The phone call from U.S. Army investigators left the woman on edge. They had questions for her, a military spouse in Texas, about a doctor she’d seen at an Army-run hospital.
That day in October, the investigators explained that her gynecologist, an Army major at Fort Hood, might have secretly recorded her appointments, the woman said. They later asked her to confirm this through photos they captured from the recordings, she said. Her own face stared back.
“I was just in disbelief,” the woman said. The Washington Post does not name alleged sexual abuse victims. “Because this had been a provider that I thought I could trust.”
She sued the doctor, Army Maj. Blaine McGraw, in November. On Tuesday, the Army announced criminal charges against him for allegedly making an “indecent visual recording” of the woman and dozens of his other patients. Attorneys and advocates say the case could serve as a high-profile litmus test for recent reforms in how the Pentagon deals with sex crime allegations and supports those filing the reports.
On Wednesday, 81 women joined the November lawsuit, accusing McGraw of using his position to hurt them in his exam room for years.
A lawyer representing McGraw in the criminal case did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. An attorney for the civil case was not available.
“We understand patients may feel distressed and anxious about this issue,” Fort Hood said in a statement. “The matter remains under ongoing investigation, and the subject is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.”
The investigation, which Fort Hood authorities said began in October “within hours” of a patient making a complaint, focuses on McGraw’s six years practicing medicine at the Texas post and a military hospital in Hawaii.
The case is being handled by the Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel — one of the independent prosecution units that Congress mandated each military branch establish in 2023 after victims’ advocates complained for years that the Defense Department routinely mishandled sex crime allegations. The Office of Special Trial Counsel took decisions about whether to investigate and prosecute alleged sexual harassment, assault and rape out of the hands of unit commanders and gave the responsibility instead to a team of specially chosen military lawyers.
Ryan Guilds, who represents about a half-dozen victims in the Army’s criminal case, said the prosecution will shed light on whether the military’s new system provides alleged victims with adequate services, including legal counsel and support. He pointed to complaints from advocates that the Defense Department failed to provide such services in a similar case against a military anesthesiologist, who pleaded guilty in January to abusing patients at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
“This isn’t a test of the Office of Special Trial Counsel in terms of how they prosecute, but how they treat victims,” said Guilds, who leads the pro bono legal network for Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit aimed at stopping sexual assault in the military. “Every victim should know they have a right to a lawyer to represent them during the criminal prosecution. And they should get one.”
The Office of Special Trial Counsel brought four charges and 61 specifications — meaning distinct criminal allegations — against McGraw, 47. Fifty-four of those specifications accused McGraw of making indecent visual recordings of women throughout this year — most during medical examinations at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center. One victim, who was not a patient, was secretly video-recorded at a private off-base residence near Fort Hood, according to the special trial counsel.
The other seven specifications against McGraw involve allegations of conduct unbecoming an officer, willful disobedience of a superior officer and making a false official statement, Army prosecutors said. The Army said it can’t release charging documents with exact details of those allegations, and others against McGraw, until after an arraignment, which has not yet been scheduled.
“We are still very early in the legal process,” Michelle McCaskill, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel, said in an email.
The Army’s case involves at least 44 victims but could grow as investigators canvas McGraw’s former patients at Fort Hood and Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, where McGraw was a resident in the obstetrics and gynecology service department between 2019 and 2023.
“I know this information is incredibly upsetting to them, and we are here to provide support,” Col. William Bimson, Tripler Army Medical Center’s director, said in a statement. “We have many resources to offer, and we want to hear their concerns and help them get the medical care and other support they need.”
McGraw has been in pretrial confinement at the Bell County Jail in Belton, Texas, since Dec. 2, after he was accused of violating restrictions placed on him following the allegations. The restrictions limited his movement on base and required that he follow a check-in process to go somewhere not preapproved, said a Fort Hood official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Fort Hood authorities said there’s no evidence to suggest McGraw violated a military protective order related to the alleged victims.
The civil complaint, filed Nov. 10 in Texas state court, says the number of alleged victims is larger than the 44 identified by the Army so far.
The Texas woman who first filed that lawsuit — identified only as “Jane Doe” — met with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division in late October, just three days after her last appointment with McGraw, her complaint said.
During that appointment, McGraw performed a pelvic exam and then a breast exam, even though she said she did not need one, the lawsuit alleges. The woman said she later discovered from investigators that McGraw had allegedly recorded both exams.
That allegation led her to consider other experiences she had with the doctor during the year she went to Darnall Medical Center for care, the woman told The Post. Among the experiences, she said, were comments McGraw allegedly made about her breasts and tattoos, exams she underwent without a gown because McGraw allegedly said the facility had run out of them, and calls she received from him outside of appointments.
The dozens of women who joined her lawsuit — from Texas, Hawaii and 14 other states — shared similar experiences, their new complaint says. The additional plaintiffs include a 19-year-old rape victim who alleged McGraw was “constantly” on his phone, with no explanation, while he performed a rape kit for her. The teenager, an active-duty soldier, now believes he probably took inappropriate photos of her during that procedure, according to the complaint. She and the other new plaintiffs are also identified as Jane Does.
Fort Hood has long been at the center of accusations that military leaders have failed to properly address crimes. After the 2020 murder of a 20-year-old female soldier on the base, an independent civilian review board found that years of failures to investigate crimes and punish offenders had created a “permissive environment for sexual assault and harassment.”
Despite recent reforms, including Congress’s mandate that the Pentagon establish independent prosecution offices, similar complaints have resurfaced in the latest high-profile case plaguing Fort Hood.
Andrew Cobos, an attorney representing the women in the civil case, wrote to Under Secretary of the Army Michael Obadal on Dec. 4, complaining that other than military law enforcement, “no senior Army leader, medical command representative, or oversight entity has reached out to understand their experiences or to discuss how the Army intends to prevent similar failures in the future.”
“Compounding these concerns is the fact that several of the survivors in the McGraw matter previously attempted to raise warnings through established command channels — both formally and informally — yet their concerns were minimized, dismissed, or left unaddressed,” Cobos wrote in a letter seen by The Post.
On the date of Cobos’s letter, Fort Hood officials released another statement saying that the base medical center had suspended McGraw on Oct. 17 following a patient’s complaint and that the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division had begun a formal inquiry “within hours.”
“McGraw was removed from all patient care duties and access to electronic records to ensure patient safety, and all personnel involved were continuously accounted for,” the statement added.
On Wednesday, the first plaintiff who retained Cobos spoke at a news conference held to announce the scores of women who had joined her.
It would mean sharing the allegations again, on a more public stage, after she had already answered the Army’s questions and recounted her experiences in court filings.
But she said she needed to do it for her two daughters, who had dreamed of following in their father’s footsteps by joining the military — her oldest already on track to graduate from an ROTC program.
At the news conference, the woman’s attorney introduced her.
“This is Jane Doe,” he said.
The woman stepped forward, took the microphone, placed the paper with her speech atop the lectern and began to speak.
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