“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. Oshita was one of 80 former USC students who reached a settlement 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. 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. “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.” “There’s no population that’s immune from the reach of the damaging results of sexual misconduct,” Kellogg said.
