For nearly 30 years, there was only one full-time gynecologist on staff at the University of Southern California's student health clinic: Dr. George Tyndall, about whom there was a widespread understanding among staff and students that he sexualized his examinations, making overt sexual remarks to the teenagers under his care, fondling them, and waxing creepy about his predilection for Asian women.
The university received a steady stream of complaints about Tyndall's conduct starting in the 1990s, when students complained that he had made a habit of photographing their vulvas. The university allowed him to continue to practice for decades more, despite mounting complaints, until finally one of the clinic nurses reported Tyndall to the campus rape crisis center.
After determining that Tyndall had acted improperly, the university secretly paid him off and dismissed him. They never told the survivors of his abuse that he had been found to have transgressed.
Many of Tyndall's students were foreign and uncertain of US medical norms; the chaperones who reported his conduct said he was especially rapey with Chinese women. When the administration began to question Tyndall's conduct, he started handing letters of support to his patients after examinations, asking them to sign them and email them to the university, BCCing him so he'd know they complied.
Tyndall denies any wrongdoing. He is still licensed to practice medicine in California and told the LA Times he intends do continue seeing patients into his 80s.
The university has set up a hotline for Tyndall's former patients to report sexual assaults they experienced under his care.
One graduate, a 27-year-old woman who works in law enforcement, said she was 19 when she saw Tyndall for her first-ever gynecology appointment, where he instructed her to lie on the exam table. Tyndall, she said, told her he was going to put his fingers inside her so he could ensure the speculum would fit. He put one in, then a second. At one point, he remarked, "You'll be great at sex," she recalled.
As he put a third finger inside her, she said she locked eyes with the nurse in the room.
"She made eye contact with me, and looked at me remorsefully," she said. The nurse then turned away.
"I've seen plenty of gynecologists since him and no one has done it," said the woman, who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity.
After reading The Times' article, she said she called her boyfriend and cried.
A USC doctor was accused of bad behavior with young women for years. The university let him continue treating students [Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton and Paul Pringle/LA Times]
Former students recount decades of disturbing behavior by USC gynecologist [Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and Paul Pringle/LA Times]
(via Super Punch)
