The University of Michigan has agreed to pay $490m to more than 1,000 former students who suffered sexual abuse by a sports doctor at the school.
Most of the students who have said they were abused by Dr Robert Anderson are male, with allegations going back as far as the 1960s.
Parker Stinar of the law firm Wahlberg, Woodruff, Nimmo & Sloane in Denver, which represents dozens of the former students who have made allegations against Dr Anderson, said in a statement that “it has been a long and challenging journey and I believe this settlement will provide justice and healing for the many brave men and women who refused to be silenced”.
The school said in a press release that out of the $490m total, “$460 million will be available to the approximately 1,050 claimants, and $30 million would be reserved for future claimants who choose to participate in the settlement before July 31, 2023”.
The school added that the settlement has been approved by 98 per cent of the claimants.
“Claimants and their attorneys will be responsible for deciding how to divide the $460 million among the claimants,” the school said, adding that they “will have no role in this process”.
“We hope this settlement will begin the healing process for survivors,” the chair of the University of Michigan Board of Regents, Jordan Acker, said. “At the same time, the work that began two years ago, when the first brave survivors came forward, will continue.”
University President Mary Sue Coleman said: “This agreement is a critical step among many the university has taken to improve support for survivors and more effectively prevent and address misconduct.”
Attorney Jamie White, who represents 78 survivors, told The Michigan Daily that the agreement was reached on Tuesday night. Talks between accusers and the school began in October 2020.
A judge and the victims still have to accept the settlement.
“It’s always difficult to put a value on what is fair and what is not fair when it comes to having your childhood taken away,” he told the paper. “Based on my conversations with my clients, even prior to yesterday, [I think] that this is going to be acceptable to them.”
Dr Anderson worked at the university from 1966 until 2003, serving as a team doctor and the director of University Health Services. He retired in 2003 and died in 2008, without having been investigated or tried.
While Mr White said the university had been cooperative, he told The Michigan Daily that he had hoped that the settlement would have come sooner as many of the claimants are older men, some of whom passed away during the mediation process.
“What my clients said from day one, and I represent a significant amount of ex-football players, is that they loved the University of Michigan, and it was very important to them that the University of Michigan was not bashed or smeared or hurt during this process,” Mr White told the paper. “At the same time, you know, they wanted some accountability and they want the University of Michigan to be the leader that it has been for more than a century.”
A report on the abuse by law firm WilmerHale released in May 2021 said that the university was aware of Dr Anderson’s abuse while he was still working there.
“Although the information these individuals received varied in directness and specificity, Dr Anderson’s misconduct may have been detected earlier and brought to an end if they had considered, understood, investigated, or elevated what they heard,” the report stated.
Michigan State University reached a $500m settlement in May 2018 with 332 survivors of sexual abuse by former university doctor Larry Nassar. He was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison in January 2018.
Mr White, who also represented some of Nassar’s victims, told The Michigan Daily: “We have two of the biggest universities in the world here, and they both have been lambasted over the last three years with this issue.”
“My hope is as a community and as a state and as universities that we can look at what’s occurred here and say, how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again?” he added.
Former University of Michigan wrestler Tad DeLuca, whose allegations initiated the investigation into Dr Anderson, wrote in a 1975 letter to his coaches that “something is wrong with Dr Anderson”.
“Regardless of what you go in there for, he always makes you drop your drawers,” he added.
According to NBC News, Mr DeLuca alleged that Dr Anderson was known as “Dr Drop Your Drawers Anderson”.
He told reporters in February 2020 that he was humiliated by his coach for speaking up. The coach read the letter to the rest of the team, and Mr DeLuca said he was forced to leave the group and had his scholarship cancelled.
“Those few minutes in front of my friends and teammates, the coach stripped away everything I had ever been,” he said at the time.
