The University of Southern California graduate Mishal Mahmud directs a thorough, albeit brief, examination into the college’s decades-long sex scandal involving Dr. George Tyndall.
This short documentary intersperses clips of interviews and short passages of text that provide a bit of background to the scandal. From 1989 to 2016, Tyndall treated more than 10,000 patients as USC’s only full-time gynecologist.
In Breach of Trust, women from a wide range of graduating classes speak out about the harassment and abuse they suffered from Tyndall. To create this account, Mahmud highlights the voices of USC students and faculty in addition to the 2018 L.A. Times report that first brought the scandal to the public eye.
After years of reporting complaints to management and not seeing any action taken, Cindy Gilbert (former nurse supervisor at the USC Student Health Center) turned to the USC Rape Crisis Center in 2016. In an interview, Gilbert says she had to resign after facing backlash for her action. However, her decision springboarded an independent investigation that led to USC negotiating a private financial payout with Tyndall.
Outraged by the school’s coverup of the doctor’s recurring abuse of power, over 200 tenured faculty asked President C. L. Max Nikias to step down from the administration. While he complied with this request, he remained at USC as a tenured professor and member of the Board of Trustees.
This short film is engaging, informative, and multi-functional. What begins as a story of gross abuse recenters its focus on a community of women who oust their abuser and indict the university leaders who turned their backs on them. Breach of Trust satisfies its goal of exposing corruption in a school that failed to protect its students. A valuable addition for social justice-oriented library shelves. Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P.