You went to a doctor, a therapist, or a nurse because something was wrong and you needed help. You did everything a good patient is supposed to do, and someone used every one of those things against you. If you have spent years unsure whether what happened was actually abuse, you are not alone. That uncertainty is the predictable result of harm delivered in the language of medicine.
This article explains why the therapeutic relationship creates such unusual vulnerability, how legal responsibility may extend beyond the individual provider to the hospital or health system that credentialed and kept them, what the Larry Nassar and George Tyndall matters established about institutional accountability, and two procedural obstacles survivors are rarely warned about. Constant Legal Group (CLG) handles these cases, and this article includes the difficult parts alongside the encouraging ones.

Why the Therapeutic Relationship Creates Unusual Vulnerability

The provider controls the room, the vocabulary, and the written record of what occurred, while a patient has no realistic way to contradict the chart afterward. In many of these cases the misconduct was framed as a medical procedure, which is what delays recognition for years – a healthcare provider misconduct claim frequently turns on whether what happened had any legitimate medical purpose at all. Examinations often occur without a chaperone present; allegations against the University of Southern California gynecologist first surfaced in 2016 when a chaperone nurse reported him for inappropriate comments to a student patient.
This deserves to be said without qualification: agreeing to an examination is not agreement to sexual contact, and freezing, staying quiet, or returning for a later appointment are common responses to fear rather than evidence of consent. In therapy, the relationship itself is the treatment, which gives an exploitative therapist unusual leverage. Many states treat sexual contact between a therapist and a current patient as a criminal offense and grounds for license revocation regardless of whether the patient appeared to agree at the time, and a therapist abuse civil claim may proceed on that basis even where the survivor initially believed the relationship was mutual.

The Provider and the Institution Are Two Separate Questions

A claim against an individual provider rests on what that person did. A claim against the hospital, practice, or health system rests on what the organization did or failed to do, and exists independently – an institution may bear responsibility even where it did not know that specific abuse was occurring, if it failed to take reasonable steps that could have revealed or prevented it. In Darling v. Charleston Community Memorial Hospital, decided by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1965, the court held that a hospital owes its own duty to patients rather than simply borrowing the duties of the physicians practicing inside it. That principle, corporate negligence, is the foundation for most modern efforts to sue a hospital for doctor abuse.

The Institutional Theories That May Apply

Negligent Credentialing – A hospital is generally expected to verify a provider’s license history and disciplinary record before granting privileges, and to reevaluate periodically. This is recognized as a distinct cause of action in roughly 28 to 30 states; Texas is a notable outlier, requiring the harder showing of malicious rather than negligent credentialing.

Negligent Supervision and Retention – Supervision concerns oversight of a provider already on staff; retention concerns the decision to keep someone after concerns surfaced. Retention is frequently the strongest theory available, because the documentary timeline often shows complaints arriving years before any meaningful action.

Failure to Act on Patient Complaints – Where complaints were logged and nothing followed, those records may establish what the institution knew and when, with dates attached.

Negligent Hiring – This may apply where a query to the National Practitioner Data Bank, established under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act, would have surfaced prior misconduct that the institution never checked for.
Vicarious liability has real limits worth naming honestly: employers are generally responsible for employee conduct within the scope of employment, and sexual abuse is usually held to fall outside that scope, which is exactly why the independent theories above carry so much weight. Where the provider practiced at a university health center, Title IX may supply an additional avenue for students who were patients.

What the Nassar and Tyndall Matters Established

In 2018, Michigan State University agreed to pay $500 million to more than 300 women and girls who said they were assaulted by Dr. Larry Nassar, after the university was accused of missing repeated opportunities to intervene. Responsibility did not stop at the employer: in 2021, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee reached a $380 million settlement, and in April 2024 the Department of Justice agreed to pay $138.7 million to resolve 139 claims arising from the FBI’s handling of the allegations, following an Inspector General report finding officials had failed to respond with urgency. Settlements across the matter approached $1 billion. The useful question for a survivor is therefore not only who committed the abuse, but which organizations held information and what each did with it.

In March 2021, the University of Southern California agreed to an $852 million settlement with 710 plaintiffs who accused campus gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall of abuse spanning decades, described by plaintiffs’ attorneys as the largest sexual abuse settlement against any university. A separate federal class action, the Title IX matter, had settled earlier in October 2018 for $215 million covering roughly 18,000 former patients, bringing the university’s total commitment past $1 billion. In both situations, the core allegation was not simply that an institution had employed someone dangerous. It was that concerns existed, were handled internally, and did not produce protective action for years.

The Medical Malpractice Recharacterization Problem

This is the obstacle survivors are least often warned about, and it can determine a case’s outcome before the facts are heard. Because conduct occurred during an appointment, defendants often argue the claim is medical malpractice rather than an ordinary tort, which in many states triggers a shorter filing deadline, damages caps, and a certificate-of-merit or pre-litigation review requirement.

Ninety-four former patients sued Dr. David Broadbent and two hospitals, alleging sexual battery and assault. A Utah trial judge dismissed the case, reasoning the claims belonged under the state’s malpractice act, cutting the filing window to two years and capping pain-and-suffering recovery. On August 8, 2024, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously reversed. Justice Paige Petersen concluded the plaintiffs had not alleged injury from any health care provided, finding instead that the allegation was that the physician abused his position to commit assault under the pretense of providing health care. The Utah Legislature had separately amended its Malpractice Act in 2023 to exclude sexual assault, though that amendment did not apply retroactively and offered no help to these plaintiffs. Courts in other states have reached differing conclusions on this question, and the answer may depend heavily on how a claim is framed at the outset.

Why Institutional Records Can Be Difficult to Obtain

Nearly every state has a peer review privilege statute protecting hospital peer review and credentialing committee deliberations from discovery, intended to encourage candid internal evaluation of physicians. The practical effect in an abuse case is that the very records showing what an institution knew may be shielded. The picture is not uniform: some states construe the privilege narrowly, some make credentialing data available where negligent credentialing is pleaded directly, and some apply the privilege broadly. This is not a reason for discouragement – complaint logs, patient advocacy files, incident reports, licensing board files, and testimony from former employees who raised concerns at the time often assemble into a substantial record.

Therapists, Counselors, and Mental Health Providers

Abuse in mental health settings follows a different logic. In therapy there is no procedure to point to; the work consists of disclosure, and a therapist who exploits that frame is misusing the treatment itself, not an incidental feature of it. This is why many states treat sexual contact between a psychotherapist and a current patient as a criminal offense regardless of apparent agreement, why licensing boards treat it as grounds for revocation, and why some states extend the prohibition for a period after treatment ends or indefinitely where dependency was significant. A survivor who initially experienced the relationship as consensual, or even as love, may still have a therapist abuse civil claim. The same institutional theories described above may apply to clinics, group practices, and treatment programs, and session notes, supervision records, and billing data frequently document the timeline in more detail than survivors expect.

What Survivors Can Do

• Request your own medical records, which you generally have a right to obtain
• Write down what you remember, including appointment dates and whether a chaperone was present
• Preserve appointment confirmations, billing statements, and patient portal messages
• Note whether you reported anything at the time, and to whom
• Understand that a licensing board complaint and a civil claim are separate processes with separate deadlines
• Speak with a trauma-informed attorney before assuming a claim is time-barred

Most of the institutional evidence in these cases is not yours to gather. It sits with the hospital or university and is normally obtained through the legal process. You are not expected to arrive with proof.

We Are Here to Hear Your Story

Abuse by a healthcare provider is a particular kind of betrayal, because it takes the act of asking for help and turns it into the mechanism of harm. Constant Legal Group (CLG) represents survivors in civil claims against individual providers and against the hospitals, practices, and health systems that credentialed, supervised, and retained them. We offer free, confidential consultations, with no obligation and no upfront cost. We only get paid if we recover compensation for you.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Contact Constant Legal Group for a confidential evaluation specific to your circumstances.