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.
