessary to inform its future,” the new USC president, Carol Folt, said in a statement, which did not offer any words of apology or regret for the alleged victims of Dr Tyndall.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com