US university to pay over $1 billion in gynecologist sex abuse settlement

LOS ANGELES - University of Southern California reached a $842.4 million settlement approved a Los Angeles court, lawyer Gloria Allred said in a statement, on top of $215 million agreed to in a 2018 federal class action case.

According to Allred, it is the "largest sexual abuse settlement against a university in US history."

George Tyndall has been accused of abuse by hundreds of female patients during medical examinations over the course of his 30-year career, in a major scandal that has engulfed the university.

Accusations against Tyndall, ranging from inappropriate touching to rape, date as far back as 1990. The youngest alleged victim was aged 17.

The doctor, now 74, has been accused of taking photos of patients' genitals, groping their breasts and making lewd remarks about their physiques, as well as racist and homophobic comments.

He allegedly targeted minority students -- including many from the university's large Asian student population.

Hundreds of former patients sued the university for failing to adequately respond to the allegations against Tyndall, claiming that the institution was aware of the doctor's actions but continued to allow him access to students.

Tyndall was not investigated by USC officials until 2016, and was allowed to retire under an amicable agreement with the university, the financial details of which have not been disclosed. 

USC reached an "agreement in principle" to pay $215 million in a federal class action case in 2018, but 702 more plaintiffs opted out of that settlement and sued in state court.

"The sheer size of this settlement is testimony to the enormous harm that the depraved action of George Tyndall caused our clients," said law firm Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, which represents 234 of the plaintiffs, in a statement. 

"It also speaks to the culpability of USC in employing Tyndall for 30 years and ignoring volumes of complaints and evidence of his misdeeds."

There was no immediate response from USC.

The university's president resigned in 2018 amid pressure from two hundred professors to step down over the scandal.

Los Angeles police opened their own investigation, and in 2019 the doctor was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual penetration and sexual battery by fraud against 16 young women.

He is awaiting trial and could face a sentence of up to 53 years in prison if convicted, the district attorney's office said. 

Tyndall has denied any wrongdoing, and said in a 2019 statement that he "remains adamant" he will be "totally exonerated."

Agence France-Presse

Donated heart survives helicopter crash in California

LOS ANGELES - Talk about a brave heart -- a donated heart was alive and pumping Monday after surviving the crash of the helicopter transporting the organ to a California hospital and then falling out of the hands of a medical worker who retrieved it.

Footage of the incident on Friday showed the aircraft lying on its side on the roof of the University of Southern California's Keck Hospital in east Los Angeles.

Video footage showed fire crews retrieving the organ and handing it over to a medical worker in hospital scrubs.

The worker then trips on a metal plate and falls over as another hospital employee rushes to pick up the precious package.

A hospital spokesperson told AFP that the organ was successfully transplanted on Friday, and the patient was doing well.

"The heart itself was fine after being dropped," the spokesperson said.

Officials said all three people on board the aircraft were doing well, although the pilot had suffered minor injuries.

The aircraft had flown from a hospital in southern California with the donor heart for a transplant and crashed for unknown reasons on the USC hospital helipad.

Agence France-Presse

Gynecologist charged with sex abuse at US university

LOS ANGELES - A former gynecologist at a top California university was arrested and charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting 16 young women during medical examinations, officials said.

George Tyndall has been accused of abuse by hundreds of female patients during his 30-year career, in a major scandal that has engulfed the University of Southern California.

The doctor was arrested outside his apartment by Los Angeles police Wednesday and charged with multiple counts of sexual penetration and sexual battery by fraud.

He could face a sentence of up to 53 years in prison if convicted, the district attorney's office said. 

Accusations against Tyndall, ranging from inappropriate touching to rape, date as far back as 1990, although the charges relate to incidents since 2009. The youngest alleged victim was aged 17.

The doctor, now 72, has been accused of taking photos of patients' genitals, groping their breasts and making lewd remarks about their physiques, as well as racist and homophobic comments.

He allegedly often targeted minority students -- including many from the university's large Asian student population -- who were not fluent in English or unfamiliar with gynecological exams.

He was not investigated by USC officials until 2016, and was allowed to retire under an amicable agreement with the university, the financial details of which have not been disclosed. 

The university's president resigned last year amid pressure from two hundred professors to step down over the scandal.

Los Angeles police opened their own investigation and have since been gathering evidence to present to prosecutors for criminal charges.

USC interim president Wanda Austin said Wednesday the university was cooperating with the police investigation.

"We hope this arrest will be a healing step for former patients and our entire university," she said.

Hundreds of former patients have also sued the university for failing to adequately respond to the allegations against Tyndall.

Last year, USC said it had reached an "agreement in principle" to pay $215 million in compensation.

Tyndall has denied any wrongdoing, and said in a statement through his lawyer Wednesday that he "remains adamant" he will be "totally exonerated."

"After a year of being tried in the press, Dr Tyndall looks forward to having his case adjudicated in a court of law where the truth will finally prevail," said attorney Andrew Flier.

USC has also been rocked in recent months by a wide-ranging college admissions bribery scandal.

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US college bribery scandal grates on those who missed the cut

The U.S. college bribery scandal has unleashed angst and fury among parents, students and admissions experts, as an unprecedented criminal investigation draws attention to the privileges afforded to wealthy Americans.

Hollywood actors and business executives are among 50 people charged with taking part in the largest college admissions scandal in U.S. history, which involved getting students into elite, highly selective universities by paying bribes and cheating the admissions process.

Ordinary Americans were not amused.

"I've worked my butt off for four years trying to make myself seem really presentable, studying two hours a week for the SAT (entrance exam) and getting all As in my classes," said Connor Finn, 18, a senior at John Marshall High school in Los Angeles. "And then the fact that people would just pay hundreds of thousands of dollars and without the hard work is really not rewarding at all," he said.

Finn's father, Michael, said the teenager applied to a dozen universities, including University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where the daughter of one couple charged in the scandal was enrolled. Connor is still waiting for a response, his father said.

Dan Raffety, a college counselor at the Elgin Academy prep school near Chicago, said he had a student with superb grades, perfect entrance exam scores and a resume full of extracurricular activities who was denied entry at Georgetown.

He said he was angered to think academically deserving students may have lost a spot to cheaters.

ACCESS TO POWER

Besides academic excellence, elite schools offer access for their graduates to a network of people in power.

"At some point this isn't really about education. This is about trying to get access," Rafferty said.

Many elite universities give preference to "legacy" applicants: the children of those who previously attended. In other cases, major financial gifts, including multimillion-dollar donations to construct buildings on campus, pave the way for the privileged. Both practices are legal.

The competition can be fierce and seem unfair even to people of privilege, however.

One wealthy Massachusetts parent said his son had excellent credentials but still was denied entry to Ivy League Brown University, even after the family spent thousands of dollars for a tutor to improve the boy's entrance exam scores.

Meanwhile, he said students whom he considered lesser academic talents gained an advantage by going to private prep schools, whose business model is to get students into elite universities.

"It's a booming business because parents are the ripest target in the world. They'll pay and do anything for their kids. And this (scandal) is an example of things gone awry," said the father, who asked to remain anonymous so he could speak freely.

His son chose to stay in public school and ended up at Tufts University, a highly rated school that nonetheless lacks Ivy League cachet.

LOOKING FOR DIVERSITY, TOO

The top universities have such an excess of qualified applicants they could limit their candidates to the best students with perfect entrance exam scores, admissions experts say.

They are also looking for diversity, accepting high achieving poor and minority students who cannot afford tutors and coaches.

"This scandal, most people would agree, is ridiculous," said Natasha Kumar Warikoo, a graduate professor of education at Harvard and author of "The Diversity Bargain," which examines how students at elite universities view affirmative action.

"But beyond that we don't have a consensus in the United States about what fair is," she added.

UCLA student Sandy Situ, 21, the daughter of immigrants, said the scandal had made her think about the uphill battle for those who are unable to attend the schools of their choice.

"I think about the resources that were taken away from them, the chances that they could have achieved something better, all the people who were turned away for people who could just pay their way in," Situ said. "What a sad moment this is for America." (Reporting by Daniel Trotta; additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis and Rollo Ross; editing by Bill Tarrant and Rosalba O'Brien)

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University of Southern California torn by scandal surrounding gynecologist

LOS ANGELES - Two-hundred faculty members of the University of Southern California on Tuesday called for the USC's top official to resign over the school's handling of complaints that a campus health clinic gynecologist sexually abused his patients during pelvic exams.

The demand for USC President C.L. Max Nikias to step down came in an open letter from professors to the school's Board of Trustees as USC faced a mounting tide of litigation accusing Dr. George Tyndall of misconduct and the university of complicity and negligence.

Tyndall resigned from the university last year after an internal inquiry found his pelvic examination practices were beyond accepted medical standards and that he had harassed patients.

More than 2,200 students, alumni and others at USC, one of the most prestigious private U.S. institutions of higher education, signed a separate online petition calling for Nikias' ouster as the campus reeled from its third major personnel scandal since last year.

The university has acknowledged failing to properly act on at least eight complaints made against Tyndall between 2000 and 2014. Several former patients have filed civil lawsuits in the past two days, and one new accusation lodged in a sworn declaration released on Tuesday dates back to 1991.

A hotline and special website that USC set up recently have received about 200 more reports from concerned patients, the university said.

The Chinese government last week voiced "deep concern" over reports that many of Tyndall's alleged victims were foreign students from China.

Tyndall, 71, could not be reached by Reuters for comment. However, in interviews with the Los Angeles Times he has denied wrongdoing and defended the efficacy of his medical exams.

NO ACTIVE CRIMINAL PROBE

The university recently brought the situation to the attention of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, which referred the matter on May 9 to the Los Angeles Police Department "to investigate potential criminal misconduct," a spokesman for the D.A. said in an email.

An LAPD spokesman, Tony Im, said on Tuesday police "have no active criminal investigation on this matter."

Responding to the faculty letter, USC Board of Trustees Chairman John Mork said in a statement that the board's executive committee had "full confidence" in Nikias.

Mork called the reports surrounding Tyndall "distressing."

Nikias acknowledged the "faculty's anger and frustration" in a statement on Tuesday, and said he was "committed to working with them" to implement a new action plan to address the crisis and to "change the culture."

Nikias came under fire last year over accusations of chronic drug abuse by a former USC medical school dean and allegations of sexual harassment by another medical school dean.

Those scandals were cited in both the faculty letter and the online petition as evidence of Nikias' failures as president.

"He has lost the moral authority to lead the university," the letter said. "The university administration's actions have been wrong at every turn."

The letter pointed to the fact, acknowledged by USC, that the university allowed Tyndall to quietly resign last year, following the inquiry, without reporting him to the state medical board.

The university said it initially declined to report Tyndall to the medical board because he stated his intention then to retire, but USC did report him after he sought reinstatement in March.

"In hindsight, we should have made this report eight months earlier when he separated from the university," Nikias said in a letter to the campus last week.

"It is true that our system failed, but it is important that you know that this claim of a cover-up is patently false," USC Provost Michael Quick said in a message posted on Monday.

Several accusers who alleged Tyndall molested them under the guise of medical treatment recounted a sense of something being wrong at the time but not fully comprehending the encounters as sexual abuse until reading about other allegations in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month.

One USC graduate identified only as Jane Doe alleged in a sworn declaration released by her attorney on Tuesday that Tyndall had taken pictures of her genitals with a camera during a pap smear appointment, then tried to deny it, in 1991.

Eight complaints reported in the early 2000s to a former health center director, who has since died, were never brought to light until they were uncovered during the course of an investigation the university opened in 2016.

That probe was launched, and Tyndall was suspended, after a staff member at the student health center came forward with reports that he had made sexually inappropriate comments to patients.

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