Dr. George Tyndall, the former University of Southern California gynecologist who allegedly sexually abused thousands of women on campus, died Wednesday at the age of 76.
The news was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, which indicated that he was found unresponsive in his bed.
One accuser, Audry Nafziger, said that she is “dissatisfied” with this outcome.
“It’s very sad that we don’t get the same kind of justice that the UCLA women get, or Larry Nassar’s survivors get, or all the other women who have been sexually abused by doctors with campuses that covered it up,” she told KTLA. “They get to have justice, but we do not.”
Nafziger was one of Tyndall’s patients while she was studying at USC Law School and was expecting to confront him in a courtroom next year.
“As a prosecutor and as a woman who has stood up for victims my whole life, to not get an opportunity to see justice, to see him convicted, to have the system work like it’s supposed to, it’s not supposed to go this long,” she added. “It’s very dissatisfying.”
John Manly, an attorney representing alleged victims of Tyndall, was similarly disappointed, noting that “he got away with it.”
“Spent almost no days in jail. Caused untold suffering to hundreds, if not thousands, of students at USC. ….. I’m at a loss to explain this to my clients,” he told the Times.
Criminal punishment will be precluded by Tyndall’s death, but in a civil settlement, the school paid out a record $1.1 billion to about 17,000 of Tyndall’s former patients.
An autopsy will not be performed to determine Tyndall’s cause of death, the Times reported, but in a letter to the Board of Supervisors and the Medical Examiner, Manly demanded a full investigation into the death.
“This refusal to properly investigate Tyndall’s cause of death allows him to get away with his decades of horrific abuse, and leaves hundreds of women without answers,” he said in the letter. “Dr. George Tyndall’s death before he was tried represents a complete failure of the justice system in Los Angeles. His criminal case has been pending for nearly 5 years and finally was ordered to trial less than a month ago. Put simply, LA County DA George Gascon failed his victims which number in the thousands. Not only was Tyndall allowed to escape justice for five years after his arrest but USC’s secrets that he alone holds died with him.”
“Like Jeffrey Epstein, he will never have to face a criminal trial,” said attorney Gloria Allred, who represents 72 of Tyndall’s accusers. “They were hoping that they could, if he was convicted at a criminal trial, be able to give a victim impact statement so that he would hear the harm, the damage that he caused to them when he was their OBGYN and they were his patients.”
