Army gynecologist took secret videos of patients during intimate exams, lawsuit says

An Army gynecologist took secret intimate videos of a patient under his care at Fort Hood in Texas, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

The lawsuit says that the woman is believed to be one of scores who were preyed upon by Dr. Blaine McGraw and that Army leadership had allowed him to continue practicing despite receiving sexual misconduct complaints dating back years.

“By doing so, the Army gave cover to a predator in uniform,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in Bell County District Court.

McGraw has been suspended and is under investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, according to a statement on Fort Hood’s media center website. It said “potentially affected patients” would be contacted by the investigators.

At least 25 women have been contacted by Army criminal investigators after they found photos and videos on McGraw’s electronic devices showing female body parts, a military official told NBC News. The lawsuit says the allegations against McGraw also include inappropriate touching, crude remarks and performing unnecessary procedures.

The woman filed the lawsuit under the name Jane Doe to protect her identity. She is married to an active duty service member with more than 20 years in uniform, according to her lawyer, Andrew Cobos. He said he’s representing more than 45 women who have approached him with claims against McGraw.

“Upon information and belief, investigators recovered thousands of photographs and videos from his phone, taken over the course of multiple years, depicting scores of female patients, many of whom remain unidentified,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiff in the case learned about the covertly recorded videos last month when she received a call from Army investigators asking her to come in for an interview, the lawsuit says. They informed her that McGraw had secretly filmed multiple female patients during their appointments, the lawsuit says.

During the subsequent meeting, the CID investigators presented to her several frame grabs taken from videos recovered from McGraw’s phone — images that “unmistakably depicted” her body during an examination that took place three days earlier, the lawsuit says.

The investigators told her that McGraw had recorded “nearly the entirety of her final appointment, including both the breast and pelvic examinations, without her knowledge or consent,” the lawsuit says.

Once the interview was over, the investigators gave the woman a pamphlet containing the phone numbers of various Army departments. She left the meeting “disoriented and disarrayed.”

“She sat in her parked car and cried,” the lawsuit says. “Her sense of safety had been shattered.”

In a statement to NBC News, the woman said learning that she had been filmed without her consent left her feeling “violated, exposed and afraid.”

“It’s a wound that doesn’t heal,” she added. “How can anyone feel safe again when the very institution meant to protect them becomes the source of their trauma?”