Institution That Failed Massively Settles
MSU has decided to compensate its victims, and hopefully it will stop smearing them as well:
Michigan State University has settled hundreds of lawsuits filed against it by the survivors of MSU doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual assaults.
The settlement will cost the school $500 million. The school will pay $425 million now and hold $75 million in reserve in case other Nassar victims come forward.
MSU will now work on how it will pay the settlement, MSU spokeswoman Emily Guerrant told the Free Press.
Survivor attorney Jamie White said this is a chance for the women to begin to move forward.
“I don’t think they can ever be made whole, but this is a step in the right direction,” he said.
Reports of sexual misconduct by Dr. Larry Nassar reached at least 14 Michigan State University representatives in the two decades before his arrest, with no fewer than eight women reporting his actions, a Detroit News investigation has found.
Among those notified was MSU President Lou Anna Simon, who was informed in 2014 that a Title IX complaint and a police report had been filed against an unnamed physician, she told The News on Wednesday.
“I was informed that a sports medicine doctor was under investigation,” said Simon, who made the brief comments after appearing in court Wednesday to observe a sentencing hearing for Nassar. “I told people to play it straight up, and I did not receive a copy of the report. That’s the truth.”
Among the others who were aware of alleged abuse were athletic trainers, assistant coaches, a university police detective and an official who is now MSU’s assistant general counsel, according to university records and accounts of victims who spoke to The News.
Collectively, the accounts show MSU missed multiple opportunities over two decades to stop Nassar, a graduate of its osteopathic medical school who became a renowned doctor but went on to molest scores of girls and women under the guise of treating them for pain.
And while it would be nice to think that MSU and PSU extreme outliers, there are going to be more shoes dropping. For example:
For nearly 30 years, the University of Southern California’s student health clinic had one full-time gynecologist: Dr. George Tyndall. Tall and garrulous with distinctive jet black hair, he treated tens of thousands of female students, many of them teenagers seeing a gynecologist for the first time.
Few who lay down on Tyndall’s exam table at the Engemann Student Health Center knew that he had been accused repeatedly of misconduct toward young patients.
The complaints began in the 1990s, when co-workers alleged he was improperly photographing students’ genitals. In the years that followed, patients and nursing staff accused him again and again of “creepy” behavior, including touching women inappropriately during pelvic exams and making sexually suggestive remarks about their bodies.
In recent years, some colleagues feared that he was targeting the university’s growing population of Chinese students, who often had a limited understanding of the English language and American medical norms.
Still, Tyndall was allowed to continue practicing. It was not until 2016, when a frustrated nurse went to the campus rape crisis center, that he was suspended.
An internal USC investigation determined that Tyndall’s behavior during pelvic exams was outside the scope of current medical practice and amounted to sexual harassment of students. But in a secret deal last summer, top administrators allowed Tyndall to resign quietly with a financial payout.
The university did not inform Tyndall’s patients. Nor did USC report him at the time to the Medical Board of California, the agency responsible for protecting the public from problem doctors.
[…]
USC hired Tyndall in 1989 after his residency at Kaiser Permanente on Sunset Boulevard. He told people he had selected the job over higher paying opportunities in order to work with the bright, sophisticated women of what he often called “the Stanford of the South.” Even the license plate on his Acura declared his dedication to the job: it read COEDDOC, according to DMV records.
In the exam room, he was accompanied by a female nurse or medical assistant known as a chaperone — a practice embraced by many male gynecologists. In the years after he started, some chaperones became alarmed about the frequency with which he used a camera during pelvic exams, according to Tyndall and three colleagues with first-hand knowledge of the concerns.
One thing our overcompensated and underachieving elites are good at is looking the other way when exploitation of the vulnerable by the powerful is involved.