Breach of Trust

SYNOPSIS

The high-profile sexual assault scandal at the University of Southern California involving Dr. George Tyndall, the only full-time gynecologist in the school’s student health clinic from 1989 to 2016, first made headlines when journalists Harriet Ryan and Matt Hamilton exposed horrific abuses in a 2018 LA Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative report. USC recently announced it would pay $1.1 billion to patients, making it the largest sex abuse payout in higher education history. Told from the point of view of the women and sexual assault survivors advocating for change, BREACH OF TRUST offers an inside-look at the abuse, as well as the institution’s complicity.

Despite hundreds of accusations and reports of misconduct, Tyndall continued his medical practice for decades, treating more than 17,000 women, without being held accountable. After USC supervising nurse Cindy Gilbert reported Tyndall to the campus rape crisis center in 2016, Tyndall was finally suspended and placed on paid leave. Anchored by stories of the survivors and Gilbert’s whistleblower account, this film chronicles the timeline of Tyndall’s crimes and his ultimate downfall. Director and USC graduate Mishal Mahmud compassionately brings the voices of hundreds of women to the forefront, allowing space for them to speak up and be heard.

BREACH OF TRUST offers important insight into an all-too-familiar story of male predators employed by high-profile universities (such as Larry Nassar at the University of Michigan and Jerry Sandusky at Penn State University) who used their positions of power to target students – and the administrations’ ensuing complicity in allowing the abuse to go unaddressed and unpunished.