Report: Michigan missed signs of abusive doctor
Employees in the athletic department and health service department at the University of Michigan missed warning signs and failed to stop the serial sexual misconduct of former school doctor Robert Anderson, according to a report from the WilmerHale law firm released Tuesday afternoon.
The university hired WilmerHale in March 2020 to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Anderson as well as the response that patients received from other employees when they made complaints about Anderson. Investigators interviewed more than 300 former patients and more than 200 university employees during a 14-month investigation before publishing a 240-page report Tuesday. They found that Anderson engaged in sexual misconduct on "countless occasions" and that authority figures heard specific accusations as well as rumors about Anderson's misconduct but failed to stop him from abusing others.
"We will thoughtfully and diligently review and assess the report's findings, conclusions, and recommendations," university president Mark Schlissel said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "[A]nd we will work to regain the trust of survivors and to assure that we foster a safe environment for our students, our employees, and our community."
In an effort to provide a layer of independence to the investigation, university leaders were not allowed to review or read WilmerHale's findings prior to the release of the report Tuesday.
Anderson worked at the University of Michigan from 1966 through 2003. During the majority of his time at the school he worked closely with the athletic department, treating athletes' injuries and conducting annual physicals. Hundreds of former patients -- many of them former Wolverine athletes -- now say that Anderson sexually abused and harassed them in a variety of ways during the treatment of routine medical issues. In interviews and court documents, Anderson's former patients say the doctor assaulted them, fondled them and made an array of inappropriate sexual comments, among many other examples of misconduct.
Anderson died in 2008 before the claims of abuse were widely publicized.
The WilmerHale report found eight instances when patients shared concerns about Anderson in some form dating back to the 1960s. They found eight additional instances when athletes say they voiced concerns about Anderson with athletic department personnel. The investigators also found that many other employees were aware of vague rumors about Anderson's conduct.
"We also learned of more than a dozen additional instances in which Athletic Department personnel heard jokes or rumors about Dr. Anderson's examinations, some of which highlighted Dr. Anderson's propensity for performing sensitive examinations for no apparent medically appropriate reason," the report says. "Yet no one in the Athletic Department appears to have recognized what they heard as indicative of abuse or initiated any inquiries into Dr. Anderson's conduct."
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More than a half-dozen plaintiffs' law firms have filed civil lawsuits against the university and its leadership on behalf of nearly 900 clients who say they were abused by Anderson. The university said last April that it hoped to develop a process to address claims about Anderson's abuse outside of court in the interest of providing "more certain, faster relief" to survivors. The university has not yet released any details about its proposed process.
Attempts to settle the lawsuits through mediation began last October, but so far those efforts have been fruitless. Other cases in recent years involving university-employed doctors who sexually abused their patients have been settled for large sums of money. Michigan State paid $500 million to settle hundreds of cases related to Nassar's abuse. Southern California paid more than $1 billion in total to settle claims related to former university gynecologist George Tyndall.
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