May 23, 2024 • 34 mins
With the help of scores of survivors, the reporters uncover the grisly details of the doctor’s crimes, and of USC’s culture of coverups. The new leaders at the LA Times stand behind them all the way. The story is published, the outcry is everywhere, and this time, fallout is unavoidable. USC has to reckon with these revelations and take some action. It leads to a major shakeup at the top – though real accountability still seems out of reach.
A note: The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN), organizes the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline. The Hotline is a referral service for local rape crisis centers. To reach the hotline, call 1-800-656-4673, or access RAINN's online chat service.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Content warning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This episode features topics related to sexual assault and abuse.
For those in search of help, there are resources in
our show notes for today's episode.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We're always going to have predators, but it's the good
people who stand by and do nothing that allow them
to flourish, and that's certainly what happened here.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Audrey Nafsinger is a top sex crimes prosecutor for the
DA's office in Ventura County, California. But in nineteen ninety,
she was a twenty three year old law student at USC.
During a visit to the Student Health Center on campus,
Audrey was sexually assaulted by doctor George Tindall, a kyn
ofcologist who worked there and for more than twenty five years.
(00:44):
Tindall continued to pray on USC students while on the payroll.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm one of the first people that saw him. I'm
sure he perfected his craft over time, but I was
young and naive, and I trusted him.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's February twenty eighteen, six months since we published the
blockbuster story about Carmen Pulliafido, former dean of the Medical
School at USC. We're still deep into our reporting on
Pulliafido's involvement in the death of Dori Yoder's baby. When
reporter Harriet Ryan gets an anonymous tip urged her to
look into a quote creepy kinnecologist, Harriet and Matt Hamilton
(01:25):
start to dig.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
You're so like desperate for any kind of information. Everybody
had their own perspective, and usually at the end that
person would say, you should also talk to this other
woman or this other man, but don't tell them that
he talked to me.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Slowly, but surely, over months, we start to catch some breaks.
We speak the low level employees of the clinic who
decide to risk their jobs to give us a scrap
of information on Tyndall. We find survivors and ex staffers
who have spent years feeling guilty for not doing more.
We tracked down administrators who knew there were complaints about Tindall,
and we find the nurse who put everything on the
(02:06):
line to take Tyndall down. What we learned is horrific
and not just Tyndall's crimes. Again, like with Puliaffido, we
discover that USC just.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Let it happen.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This is Fallen Angels, Episode nine, The Golden Handshake. For
the next four months, we knock on doors and gather leads,
and we begin to see the patterns. Tindall clearly had
an mo one after another. Women share their stories with us,
and even though they span decades, a lot of the
(02:39):
details start to sound familiar.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
One of the key things is that he was making
the same comments to woman after women, which was he
was saying like, oh, you're so tight, you must be
a runner. And he was doing ungloved exams like he
was making the women who came in like have these
long discussions with him in his office with the door close.
A lot of them are like Asian international students. He
(03:02):
would like show them a picture of his young Asian wife,
and he had a map of China and to point
out where they were from.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Here's Audrey Nasseger again.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
He pulled out a camera and had me hold my
body parts in certain positions so he could take pictures
and dim the lights. I felt like I couldn't say no.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I think something that a lot of men don't understand
is that the whole thing is so mortifying for a
young woman that you could do almost anything during exam
and they would not complain, Like you could bring in
a giraffe in the middle, and then the the draft
could leave and they'd be like, oh, I guess that's
what happens during a gynocological exam. I just can't wait
(03:42):
until this is over, Like it's so cringey, the whole thing,
and especially when you're like a seventeen year old girl
and a much older man who's a medical professional.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
He said, I had a disease that no one's ever seen.
I think I was in my early twenties when I
saw him, but I believed him. I mean I took
him at his word as a doctor. He said he
could give me several treatments, or he could give me one,
but if we did one, it would be painful. And
I said, well, let's just do one. I mean, who
(04:13):
was to keep coming back over and over. I remember
him looking really unhappy that that was my decision, and
he tried to talk me out of that, and I
remember thinking, why are you trying to talk me out
of this? He used that ruse on a lot of women,
the exact same diagnosis on a lot of women, to
get them to keep coming back again and again.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Lucy g a USC grad student, since there was something
very wrong with the way Tindall was treating her, and
her suspicions were confirmed as soon as she was treated
by another doctor.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
I actually had a complication, and so Tindall told me
that he would have to send me to us TECH
USC's off campus hospital to see a gynocologist there. While
I was at the clinic there, gynecologists told me she
needed to retest me because sometimes they make mistakes. But
the on compas clinic and I asked the gynecologist at Tech,
(05:08):
I said, don't you need to relax my baginal muscles?
And she said, oh, we don't do that here, and
she was clearly taken aback.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
As Harriet begins looking into Tindall, she learns that he
had left USC in twenty sixteen, but still had his
medical license and he could still be out there of
treating patients. And Harriet's anonymous source tells her they're afraid
Tindall is trying to get his old job back at USC.
At first, we can't tell if the university pushed him
out because of the abuse, but then we find that
(05:41):
actually there have been formal complaints about Tyndall going back.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Decades before I saw him. Somebody had complained in writing,
and so they were molested and the university said, we'll
give you your money back for the exam.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
There had been a discussion of going to the police
within the clinic, keeping caught taking photographs of girls genitals
and like Henman Fire.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
After that, the more we learned, the more people are
willing to say. Harriet and Matt Hamilton had spoken to
a number of people who worked with Tyndall at the
Student Health Center, including a longtime nursing supervisor named Cindy Gilbert,
but she was hesitant at first to go on the record.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I remember talking to her early on, but she was
like very guarded. I mean, I think a lot of
times people want to see you work. They're like, are
you just gonna like make me do everything for you?
Are you're going to go out and work? And like,
we talked to her, she didn't want to be on
the record, and then we went out and worked, and
when we came back, you know, again we had a
lot more people, We had a lot more accounts.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Sidney Gilbert had worked at the Student Health Center for
many years. She was committed to USC, but she and
the other nurses had seen Tyndall's abuse go unchecked again
and again they were the ones trying to steer women
to other doctors and console his traumatized patients. She and
the other nurses had pleaded with doctor Larry Einstein, the
head of the health clinic, to take action, and Ninstein
(06:54):
had a very good idea what Tindall was doing.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
Here's Matt had heard from many people at the clinic
who were alarmed by his use of a camera to
photograph students' bodies or genitals in ways that seem to
deviate from standard medical practices, and at one point doctor
Tindall was barred from using this camera.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Ninstein had also heard graphic complaints from students about Tyndall's
deeply troubling behavior. He reprimanded Tyndall and ordered him to desist,
but Tindall was defiant. Feeling he was out of options,
Ninstein informed USC's vice president of student affairs.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
So there's an email from doctor Larry Ninsteen to his
boss Michael Jackson in two thousand and four, subject line
is confidential, and he says that he's quote increasingly concerned
about doctor Tindall, and at the end of his email
he says, I have not personally seen any threatening behavior
(07:57):
or violent behavior from doctor Tindall, but he says I
believe he was in an employment position before he went
into medical school. That quote included possessing a gun. So
he's suggesting that doctor Tyndall owns a firearm and that
somehow might factor into response from the university if they
(08:19):
were to question his conduct.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But the official response to Einstein's confidential report was to
do nothing, and Jackson is since denied he was ever
informed about Tyndall's abuse. In twenty ten, after yet another
student reported that Tyndall had abused her, Einstein informed a
lawyer in USC's Office of General Counsel. He also notified
(08:44):
the school's Title nine coordinator in the Office of Equity
and Diversity or OED, the General Counsel, and the OED
did nothing.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
I think the concerns of women, female employees and students
were not.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
Respected.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I think that their concerns should have set off and alarm.
I just don't think that their concerns were taken seriously.
And the other thing is just that I think us
he just has this like had this culture of like
no bad news, like nobody wants to hear any bad news.
Speaker 6 (09:13):
Just solve the.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Problem, whether or not us he wanted it. This was
bad news that wouldn't go away. Cindy and her colleagues
continue to pressure nine Steen to do more, and he
complained again to the OED.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
Doctor Ninsteen had reported that several staff and a student
had actually made allegations that doctor Tindall was making inappropriate comments,
and the complaint that came in was classified as harassment
along sexual and racial lines. He had apparently mentioned that
(09:46):
Mexicans are taking over and that prompted this big investigation.
Tindall himself was not interviewed, and less than two months
after this complaint reached OED, they closed it saying there
was insufficient evidence and basically kicked it back to doctor
Einstein to handle it. And it's clear that doctor Einstein
(10:09):
wanted to take further action, he was told he hadn't
reached the threshold reached fire Tindall, so he continued to
work at the clinic, but the concerns of nurses and
medical staff just continued to intensify and a lot of
this came to a head in June twenty.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Sixteen, Cindy could not take it anymore. She was done
with trying to solve this with HR bureaucratic divisions and
finally reported Tindall to the director of USC's Great Crisis Center.
And that's right at this time that Tyndall took a vacation, there.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
Was a fruitfly infestation in the student health clinic. So
there was a swarm of insects. No one really knew
where it was coming from, and it leads Cindy Guilt
and a colleague to doctor Tyndall's office. They unlocked the door.
They eventually find rocken fruit and food under Tyndall's desk.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
With Tindall out of the office, Cindy and her colleague
could look around. The place was filthy, covered in trash,
dirty needles, decaying fruit.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
But that wasn't the worst of it. While they're looking
for other.
Speaker 6 (11:25):
Sources of rotten food in his office, they find a
box of images of patients genitals. They were from nineteen
ninety one nineteen ninety two. There was identifying information of
some patients on them. There was no reason for him
to have this stack of patient images just sitting in
(11:49):
his office.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
These images were impossible to ignore.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
US's administration now had no choice but to finally deal
with Cindy's repeated complaints about sexual assaults.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
They called doctor Tyndall. He's basically banned from campus on
some sort of paid leave, and they initiated this investigation
into doctor Tyndall.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
The investigators uncovered more than enough evidence to fire Tyndall,
report him to the Medical Board and to the police,
but instead USC allowed Tyndall to challenge the findings in
an appeal.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
The school kept.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Him on the payroll through twenty seventeen while they worked
out an agreement. Tyndall finally chose to resign in return
for a secret payoff of two hundred thousand dollars. He
retained his medical license, and the administration would keep everything
under wraps from the staffers who had complained, from the authorities,
and from Tyndall's many victims.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Here's Audrey.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
The lace they had to go to to finally get
him fired was pretty extraordinary. The fact that other employees,
primarily female nurses, have been trying to get him to stack.
USC had more than enough notice and didn't care at all.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
But now USC is starting to care. The administration learns
of our investigation and a few things happen, they changed
course and decide they will report Tyndall to the Medical
Board eight months after he's been allowed to resign. Another
three months go by before they finally notify the police
after they learned our reporting is focused on allegations of
(13:25):
sexual assault. As USC starts to think about damage control,
we're preparing to publish, and the atmosphere at the La
Times is totally different.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Under interim Editor in chief Jim Kirk, he.
Speaker 7 (13:38):
Was cracking the whip. He wanted us to be digging
in to find out what USC's role was, what USC knew,
what USC did or didn't do about George Tindall.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Jack Leonard is one of our editors on the new story.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
You had top editors who trusted the reporting, They trusted
the editing, and they were not afraid to go with
a big, blockbuster story when they had one.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Just like with Puliafido, there's still one more step we
need to take. We have to at least try to
interview Tyndall, give him a chance to respond to these allegations.
But unlike Pulliarfido, Tindall actually agrees. In the spring of
(14:29):
twenty eighteen, Matt and Harry had sit down with doctor
George Tyndall.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
When we went out to his apartment building, it was
like he lived there, but his name wasn't on the buzzer.
You couldn't buzz his name, and like we asked like
the like the super and the Scuper's like, yeah, he
lives here. He doesn't want anyone visiting him. And so
I wait a few minutes and I called his house phone.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Left a message and he didn't pick up.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
But then when I got back to the office, got
a call from him and he was like, I'm concerned
about the message you left. You said there's allegations against me,
and I was like, yeah, there are, and he was like,
I think we should meet. He wanted to meet at
the park near his house, the bottom of the street,
so Matt no one out there. We met with him.
I did not want to talk on the record at
(15:13):
that time, but we set up another meeting shortly thereafter,
and from then on he was on the record.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
He eventually shows up and shakes our hand. He's really tall,
like I think, well over six feet, and I just
remember shaking his hand and thinking it was really big,
like it was it was a big hand. We've talked
to everyone who's worked around him, so we've heard everything.
(15:38):
Like people think he's just just has very poor hygiene.
They talk about like his shirts and he used incratic
habits and he's did smell a little bit. He wore
sunglasses and like a he wore a Barrong shirt, which
is like a Filipino dress shirt.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
We spent ten hours with him and he doesn't dispute
a lot of the things. It's just like a matter
of interpretation. He thinks he's like an excellent kindecologist. And
there are a lot of like weird moments during that
interview where Matt Hamilton bought a textbook. He was always
referring to this one textbook that he used, got incological textbook.
Matt Hamilton bought it on an Amazon so it talks
(16:19):
about how to do a regular exam.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
And we bought it to the park.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
And he's like, see and he's like going through all
the steps that you're supposed to do it a regular
guy incological exam.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
He went through and he highlighted everything he did line
by line. But you know, by the time it came
to actual contact with women's genitalia physically, Jenny closed the
book and what she described in terms of using his fingers,
it was not at the textbook and that was a
(16:50):
very big turning point, I think for Harriet and for myself,
because it's like kind of a real life example of
how he had convinced himself that what he was doing
was appropriate.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
And then we started confronting him with things that, you know,
eyewitnesses had said, and he was sitting right next to me,
and I was just like, doctor Tundele, do you understand
that people are accusing you of sexually assaulting young women
for decades?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
He had made a lot of arguments.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
At that point, and we had moved past them, and
I think when I just said it like that, he
finally got that we were not going to be talked
into adopting his point of view on his medical practice.
And he got this like far away stair and they
just stood up and he walked away and we never
(17:43):
heard from him again.
Speaker 8 (17:46):
Use this moment to encourage you, to embolden you, and
to literally push you into the rising of your life.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
May eleventh, eighteen, Oprah Winfrey is delivering an inspiring commencement
speech to the graduates of USC's Journalism School. At that
same moment, Matt and Harriet are sitting with three top
USC administrators.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
It's commencement day, it's swarming with people. There's just like families,
and everyone's in a joyous mood. And I remember, like
Harry and I going to this office on the edge
of campus. They had known for a long time that
we had been recruiting on doctor Tangel and asking questions,
So scheduling the sit down interview on commencement day at
(18:34):
least had the effect, whether intended or not, to guarantee
that any story wouldn't come out until after all the
festivities surrounding graduation wouldn't at least be marred by any
sort of story that put the university into bad light.
(18:55):
They had an hour set aside for the meeting. This
was a big story covering, you know, wide range of time.
When you consider that we had had hours to sit
with doctor Tindall but only an hour with USC. We
planned to move efficiently through the questions, and USC's administrators
began off by giving these like detailed bios of themselves
(19:17):
that last like twenty minutes. I mean, we're trying to
be friendly and just kind of take it in, but
you know, at a certain point it was like, I
don't need to know your resume, And because it was
just this, it seemed like they were a filibus train,
and so we immediately are like, okay, we haven't at
this point forty minutes or so, we have to move
(19:38):
into questions, and we start going.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Over what they sent.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
Us in their responses, trying to drill down. I remember
having whiplash after going through that interview and kind of
debating the finer points of doctor Tindall's conduct with students
and what us he knew, and why they fired him,
and why they paid him money, and why they didn't
report him to the Medical Board, and then walking out
(20:05):
of that interview and you see students beaming with their
parents and they're wearing the tops and gowns and taking
photos and selvies.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Four days after Harriet Matt's meeting, US issues a statement
to the paper. The school claims it did not violate
a California statute requiring hospitals and clinics to report problem
doctors to the Medical Board because US was quote a
school and not a hospital or clinic. With our story
just about to publish, Nikias tries to get ahead of it.
(20:37):
He emails the entire university, disclosing the allegations against Tyndall
and apologizing to quote any student who may have visited
the Student Health Center and did not receive the respectful
care each individual deserves.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But it's too late. We published four hours later.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Like our story on Puliofido, the news about Tindall explodes
across the country.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
The doctor was suspended by USC two years ago, news
of that wasn't made public until today.
Speaker 9 (21:05):
In fact, nothing pertaining to this doctor was made public
until today.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
CBS News isn't buying the timing of Nikias's letter either.
For survivors like Lucy ch it's a surreal experience. Suddenly
the full extent of Tyndall's crimes are visible, and she
can see them for.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
What they are.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
The only time I actually realized there was something wrong
was after Billy Times article came out and I ended
up calling some lawyers and one of my lawyers told me,
what you just described that sexual assault. It really shocked me.
It really shocked me. Like I had been talking to
multiple lawyers and no one said that flat out to me,
(21:45):
and it just blew me away. I was like, oh
my god, that really happened.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Now that the story is out there, USC looks for
any way to dodge accountability. The administration blames Ninsteen, the
head of the student Health Center who died before Tyndall
was suspended in twenty seventeen. USC says nothing about Ninstein's
multiple complaints to the oed to the General Council, the
title nine coordinator and hr all, of which were dismissed
(22:13):
or ignored. Here's Adry Nassinger again, So to.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Cover up by people at higher levels that just do
not care. I initially felt a sense of responsibility. Wow,
if I had spoken out all those years ago, maybe
I could have stopped those generations and women after me.
But the more reporting that came out and the more
I read, it was very obvious that they had plenty
(22:37):
of notice and think here didn't matter to them at all.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Six former students and patients join in a lawsuit against
Tyndall and also file suit against USC for failing to
fire him within a month. There are fifty two women involved.
ABC's David Muir covers the fast moving story on World
News Tonight.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
They claim it went on for years and that the
university failed to respond to complaints. Tonight, there have now
been hundreds of calls to a hotline that's been set up.
Speaker 6 (23:08):
David I spoke with a lawyer who said today he
talked to thirty six other women who say they were
also assaulted by doctor Tindall, and he expects that number to.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Grow more and more women come forward to the La
Times with their stories of abuse, the LAPD opens what
will become one of the city's biggest sexual abuse investigations ever.
Speaker 10 (23:29):
Currently, Artie Texas had the names of fifty two former
patients who have alleged inappropriate conduct by doctor Tyndall while
he worked as a guidecologist at the University of Southern California.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
The time frame of.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
This Nikyas tries to return to the Puliafeidal playbook. He
deflects blame, says he knew nothing about Tyndall and issues
of vague apology. But this time the drum beat is
just too loud, and the faculty at USC they decide
they've had enough.
Speaker 11 (24:01):
Puliaffido was shocking and disturbing and deeply problematic.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Doctor Jane John is a professor of political science and
international relations at USC, as well as gender and sexuality studies.
Speaker 11 (24:15):
We didn't actually know all of it until much later,
because much of it had been attempted to be covered
up by the university, and I believed to some degree
participation of the Pasadena Police.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Doctor Ariela Gross was a professor of law and history
at USC for twenty seven years.
Speaker 12 (24:32):
It wasn't until that Puliaffido story was broken in the
La Times that we started to really pay attention. And
I remember conversations with colleagues from the law school when
the Puliaffido story came out about Wow, this is really bad.
(24:54):
I remember firing off a letter to the president of
the Academic Senate saying, isn't the faculty going to do
something thing? Say something, and them saying, look, there's an
investigation happening. Let's wait for the investigation. When the Tendall
story broke, that's when we were like, okay, that is
(25:14):
the last straw. We should not have been silent a
year ago, and we're not going to be silent now.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
For doctor John, there was a feeling among the faculty
that they owed this to the students.
Speaker 11 (25:26):
You feel, if not like complicit in it, you do
feel like a bit of a bystander. We couldn't protect them,
we couldn't do anything to help them. We hadn't done anything,
which is why we decided to do something they never
told us anything. They issued a few letters which were
frankly bs, a lot of denials like, oh man, we
(25:48):
didn't know, Like nobody believes that. So we formed a
group maybe fifty of us at the beginning, and we
were all tenured full professors.
Speaker 12 (25:57):
We had decided that we would go public once we
had two hundred. We were having trouble figuring out, because
it's such a secretive board, how to send it to
the board. And then finally somebody said to me, just
email it to the president's office. Even though it'll say
to the chairman of the Board of trustees, c see
(26:18):
the President's office. Don't worry.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
They'll get it.
Speaker 8 (26:22):
You know, immediately.
Speaker 12 (26:23):
And the letter called for President Nikias to step down.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Doctor Gross goes on national TV on NBC's The Today
Show to make their case.
Speaker 13 (26:34):
According to The La Times, Tyndall was quietly paid off
to leave the school last year. President Nikias says he
understands the faculty's anger and frustration, but the university's board
of trustees says it has full confidence in his leadership.
Speaker 12 (26:50):
That I think really freaked the board out because they
were like, uh, oh, now this is really a national story.
And the academic seen, which had absolutely ignored us before this,
said oh, I guess we need to call a public meeting,
and that was held the following day, on a Wednesday.
Speaker 11 (27:14):
I actually worried that no one would come, because usually
when there's some kind of a scandal or something negative,
the faculty just go quiet, and we go quiet, because faculty,
I've been punished for speaking out. You're sort of frozen out.
It's a little bit putinesque, if you ask me. And
when we got there, you could barely find a sea
(27:35):
if the room was packed. And we were calling the
man to be accountable, and we wanted him to take
responsibility and to say they would fix it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
US's powerful secretive board has been standing behind a KIAS
led by billionaire developer Rick Caruso, the board chair. They
decide that for the good of the school, they need
to make a change. Gruso calls on leaders among the
faculty to meet with the kias and reinforce this position.
Doctor William Tierney, USC's professor emeritus, remembers the meeting.
Speaker 9 (28:10):
Max's kind of sober. I always remember reading that when
it was over with Nixon, I think it was Everett Dirkson,
a minority Centator went to the White House and he said, Dick,
it's over. And that's the way I felt with us
is we weren't angry, but we needed him to see
(28:33):
it was over.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
On May twenty eighteen, Max Nikias resigns as president of USC.
The Today Show covers this development on the board's change
of heart.
Speaker 9 (28:46):
Breaking overnight a bombshell announcement at the University of Southern California,
President C. L.
Speaker 13 (28:51):
Max Nikias agreeing to step down in the wake of
a scandal.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
But this isn't about face from the university's board of trustees.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
But as doctor two he might have predicted, Max Nikias
does not simply walk away. As Nikias knows, probably better
than anyone us, he likes to solve its problems with money.
Speaker 9 (29:11):
He talked with his lawyer and he gets a seven
million dollar buyout that the board provides him. The board
at that time is really at loggerheads with one another,
and there are some who want him to return, you know,
like he was on leave for the summer and he's
going to come back in September. It was crazy, and
(29:34):
he's still living in the president's house. How awkward is
all this?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
You know, when Moord gets out about this most recent backsliding,
six hundred and seventy faculty members sign a petition demanding
the board make sure Nikias is gone by the fall semester.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
It was conveyed to Max. If he did not resign
by whatever it was, August fifteenth or something, all holy
hell would break close. Faculty would teach, I mean, it
would have been nutty. So he did, but I mean
seven million dollars.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Really, the board still keeps Nikias on the faculty in
the School of Engineering. It awards him the title of
President Emeritus and names him to a prestigious position as
a life trustee. It's a golden parachute, and for those
like doctor Jane John, USC's response is not enough.
Speaker 11 (30:28):
We did not receive representation on the Board of Trustees.
They promised to do an investigation, they told us it
was underway, and then it was revealed last year that
no investigation had taken place.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
There's no report.
Speaker 12 (30:42):
USC was not the only university to have a doctor
who preyed on women's.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Students, doctor Ariella Gross.
Speaker 12 (30:52):
Unfortunately, that's happened at a number of major universities, but
USC as the word in terms of its cover up,
its secrecy, it's golden handshakes for wrongdoers, and its refusal
to truly investigate and figure out what went wrong and
(31:13):
how to avoid doing it again. None of that.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
On June twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, Tindall is arrested by
the LAPD. Almost two years later, USC settles a class
action lawsuit with over seven hundred plaintiffs, generations of young
USC women who have been abused by Tyndall. The payout
is eight hundred and fifty two million dollars, and that's
on top of more than two hundred and fifteen million
(31:40):
US already had agreed to pay other groups of Tyndall's accusers.
In the end, doctor George Tindall costs USC one point
one billion dollars. It's the largest sexual abuse settlement in
the history of American higher education.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
But it's not enough.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
Honestly, I remember feeling really disappointed because I was convinced
that I wasn't just fighting for a restitution, and I
was convinced I was fighting for somewhat at USC to
be held accountable because I didn't want this to happen
again to anyone else in any other university of your
hospital and I remember when the settlement came out, I thought,
(32:22):
I hope this isn't it. I hope this isn't the end.
I hope there's actually a sense of justice.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
As a prosecutor, Audrey knows the settlement settles nothing.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
I'm not done because only Tyndall has been investigated, and
that's not enough. It's not about the money, it's about accountability.
Who signed the two hundred thousand dollars check to Tindall
to make him go away quietly? Somebody on the board
had to know that. I mean, they don't just sign
two hundred thousand dollars checks every day. And it's just
(32:55):
like USC to buy their way out of a problem,
and nobody to be held to account other than Tindall,
who's still sitting at home right now as we as we.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Record this, Tindall's no longer sitting at home, and we'll
get into that in our next episode. But accountability, that's
another question entirely. That's coming up on the season finale
of Fallen Angels. Fallen Angels, a Story of California Corruption
(33:24):
is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with Best
Case Studios. I'm Paul Pringle, This show is based on
my book Bad City, Peril and Power in the City
of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinks,
and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is our producer, Brent Katz
is co producer. Associate producers are Hanna Leebowitz Lockhart and
(33:48):
On Pajo lock Executive producers are Me, Paul Pringle, Joe Picorello,
and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Original music is by James Newberry.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller with assistants
from Nisha Venkat. Additional editings, sound design and additional music
by Dean White, Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and
Adam Olmarik are consulting producers. Our iHeart team is Ali
Perry and Carl Catle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever
(34:19):
you get your podcasts
Content warning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This episode features topics related to sexual assault and abuse.
For those in search of help, there are resources in
our show notes for today's episode.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We're always going to have predators, but it's the good
people who stand by and do nothing that allow them
to flourish, and that's certainly what happened here.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Audrey Nafsinger is a top sex crimes prosecutor for the
DA's office in Ventura County, California. But in nineteen ninety,
she was a twenty three year old law student at USC.
During a visit to the Student Health Center on campus,
Audrey was sexually assaulted by doctor George Tindall, a kyn
ofcologist who worked there and for more than twenty five years.
(00:44):
Tindall continued to pray on USC students while on the payroll.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm one of the first people that saw him. I'm
sure he perfected his craft over time, but I was
young and naive, and I trusted him.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's February twenty eighteen, six months since we published the
blockbuster story about Carmen Pulliafido, former dean of the Medical
School at USC. We're still deep into our reporting on
Pulliafido's involvement in the death of Dori Yoder's baby. When
reporter Harriet Ryan gets an anonymous tip urged her to
look into a quote creepy kinnecologist, Harriet and Matt Hamilton
(01:25):
start to dig.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
You're so like desperate for any kind of information. Everybody
had their own perspective, and usually at the end that
person would say, you should also talk to this other
woman or this other man, but don't tell them that
he talked to me.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Slowly, but surely, over months, we start to catch some breaks.
We speak the low level employees of the clinic who
decide to risk their jobs to give us a scrap
of information on Tyndall. We find survivors and ex staffers
who have spent years feeling guilty for not doing more.
We tracked down administrators who knew there were complaints about Tindall,
and we find the nurse who put everything on the
(02:06):
line to take Tyndall down. What we learned is horrific
and not just Tyndall's crimes. Again, like with Puliaffido, we
discover that USC just.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Let it happen.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This is Fallen Angels, Episode nine, The Golden Handshake. For
the next four months, we knock on doors and gather leads,
and we begin to see the patterns. Tindall clearly had
an mo one after another. Women share their stories with us,
and even though they span decades, a lot of the
(02:39):
details start to sound familiar.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
One of the key things is that he was making
the same comments to woman after women, which was he
was saying like, oh, you're so tight, you must be
a runner. And he was doing ungloved exams like he
was making the women who came in like have these
long discussions with him in his office with the door close.
A lot of them are like Asian international students. He
(03:02):
would like show them a picture of his young Asian wife,
and he had a map of China and to point
out where they were from.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Here's Audrey Nasseger again.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
He pulled out a camera and had me hold my
body parts in certain positions so he could take pictures
and dim the lights. I felt like I couldn't say no.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I think something that a lot of men don't understand
is that the whole thing is so mortifying for a
young woman that you could do almost anything during exam
and they would not complain, Like you could bring in
a giraffe in the middle, and then the the draft
could leave and they'd be like, oh, I guess that's
what happens during a gynocological exam. I just can't wait
(03:42):
until this is over, Like it's so cringey, the whole thing,
and especially when you're like a seventeen year old girl
and a much older man who's a medical professional.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
He said, I had a disease that no one's ever seen.
I think I was in my early twenties when I
saw him, but I believed him. I mean I took
him at his word as a doctor. He said he
could give me several treatments, or he could give me one,
but if we did one, it would be painful. And
I said, well, let's just do one. I mean, who
(04:13):
was to keep coming back over and over. I remember
him looking really unhappy that that was my decision, and
he tried to talk me out of that, and I
remember thinking, why are you trying to talk me out
of this? He used that ruse on a lot of women,
the exact same diagnosis on a lot of women, to
get them to keep coming back again and again.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Lucy g a USC grad student, since there was something
very wrong with the way Tindall was treating her, and
her suspicions were confirmed as soon as she was treated
by another doctor.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
I actually had a complication, and so Tindall told me
that he would have to send me to us TECH
USC's off campus hospital to see a gynocologist there. While
I was at the clinic there, gynecologists told me she
needed to retest me because sometimes they make mistakes. But
the on compas clinic and I asked the gynecologist at Tech,
(05:08):
I said, don't you need to relax my baginal muscles?
And she said, oh, we don't do that here, and
she was clearly taken aback.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
As Harriet begins looking into Tindall, she learns that he
had left USC in twenty sixteen, but still had his
medical license and he could still be out there of
treating patients. And Harriet's anonymous source tells her they're afraid
Tindall is trying to get his old job back at USC.
At first, we can't tell if the university pushed him
out because of the abuse, but then we find that
(05:41):
actually there have been formal complaints about Tyndall going back.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Decades before I saw him. Somebody had complained in writing,
and so they were molested and the university said, we'll
give you your money back for the exam.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
There had been a discussion of going to the police
within the clinic, keeping caught taking photographs of girls genitals
and like Henman Fire.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
After that, the more we learned, the more people are
willing to say. Harriet and Matt Hamilton had spoken to
a number of people who worked with Tyndall at the
Student Health Center, including a longtime nursing supervisor named Cindy Gilbert,
but she was hesitant at first to go on the record.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I remember talking to her early on, but she was
like very guarded. I mean, I think a lot of
times people want to see you work. They're like, are
you just gonna like make me do everything for you?
Are you're going to go out and work? And like,
we talked to her, she didn't want to be on
the record, and then we went out and worked, and
when we came back, you know, again we had a
lot more people, We had a lot more accounts.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Sidney Gilbert had worked at the Student Health Center for
many years. She was committed to USC, but she and
the other nurses had seen Tyndall's abuse go unchecked again
and again they were the ones trying to steer women
to other doctors and console his traumatized patients. She and
the other nurses had pleaded with doctor Larry Einstein, the
head of the health clinic, to take action, and Ninstein
(06:54):
had a very good idea what Tindall was doing.
Speaker 6 (06:57):
Here's Matt had heard from many people at the clinic
who were alarmed by his use of a camera to
photograph students' bodies or genitals in ways that seem to
deviate from standard medical practices, and at one point doctor
Tindall was barred from using this camera.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Ninstein had also heard graphic complaints from students about Tyndall's
deeply troubling behavior. He reprimanded Tyndall and ordered him to desist,
but Tindall was defiant. Feeling he was out of options,
Ninstein informed USC's vice president of student affairs.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
So there's an email from doctor Larry Ninsteen to his
boss Michael Jackson in two thousand and four, subject line
is confidential, and he says that he's quote increasingly concerned
about doctor Tindall, and at the end of his email
he says, I have not personally seen any threatening behavior
(07:57):
or violent behavior from doctor Tindall, but he says I
believe he was in an employment position before he went
into medical school. That quote included possessing a gun. So
he's suggesting that doctor Tyndall owns a firearm and that
somehow might factor into response from the university if they
(08:19):
were to question his conduct.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But the official response to Einstein's confidential report was to
do nothing, and Jackson is since denied he was ever
informed about Tyndall's abuse. In twenty ten, after yet another
student reported that Tyndall had abused her, Einstein informed a
lawyer in USC's Office of General Counsel. He also notified
(08:44):
the school's Title nine coordinator in the Office of Equity
and Diversity or OED, the General Counsel, and the OED
did nothing.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
I think the concerns of women, female employees and students
were not.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
Respected.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I think that their concerns should have set off and alarm.
I just don't think that their concerns were taken seriously.
And the other thing is just that I think us
he just has this like had this culture of like
no bad news, like nobody wants to hear any bad news.
Speaker 6 (09:13):
Just solve the.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Problem, whether or not us he wanted it. This was
bad news that wouldn't go away. Cindy and her colleagues
continue to pressure nine Steen to do more, and he
complained again to the OED.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
Doctor Ninsteen had reported that several staff and a student
had actually made allegations that doctor Tindall was making inappropriate comments,
and the complaint that came in was classified as harassment
along sexual and racial lines. He had apparently mentioned that
(09:46):
Mexicans are taking over and that prompted this big investigation.
Tindall himself was not interviewed, and less than two months
after this complaint reached OED, they closed it saying there
was insufficient evidence and basically kicked it back to doctor
Einstein to handle it. And it's clear that doctor Einstein
(10:09):
wanted to take further action, he was told he hadn't
reached the threshold reached fire Tindall, so he continued to
work at the clinic, but the concerns of nurses and
medical staff just continued to intensify and a lot of
this came to a head in June twenty.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Sixteen, Cindy could not take it anymore. She was done
with trying to solve this with HR bureaucratic divisions and
finally reported Tindall to the director of USC's Great Crisis Center.
And that's right at this time that Tyndall took a vacation, there.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
Was a fruitfly infestation in the student health clinic. So
there was a swarm of insects. No one really knew
where it was coming from, and it leads Cindy Guilt
and a colleague to doctor Tyndall's office. They unlocked the door.
They eventually find rocken fruit and food under Tyndall's desk.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
With Tindall out of the office, Cindy and her colleague
could look around. The place was filthy, covered in trash,
dirty needles, decaying fruit.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
But that wasn't the worst of it. While they're looking
for other.
Speaker 6 (11:25):
Sources of rotten food in his office, they find a
box of images of patients genitals. They were from nineteen
ninety one nineteen ninety two. There was identifying information of
some patients on them. There was no reason for him
to have this stack of patient images just sitting in
(11:49):
his office.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
These images were impossible to ignore.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
US's administration now had no choice but to finally deal
with Cindy's repeated complaints about sexual assaults.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
They called doctor Tyndall. He's basically banned from campus on
some sort of paid leave, and they initiated this investigation
into doctor Tyndall.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
The investigators uncovered more than enough evidence to fire Tyndall,
report him to the Medical Board and to the police,
but instead USC allowed Tyndall to challenge the findings in
an appeal.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
The school kept.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Him on the payroll through twenty seventeen while they worked
out an agreement. Tyndall finally chose to resign in return
for a secret payoff of two hundred thousand dollars. He
retained his medical license, and the administration would keep everything
under wraps from the staffers who had complained, from the authorities,
and from Tyndall's many victims.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Here's Audrey.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
The lace they had to go to to finally get
him fired was pretty extraordinary. The fact that other employees,
primarily female nurses, have been trying to get him to stack.
USC had more than enough notice and didn't care at all.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
But now USC is starting to care. The administration learns
of our investigation and a few things happen, they changed
course and decide they will report Tyndall to the Medical
Board eight months after he's been allowed to resign. Another
three months go by before they finally notify the police
after they learned our reporting is focused on allegations of
(13:25):
sexual assault. As USC starts to think about damage control,
we're preparing to publish, and the atmosphere at the La
Times is totally different.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Under interim Editor in chief Jim Kirk, he.
Speaker 7 (13:38):
Was cracking the whip. He wanted us to be digging
in to find out what USC's role was, what USC knew,
what USC did or didn't do about George Tindall.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Jack Leonard is one of our editors on the new story.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
You had top editors who trusted the reporting, They trusted
the editing, and they were not afraid to go with
a big, blockbuster story when they had one.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Just like with Puliafido, there's still one more step we
need to take. We have to at least try to
interview Tyndall, give him a chance to respond to these allegations.
But unlike Pulliarfido, Tindall actually agrees. In the spring of
(14:29):
twenty eighteen, Matt and Harry had sit down with doctor
George Tyndall.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
When we went out to his apartment building, it was
like he lived there, but his name wasn't on the buzzer.
You couldn't buzz his name, and like we asked like
the like the super and the Scuper's like, yeah, he
lives here. He doesn't want anyone visiting him. And so
I wait a few minutes and I called his house phone.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Left a message and he didn't pick up.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
But then when I got back to the office, got
a call from him and he was like, I'm concerned
about the message you left. You said there's allegations against me,
and I was like, yeah, there are, and he was like,
I think we should meet. He wanted to meet at
the park near his house, the bottom of the street,
so Matt no one out there. We met with him.
I did not want to talk on the record at
(15:13):
that time, but we set up another meeting shortly thereafter,
and from then on he was on the record.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
He eventually shows up and shakes our hand. He's really tall,
like I think, well over six feet, and I just
remember shaking his hand and thinking it was really big,
like it was it was a big hand. We've talked
to everyone who's worked around him, so we've heard everything.
(15:38):
Like people think he's just just has very poor hygiene.
They talk about like his shirts and he used incratic
habits and he's did smell a little bit. He wore
sunglasses and like a he wore a Barrong shirt, which
is like a Filipino dress shirt.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
We spent ten hours with him and he doesn't dispute
a lot of the things. It's just like a matter
of interpretation. He thinks he's like an excellent kindecologist. And
there are a lot of like weird moments during that
interview where Matt Hamilton bought a textbook. He was always
referring to this one textbook that he used, got incological textbook.
Matt Hamilton bought it on an Amazon so it talks
(16:19):
about how to do a regular exam.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
And we bought it to the park.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
And he's like, see and he's like going through all
the steps that you're supposed to do it a regular
guy incological exam.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
He went through and he highlighted everything he did line
by line. But you know, by the time it came
to actual contact with women's genitalia physically, Jenny closed the
book and what she described in terms of using his fingers,
it was not at the textbook and that was a
(16:50):
very big turning point, I think for Harriet and for myself,
because it's like kind of a real life example of
how he had convinced himself that what he was doing
was appropriate.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
And then we started confronting him with things that, you know,
eyewitnesses had said, and he was sitting right next to me,
and I was just like, doctor Tundele, do you understand
that people are accusing you of sexually assaulting young women
for decades?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
He had made a lot of arguments.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
At that point, and we had moved past them, and
I think when I just said it like that, he
finally got that we were not going to be talked
into adopting his point of view on his medical practice.
And he got this like far away stair and they
just stood up and he walked away and we never
(17:43):
heard from him again.
Speaker 8 (17:46):
Use this moment to encourage you, to embolden you, and
to literally push you into the rising of your life.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
May eleventh, eighteen, Oprah Winfrey is delivering an inspiring commencement
speech to the graduates of USC's Journalism School. At that
same moment, Matt and Harriet are sitting with three top
USC administrators.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
It's commencement day, it's swarming with people. There's just like families,
and everyone's in a joyous mood. And I remember, like
Harry and I going to this office on the edge
of campus. They had known for a long time that
we had been recruiting on doctor Tangel and asking questions,
So scheduling the sit down interview on commencement day at
(18:34):
least had the effect, whether intended or not, to guarantee
that any story wouldn't come out until after all the
festivities surrounding graduation wouldn't at least be marred by any
sort of story that put the university into bad light.
(18:55):
They had an hour set aside for the meeting. This
was a big story covering, you know, wide range of time.
When you consider that we had had hours to sit
with doctor Tindall but only an hour with USC. We
planned to move efficiently through the questions, and USC's administrators
began off by giving these like detailed bios of themselves
(19:17):
that last like twenty minutes. I mean, we're trying to
be friendly and just kind of take it in, but
you know, at a certain point it was like, I
don't need to know your resume, And because it was
just this, it seemed like they were a filibus train,
and so we immediately are like, okay, we haven't at
this point forty minutes or so, we have to move
(19:38):
into questions, and we start going.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Over what they sent.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
Us in their responses, trying to drill down. I remember
having whiplash after going through that interview and kind of
debating the finer points of doctor Tindall's conduct with students
and what us he knew, and why they fired him,
and why they paid him money, and why they didn't
report him to the Medical Board, and then walking out
(20:05):
of that interview and you see students beaming with their
parents and they're wearing the tops and gowns and taking
photos and selvies.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Four days after Harriet Matt's meeting, US issues a statement
to the paper. The school claims it did not violate
a California statute requiring hospitals and clinics to report problem
doctors to the Medical Board because US was quote a
school and not a hospital or clinic. With our story
just about to publish, Nikias tries to get ahead of it.
(20:37):
He emails the entire university, disclosing the allegations against Tyndall
and apologizing to quote any student who may have visited
the Student Health Center and did not receive the respectful
care each individual deserves.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But it's too late. We published four hours later.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Like our story on Puliofido, the news about Tindall explodes
across the country.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
The doctor was suspended by USC two years ago, news
of that wasn't made public until today.
Speaker 9 (21:05):
In fact, nothing pertaining to this doctor was made public
until today.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
CBS News isn't buying the timing of Nikias's letter either.
For survivors like Lucy ch it's a surreal experience. Suddenly
the full extent of Tyndall's crimes are visible, and she
can see them for.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
What they are.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
The only time I actually realized there was something wrong
was after Billy Times article came out and I ended
up calling some lawyers and one of my lawyers told me,
what you just described that sexual assault. It really shocked me.
It really shocked me. Like I had been talking to
multiple lawyers and no one said that flat out to me,
(21:45):
and it just blew me away. I was like, oh
my god, that really happened.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Now that the story is out there, USC looks for
any way to dodge accountability. The administration blames Ninsteen, the
head of the student Health Center who died before Tyndall
was suspended in twenty seventeen. USC says nothing about Ninstein's
multiple complaints to the oed to the General Council, the
title nine coordinator and hr all, of which were dismissed
(22:13):
or ignored. Here's Adry Nassinger again, So to.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Cover up by people at higher levels that just do
not care. I initially felt a sense of responsibility. Wow,
if I had spoken out all those years ago, maybe
I could have stopped those generations and women after me.
But the more reporting that came out and the more
I read, it was very obvious that they had plenty
(22:37):
of notice and think here didn't matter to them at all.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Six former students and patients join in a lawsuit against
Tyndall and also file suit against USC for failing to
fire him within a month. There are fifty two women involved.
ABC's David Muir covers the fast moving story on World
News Tonight.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
They claim it went on for years and that the
university failed to respond to complaints. Tonight, there have now
been hundreds of calls to a hotline that's been set up.
Speaker 6 (23:08):
David I spoke with a lawyer who said today he
talked to thirty six other women who say they were
also assaulted by doctor Tindall, and he expects that number to.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Grow more and more women come forward to the La
Times with their stories of abuse, the LAPD opens what
will become one of the city's biggest sexual abuse investigations ever.
Speaker 10 (23:29):
Currently, Artie Texas had the names of fifty two former
patients who have alleged inappropriate conduct by doctor Tyndall while
he worked as a guidecologist at the University of Southern California.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
The time frame of.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
This Nikyas tries to return to the Puliafeidal playbook. He
deflects blame, says he knew nothing about Tyndall and issues
of vague apology. But this time the drum beat is
just too loud, and the faculty at USC they decide
they've had enough.
Speaker 11 (24:01):
Puliaffido was shocking and disturbing and deeply problematic.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Doctor Jane John is a professor of political science and
international relations at USC, as well as gender and sexuality studies.
Speaker 11 (24:15):
We didn't actually know all of it until much later,
because much of it had been attempted to be covered
up by the university, and I believed to some degree
participation of the Pasadena Police.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Doctor Ariela Gross was a professor of law and history
at USC for twenty seven years.
Speaker 12 (24:32):
It wasn't until that Puliaffido story was broken in the
La Times that we started to really pay attention. And
I remember conversations with colleagues from the law school when
the Puliaffido story came out about Wow, this is really bad.
(24:54):
I remember firing off a letter to the president of
the Academic Senate saying, isn't the faculty going to do
something thing? Say something, and them saying, look, there's an
investigation happening. Let's wait for the investigation. When the Tendall
story broke, that's when we were like, okay, that is
(25:14):
the last straw. We should not have been silent a
year ago, and we're not going to be silent now.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
For doctor John, there was a feeling among the faculty
that they owed this to the students.
Speaker 11 (25:26):
You feel, if not like complicit in it, you do
feel like a bit of a bystander. We couldn't protect them,
we couldn't do anything to help them. We hadn't done anything,
which is why we decided to do something they never
told us anything. They issued a few letters which were
frankly bs, a lot of denials like, oh man, we
(25:48):
didn't know, Like nobody believes that. So we formed a
group maybe fifty of us at the beginning, and we
were all tenured full professors.
Speaker 12 (25:57):
We had decided that we would go public once we
had two hundred. We were having trouble figuring out, because
it's such a secretive board, how to send it to
the board. And then finally somebody said to me, just
email it to the president's office. Even though it'll say
to the chairman of the Board of trustees, c see
(26:18):
the President's office. Don't worry.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
They'll get it.
Speaker 8 (26:22):
You know, immediately.
Speaker 12 (26:23):
And the letter called for President Nikias to step down.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Doctor Gross goes on national TV on NBC's The Today
Show to make their case.
Speaker 13 (26:34):
According to The La Times, Tyndall was quietly paid off
to leave the school last year. President Nikias says he
understands the faculty's anger and frustration, but the university's board
of trustees says it has full confidence in his leadership.
Speaker 12 (26:50):
That I think really freaked the board out because they
were like, uh, oh, now this is really a national story.
And the academic seen, which had absolutely ignored us before this,
said oh, I guess we need to call a public meeting,
and that was held the following day, on a Wednesday.
Speaker 11 (27:14):
I actually worried that no one would come, because usually
when there's some kind of a scandal or something negative,
the faculty just go quiet, and we go quiet, because faculty,
I've been punished for speaking out. You're sort of frozen out.
It's a little bit putinesque, if you ask me. And
when we got there, you could barely find a sea
(27:35):
if the room was packed. And we were calling the
man to be accountable, and we wanted him to take
responsibility and to say they would fix it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
US's powerful secretive board has been standing behind a KIAS
led by billionaire developer Rick Caruso, the board chair. They
decide that for the good of the school, they need
to make a change. Gruso calls on leaders among the
faculty to meet with the kias and reinforce this position.
Doctor William Tierney, USC's professor emeritus, remembers the meeting.
Speaker 9 (28:10):
Max's kind of sober. I always remember reading that when
it was over with Nixon, I think it was Everett Dirkson,
a minority Centator went to the White House and he said, Dick,
it's over. And that's the way I felt with us
is we weren't angry, but we needed him to see
(28:33):
it was over.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
On May twenty eighteen, Max Nikias resigns as president of USC.
The Today Show covers this development on the board's change
of heart.
Speaker 9 (28:46):
Breaking overnight a bombshell announcement at the University of Southern California,
President C. L.
Speaker 13 (28:51):
Max Nikias agreeing to step down in the wake of
a scandal.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
But this isn't about face from the university's board of trustees.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
But as doctor two he might have predicted, Max Nikias
does not simply walk away. As Nikias knows, probably better
than anyone us, he likes to solve its problems with money.
Speaker 9 (29:11):
He talked with his lawyer and he gets a seven
million dollar buyout that the board provides him. The board
at that time is really at loggerheads with one another,
and there are some who want him to return, you know,
like he was on leave for the summer and he's
going to come back in September. It was crazy, and
(29:34):
he's still living in the president's house. How awkward is
all this?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
You know, when Moord gets out about this most recent backsliding,
six hundred and seventy faculty members sign a petition demanding
the board make sure Nikias is gone by the fall semester.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
It was conveyed to Max. If he did not resign
by whatever it was, August fifteenth or something, all holy
hell would break close. Faculty would teach, I mean, it
would have been nutty. So he did, but I mean
seven million dollars.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Really, the board still keeps Nikias on the faculty in
the School of Engineering. It awards him the title of
President Emeritus and names him to a prestigious position as
a life trustee. It's a golden parachute, and for those
like doctor Jane John, USC's response is not enough.
Speaker 11 (30:28):
We did not receive representation on the Board of Trustees.
They promised to do an investigation, they told us it
was underway, and then it was revealed last year that
no investigation had taken place.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
There's no report.
Speaker 12 (30:42):
USC was not the only university to have a doctor
who preyed on women's.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Students, doctor Ariella Gross.
Speaker 12 (30:52):
Unfortunately, that's happened at a number of major universities, but
USC as the word in terms of its cover up,
its secrecy, it's golden handshakes for wrongdoers, and its refusal
to truly investigate and figure out what went wrong and
(31:13):
how to avoid doing it again. None of that.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
On June twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, Tindall is arrested by
the LAPD. Almost two years later, USC settles a class
action lawsuit with over seven hundred plaintiffs, generations of young
USC women who have been abused by Tyndall. The payout
is eight hundred and fifty two million dollars, and that's
on top of more than two hundred and fifteen million
(31:40):
US already had agreed to pay other groups of Tyndall's accusers.
In the end, doctor George Tindall costs USC one point
one billion dollars. It's the largest sexual abuse settlement in
the history of American higher education.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
But it's not enough.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
Honestly, I remember feeling really disappointed because I was convinced
that I wasn't just fighting for a restitution, and I
was convinced I was fighting for somewhat at USC to
be held accountable because I didn't want this to happen
again to anyone else in any other university of your
hospital and I remember when the settlement came out, I thought,
(32:22):
I hope this isn't it. I hope this isn't the end.
I hope there's actually a sense of justice.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
As a prosecutor, Audrey knows the settlement settles nothing.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
I'm not done because only Tyndall has been investigated, and
that's not enough. It's not about the money, it's about accountability.
Who signed the two hundred thousand dollars check to Tindall
to make him go away quietly? Somebody on the board
had to know that. I mean, they don't just sign
two hundred thousand dollars checks every day. And it's just
(32:55):
like USC to buy their way out of a problem,
and nobody to be held to account other than Tindall,
who's still sitting at home right now as we as we.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Record this, Tindall's no longer sitting at home, and we'll
get into that in our next episode. But accountability, that's
another question entirely. That's coming up on the season finale
of Fallen Angels. Fallen Angels, a Story of California Corruption
(33:24):
is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with Best
Case Studios. I'm Paul Pringle, This show is based on
my book Bad City, Peril and Power in the City
of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinks,
and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is our producer, Brent Katz
is co producer. Associate producers are Hanna Leebowitz Lockhart and
(33:48):
On Pajo lock Executive producers are Me, Paul Pringle, Joe Picorello,
and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Original music is by James Newberry.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller with assistants
from Nisha Venkat. Additional editings, sound design and additional music
by Dean White, Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini and
Adam Olmarik are consulting producers. Our iHeart team is Ali
Perry and Carl Catle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever
(34:19):
you get your podcasts
Host
Paul Pringle
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