USC settles case with men who claim that campus doctor abused them

LOS ANGELES » Kenny Oshita was a first semester law student at the University of Southern California when a visit to a school doctor for a possible sexual disease turned into an invasive procedure that left him feeling violated.

He was not alone.

Scores of other men — most of them gay or bisexual — said they had disturbing encounters with Dr. Dennis Kelly at the USC Student Health Center but they didn’t realize it was pervasive until a graduate sued in 2019 claiming he had been forced to undergo an uncomfortable rectal exam during a routine checkup.

“When I discovered later that this was a pattern of behavior where he was targeting individuals like me, it was like I was in a China shop and all the glass around me was shattered,” Oshita said Friday. “It was alarming.”

Oshita was one of 80 former USC students who reached a settlement Thursday with the Los Angeles university that has weathered several major scandals in recent years, including one involving another campus doctor accused of sexually abusing hundreds of women students.

Unlike settlements in the cases against Dr. George Tyndall that resulted in payouts over $1 billion and an apology from the school’s president, no such disclosures or statements were made by USC in the Kelly case.

The parties in the Kelly case issued a joint statement saying the terms were confidential. USC and Kelly denied the allegations.

In addition to the secret terms of the agreement, the Kelly case is unusual from other recent settlements involving sexually abusive university doctors because most of the plaintiffs — 76 of 80 — are LGBTQ, attorney Mikayla Kellogg said. One plaintiff who was born a male is now a female.

“There’s no population that’s immune from the reach of the damaging results of sexual misconduct,” Kellogg said. “Here we have this population that is both male and LGBTQ-plus ... and that is really what makes it a unique story, but also a story that I think needs the attention.”

The Kelly case may never have come to light if not for reports of the rampant sexual abuse by Tyndall and Dr. Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University sports doctor as well as a doctor at USA Gymnastics, who is now serving decades in prison for abusing female athletes, including medal-winning Olympians.