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The University of Michigan agreed to pay $490 million to some 1,000 victims of sexual abuse by a sports doctor hired by this center, who died in 2008, as part of a court settlement announced Wednesday.
One of the victims’ lawyers, Jamie White, explained that the agreement was reached Tuesday night, after 15 months of mediation between the two sides.
The agreement must now be approved by a judge, the complainants themselves, and the university’s board of trustees.
The settlement resolves complaints and lawsuits filed by some 1,050 people who have accused the late physician Robert Anderson of abusing them during physical examinations.
Anderson worked for the university between 1966 and 2003, but revelations about his conduct were not made public until 2020.
For years, victims complained about the doctor’s behavior to their coaches and university officials without action.
Another of the victim’s attorneys, Parker Stinar, said in a statement that “this historic settlement was achieved because survivors of sex abuse refused to be silenced and demanded accountability from their abuser, Robert Anderson, and the University of Michigan.”
For his part, the chairman of the school’s board of trustees, Jordan Acker, expressed in another statement his hope that this settlement will begin the process for victims to heal their wounds.
This is one of the biggest sexual abuse scandals in a university in the United States after those that occurred in the last decades at Pennsylvania State University, the University of Southern California or Ohio State University.
