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The University of California system agreed to a $243 million payout to settle hundreds of sexual abuse claims against James Heaps, a gynecologist who used to work at UC’s Los Angeles campus, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Heaps was accused by thousands of former patients of using a painful vaginal examination technique, inappropriately touching and groping women during exams, and making inappropriate sexual comments to patients and employees, according to the Times.
In November, the University of California system paid $73 million in a class action settlement with 5,000 of Heaps’s former patients. About 600 women opted out of that class action suit, and the recent sum will settle 203 of those civil cases. A lawyer for Heaps said he was not involved in and does not approve of the civil settlement. Heaps also faces 21 felony counts of sexual abuse.
Lawyers for plaintiffs hope the settlement will force the university system to reckon with sexual misconduct in its ranks.
“The sheer size of this settlement evidences the enormous harm that the depraved actions of James Heaps, which was enabled by U.C.L.A., caused our clients,” the statement said. “It also speaks to the culpability of U.C.L.A. in employing Heaps for 35 years and ignoring volumes of complaints and evidence of Heaps violating his role as a physician.”
