University of Michigan reaches $490 million settlement with sex abuse victims

By Corky SiemaszkoNBC

The University of Michigan has agreed to pay $490 million in damages to more than 1,000 mostly male former students who said they were sexually abused by sports doctor Robert Anderson, their attorneys confirmed Wednesday.

The announcement came after 15 months of mediation and concludes one of the country's biggest sexual abuse scandals, involving several generations of victims dating back to the 1960s.

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“It has been a long and difficult road and I believe this settlement will provide justice and healing for the many brave men and women who refused to be silenced,” said Parker Stinar of the law firm Wahlberg, Woodruff, Nimmo & Sloane, based in Washington. in Denver, representing dozens of Anderson accusers.

Stinar explained that some 1,050 Anderson "survivors" will split the $490 million settlement, meaning each victim will receive an average of about $438,000.

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Thirty million dollars of that money will be reserved in case other alleged victims accuse the sports doctor.

Rick Fitzgerald, associate vice president for public affairs at the University of Michigan, confirmed the deal.

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"It is our hope that this settlement will begin the healing process for survivors," Jordan Acker, president of the Board of Regents, said in a news release first obtained by The Michigan Daily school newspaper.

"At the same time, the work that began two years ago, when the first brave survivors came forward, will continue," he added.

The president of the University of Michigan, Mary Sue Coleman, agreed that the agreement, which still needs to be signed by the Board of Regents and approved by 98% of the plaintiffs, is the right thing to do.

“This settlement is one critical step among many the university has offered to improve support for survivors and more effectively prevent and address misconduct,” he said.

Undated photo of Dr. Robert E. Anderson. Robert Kalmbach / University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library via AP

This settlement is about $10 million less than the one reached between Michigan State University and the hundreds of young athletes who survived the sexual assaults of sports doctor Larry Nassar.

The agreement was reached with the help of court-appointed mediator Robert F. Riley and was overseen by Judge Victoria A. Roberts of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Once that was done, the university requested that former Michigan football player and Anderson victim Jon Vaughn stop camping outside the home of university president Mark Schlissel, The Detroit News reported.

He's been there for over 100 days.

Anderson, who retired in 2003 and died five years later, was director of the University Health Service and was also the chief physician for the Michigan football teams coached by coaches Bo Schembechler and Lloyd Carr.

Schembechler died in 2006. His son, Matt, alleged that he was molested by Anderson in 1969 at age 10 and that his father refused to believe him.

His mother, Millie, tried to get Anderson fired, but Schembechler got him reinstated.

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But Anderson wasn't just targeting athletes.

One of his victims was a music student named Bill Herndon, who in 1971 went to see Anderson for a urinary tract infection and said the doctor would not remove a needle from his arm unless he performed oral sex on him.

“I am grateful that UM has finally made this offer to address a lifetime of damage that Dr. Anderson caused to more than 1,000 victims, damage that UM had known about since 1969,” Herndon said in a statement published by Estey & Bomberger, the San Diego law firm that represented him and 74 other victims.

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The investigation began thanks to the complaint of a former wrestler named Tad DeLuca.

DeLuca wrote a nine-page letter to his coach, Bill Johannesen, and the athletic director at the time, Don Canham, in 1975, describing what Anderson repeatedly did to him under the guise of medical tests.

"Something is wrong with Dr. Anderson," DeLuca wrote in the letter.

“Regardless of what you go in there, he always makes you pull down your pants,” he added.

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Anderson was widely known as "Dr. 'Take off your underpants' Anderson."

But Johannesen humiliated him for talking about Anderson reading his letter out loud to the rest of the team before he was kicked off the team and lost his scholarship.

“Those few minutes in front of my friends and teammates, the coach stripped me of everything that I had been,” DeLuca later told reporters in February 2020.

Johannesen, who coached the Michigan wrestling team in the 1970s, previously told The Associated Press in a statement that no one directly informed him of any abuse by Anderson.

Canham died in 2005.

DeLuca, a married father of three and a retired teacher who lives in northern Michigan, refused to give up.

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Inspired by gymnasts at Michigan State University who reported being abused by Larry Nassar, DeLuca contacted authorities again.

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And in 2018, police in Washtenaw County, Michigan, launched an investigation into Anderson based on a second letter DeLuca wrote.

Deputy Chief County Prosecutor Steven Hiller said no charges could be filed because Anderson was dead and none of the indictments alleged acts that fell within the state's six-year statute of limitations.

However, the police investigation noted that Michigan officials were "aware of the rumors and allegations of misconduct" by Anderson.

In 2020, Schlissel apologized on behalf of the university to anyone harmed by Anderson.

And a year later, WilmerHale, a law firm hired by the university to conduct an independent investigation, concluded that university officials knew Anderson was abusing students and could have stopped him.

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Anderson's case echoed the Dr. Richard Strauss scandal at Ohio State University, where 350 men accused the university of failing to protect them from a predatory doctor.

In that case, the independent law firm Perkins Coie concluded that coaches and athletic administrators at Ohio State had known for two decades that Strauss was abusing male athletes, but failed to raise the alarm or stop him.