Content warning.
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.
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.
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. Tindall continued to pray on USC students while on the payroll.
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.
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 start to dig.
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.
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 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.
Let it happen.
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 details start to sound familiar.
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 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.
Here's Audrey Nasseger again.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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, 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.
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 actually there have been formal complaints about Tyndall going back.
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.
There had been a discussion of going to the police within the clinic, keeping caught taking photographs of girls genitals and like Henman Fire.
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.
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.
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 had a very good idea what Tindall was doing.
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.
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.
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 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 were to question his conduct.
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 the school's Title nine coordinator in the Office of Equity and Diversity or OED, the General Counsel, and the OED did nothing.
I think the concerns of women, female employees and students were not.
Respected.
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.
Just solve the.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
With Tindall out of the office, Cindy and her colleague could look around. The place was filthy, covered in trash, dirty needles, decaying fruit.
But that wasn't the worst of it. While they're looking for other.
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 his office.
These images were impossible to ignore.
US's administration now had no choice but to finally deal with Cindy's repeated complaints about sexual assaults.
They called doctor Tyndall. He's basically banned from campus on some sort of paid leave, and they initiated this investigation into doctor Tyndall.
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.
The school kept.
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.
Here's Audrey.
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.
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
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.
Under interim Editor in chief Jim Kirk, he.
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.
Jack Leonard is one of our editors on the new story.
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.
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 twenty eighteen, Matt and Harry had sit down with doctor George Tyndall.
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.
Left a message and he didn't pick up.
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 that time, but we set up another meeting shortly thereafter, and from then on he was on the record.
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. 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.
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 about how to do a regular exam.
And we bought it to the park.
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.
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 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.
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?
He had made a lot of arguments.
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 heard from him again.
Use this moment to encourage you, to embolden you, and to literally push you into the rising of your life.
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.
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 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.
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
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 into questions, and we start going.
Over what they sent.
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 of that interview and you see students beaming with their parents and they're wearing the tops and gowns and taking photos and selvies.
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.
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.
But it's too late. We published four hours later.
Like our story on Puliofido, the news about Tindall explodes across the country.
The doctor was suspended by USC two years ago, news of that wasn't made public until today.
In fact, nothing pertaining to this doctor was made public until today.
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.
What they are.
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, and it just blew me away. I was like, oh my god, that really happened.
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 or ignored. Here's Adry Nassinger again, So to.
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 of notice and think here didn't matter to them at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The time frame of.
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.
Puliaffido was shocking and disturbing and deeply problematic.
Doctor Jane John is a professor of political science and international relations at USC, as well as gender and sexuality studies.
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.
Doctor Ariela Gross was a professor of law and history at USC for twenty seven years.
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. 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 the last straw. We should not have been silent a year ago, and we're not going to be silent now.
For doctor John, there was a feeling among the faculty that they owed this to the students.
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 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.
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 the President's office. Don't worry.
They'll get it.
You know, immediately.
And the letter called for President Nikias to step down.
Doctor Gross goes on national TV on NBC's The Today Show to make their case.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 it was over.
On May twenty eighteen, Max Nikias resigns as president of USC. The Today Show covers this development on the board's change of heart.
Breaking overnight a bombshell announcement at the University of Southern California, President C. L.
Max Nikias agreeing to step down in the wake of a scandal.
But this isn't about face from the university's board of trustees.
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.
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 he's still living in the president's house. How awkward is all this?
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's no report.
USC was not the only university to have a doctor who preyed on women's.
Students, doctor Ariella Gross.
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 how to avoid doing it again. None of that.
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 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.
But it's not enough.
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, I hope this isn't it. I hope this isn't the end. I hope there's actually a sense of justice.
As a prosecutor, Audrey knows the settlement settles nothing.
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 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.
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 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 On Pajo lock Executive producers are Me, Paul Pringle, Joe Picorello, and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios.
Original music is by James Newberry.
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 you get your podcasts