Gynae Report ‘My Doctor Assaulted Me'

Daniella Mohazab will never forget how, while watching her undress from the waist down, her gynaecologist smiled.

- Nina Bahadur

A middle-aged man in khaki pants, Dr George Tyndall didn’t leave the room after asking Mohazab to remove her clothes. He stood there as she lay down on the exam table, then inserted two ungloved fingers into her vagina, feeling around for what felt like ages, pausing only to add lube. Tyndall said that he was prepping her for an STI test, making it so the swab wouldn’t hurt when it entered her. Mohazab, then 19, had never had a pelvic exam before. ‘It felt very sexual,’ she says. ‘But I just assumed that’s how a gynae visit was done.’

She’d already gotten weird vibes from Tyndall 10 minutes earlier when, in his office, he told her that Filipina women like her were good in bed. He’d also told her she was pretty. Still, he worked at her student health centre at the University of Southern California (USC). Mohazab trusted the school, so she thought she could trust him too.

THE INVISIBLE VICTIMS

It wasn’t until two years later, in May 2018, that the incident started to make sense. That’s when Mohazab received an e-mail from USC: Tyndall had been accused of inappropriate behaviour and had been fired. She’s now one of more than 100 women suing him and USC, alleging sexual battery and harassment. (Tyndall denies any wrongdoing.)