Exclusive: What led the Army to investigate gynecologist described in lawsuit as a ‘predator in uniform’

The combat veteran had been an infantryman in Afghanistan – a job where you keep your head on a swivel and constantly take inventory of your surroundings. And so he was paying close attention as an Army gynecologist examined his pregnant wife, an Army officer, last month at Fort Hood, Texas.

When the doctor leaned over as he shifted the wand used for the vaginal ultrasound, something caught the veteran’s eye: The doctor’s phone was now in his shirt pocket with the camera lens pointed out. It hadn’t been there before.

When the veteran glimpsed the screen, he could see the phone was recording, according to a person familiar with what the husband later told investigators.

After the doctor left the exam room, the veteran found two female medical staffers and told them what happened, the source said. The couple’s interactions with hospital staff that followed left him so frustrated that he ultimately boiled over with apparent frustration.

“I just caught a doctor recording my wife’s vagina!” he screamed in the hospital lobby, according to the same source.

That outburst and the details surrounding it, which have not been previously reported, set in motion a series of events that have blown the lid off what could become one of — if not, the — largest cases of alleged sexual misconduct in US military history.

Last month, military officials in Texas suspended Dr. Blaine McGraw, an Army major and gynecologist at Fort Hood, who is now accused in a civil lawsuit of repeatedly groping a female patient and secretly recording intimate videos of her during a recent pelvic and breast exam. The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, saw McGraw just days before the Army veteran accompanied his wife to the Fort Hood hospital.

Army investigators recovered thousands of photographs and videos from McGraw’s phone that were “taken over the course of multiple years, depicting scores of female patients, many of whom remain unidentified,” according to the lawsuit.

So far, at least 65 women claim they were victims of McGraw’s sexual misconduct, according to two lawyers representing accusers. But sources said that number is incomplete and expected to grow.

The Army is sending letters to approximately 3,000 patients McGraw came into contact with at Fort Hood and Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii where he worked years earlier, sources said. CNN spoke to at least one alleged victim who said she had not yet been contacted by Army officials.

“The potential magnitude of this harm is, to my knowledge, unprecedented in Army history,” said Andrew Cobos, a lawyer representing some of McGraw’s accusers. “It spans two major military installations, two different chains of commands, thousands of military spouses and soldiers who fell under his care.”

Lawyer for women alleging sexual misconduct against Army doctor shares details

Lawyer for women alleging sexual misconduct against Army doctor shares details

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CNN spoke to alleged victims of McGraw who described an onerous reporting process, with some feeling that they were brushed off or not believed. One alleged victim, an Army spouse, told CNN she tried multiple times to report McGraw for inappropriate behavior last year, but ultimately gave up after being repeatedly transferred between departments at Fort Hood, only finally to be disconnected.

Interviews with alleged victims and others provide new details of the scope of McGraw’s alleged misconduct and attempts to report him earlier, including complaints made against him in 2022 and in 2024. The case also reveals broader systemic failures within the Army that sources attribute to part of a larger cultural issue.

Advocates and servicemembers expressed concern that reporting allegations of sexual assault and misconduct will become more difficult after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently promised to end the ability to file anonymous and “frivolous” complaints.

Alleged victims, all of whom are women, spoke to CNN for this story under the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy. In some cases, pseudonyms are used to identify them.

The lawsuit against McGraw, filed on November 10, alleges that the “Army knew” and “gave cover to a predator in uniform,” noting that complaints had been made about McGraw at both Fort Hood and Tripler.

Five years after the brutal murder of Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Hood whose sexual harassment claims went unanswered by commanders, advocates and soldiers are questioning the effectiveness of the sweeping military justice reforms in the wake of that tragedy.

Some said the same problems that existed then enabled McGraw to continue seeing patients despite alleged attempts to report him earlier.

Shannon Hough, founder and director of Shield of Sisters, a nonprofit that provides support to survivors of military sexual trauma, said she’s spoken with dozens of women who have come forward as alleged victims of McGraw. “Every single one” told her they had previously made an effort to report him to Army officials, Hough said.

The lawsuit alleged that while he was a resident at Tripler in Hawaii, “at least one female patient filed a complaint alleging that McGraw had improperly recorded her pelvic examination on his cell phone.”

“Rather than investigate or remove him from patient care, McGraw’s chain of command dismissed the complaint, laughed it off, and allowed him to continue practicing medicine,” the lawsuit claims.

A source familiar with the army investigation said an incident occurred while McGraw was seeing a patient after hours in November 2022 and that it was not reported to law enforcement. Instead, there was an internal review, which Army investigators are now reviewing, the source said.

Another source familiar with the investigation said McGraw was “administratively corrected” for the November incident.

Then in 2024 at Fort Hood, Army officials again investigated McGraw for allegedly touching a patient’s anus during a medical procedure, one of the sources said. No action was ultimately taken after investigators deemed the allegation unsubstantiated.

Many women accuse McGraw of performing unnecessary procedures during their medical care, which they worry he did not note in their records. And as the Army has begun reaching out to former patients, some have attempted to request medical records from years prior to see if McGraw documented exams he performed on them. At least one woman, however, was told her file no longer exists because of a military-wide transition to a new medical records system in 2019.

An official familiar with the situation told CNN that Tripler Army Medical Center was working through how to retrieve potentially lost records.

McGraw first commissioned in the Navy in 2004 and attended the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland, a health sciences school for the military. But a person familiar with the situation said McGraw didn’t finish his schooling there, effectively ending his short career in the Navy. He then joined the Army in 2006 and served initially as an infantry officer.

Eventually, McGraw became a physician assistant, serving at Fort Campbell in Kentucky with the 101st Airborne and Fort Sam Houston in Texas, before going to medical school at East Tennessee State University while still in the army, according to his service record.

McGraw has not been criminally charged. According to Texas’ Bell County Courthouse database, he was unable to attend a hearing for a speeding violation on Nov. 10 because he was “admitted for inpatient care for an unspecified amount of time.” Multiple sources said McGraw was scheduled to be released Thursday, Nov 20.

The source familiar with the investigation said Army officials were considering placing McGraw into a pretrial confinement upon discharge from the health facility.

In a statement to CNN on Friday, Daniel Conway, a lawyer representing McGraw, said, “We’ve seen a significant number of new allegations – particularly as Army law enforcement is inviting former patients to come forward. At this point, beyond the allegations themselves, we’ve seen no records to support that patients were touched in a way that was not medically indicated. We believe that the Army previously resolved at least one of the allegations because of an eye-witness account by another provider present. We’ll continue to cooperate. We remain disappointed at Army law enforcement’s handling of the investigation.”

Tripler Army Medical Center said in a statement released on Friday it was “in the process” of notifying patients seen by McGraw between June 2019 and June 2023 that their former doctor is the subject of an Army Criminal Investigation Command investigation.

Tripler staff are “fully cooperating” with the investigation, it said. “Patients will be provided with resources to learn about the investigation, file concerns, get answers to questions, and arrange medical care and support.”

Col. William Bimson, director of Tripler, said he recognized the information “is incredibly upsetting” to patients, “and we are here to provide support.”

The Fort Hood Medical Center also released a statement, saying, “Fort Hood recognizes the great trust and responsibility inherent in caring for our soldiers, families, and beneficiaries and will continue to care for everyone involved throughout this process.”

For Hough, a survivor of military sexual trauma herself who said she is personally communicating with McGraw’s alleged victims daily, this case shows that the protections Shield of Sisters and other advocacy groups pushed for years ago after Guillén’s murder “were ignored and just forgotten.”

Officer: Military is ‘toxic’ for women

CNN’s Brianna Keilar highlights the story of a highly qualified Naval officer and former SEAL team six member who suddenly lost her post. The impression from internal sources was that it was because of her gender. Her story is part of an exclusive report in which CNN spoke to more than a dozen active-duty women across the military branches who say they ‘aren’t welcome’ and feel ‘targeted.’ They believe US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s policies are pushing women out and discouraging others from joining the military.

Officer: Military is ‘toxic’ for women

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The Army families Hough spoke with in the wake of this case are “feeling extreme betrayal” after they trusted the military with their health care, she said.

Earlier this year, an Army doctor, Maj. Michael Stockin, pleaded guilty in a military court after he was accused of touching or viewing the genitals of more than 40 of his male patients under the guise of medical treatment between 2019 and 2022, according to court documents. His victims are now seeking $225 million in a civil suit against the Army.

That had been considered perhaps the largest such military abuse case – until this one.

“This is going to go down as the largest scandal in the military’s history,” Hough said. “And if they don’t hear us now, we’re done… And if they don’t make the reform and stick to it after this, then there’s no hope.”

After the combat veteran shouted in the hospital lobby at Fort Hood, what transpired over the course of the next several hours, as he and his wife tried to sound the alarm both at the hospital and with broader Army leadership at Fort Hood, was an emotional and bureaucratic nightmare, according to the source familiar with his report.

When the couple went to the III Armored Corps headquarters building at Fort Hood, the combat veteran told a staff sergeant at the front desk that he needed to exercise the commander’s “open door policy,” a protocol circulated in a base memo earlier this year guaranteeing service members could bring concerns directly to the commander.

The couple were told two commanders were out of state and couldn’t see him. Then they turned to the hospital command team, who suggested the female officer fill out a form and said senior officials were either busy or out of the office. They then tried to turn to the inspector general’s office – only to be told it was located in the first place they tried.

Finally, the husband left a voicemail on the commanding general’s hotline, according to the source familiar with what the veteran told investigators. He didn’t hear back from anyone in base leadership for days, the source said.

Over the following weeks, investigators contacted and interviewed other women they could identify from the images and videos they’d found on McGraw’s phone, including Jane Doe in the lawsuit.

One alleged victim – an Army spouse CNN is identifying as Megan, a pseudonym – said she tried repeatedly to report McGraw for inappropriate behavior nearly a year earlier, in late 2024. But she hit so many dead ends that she gave up trying, she said.

Long before Megan visited Fort Hood’s Darnall Medical Center in December 2024 for a sinus infection between pre-natal check-ups, she had requested never to see a male gynecologist. She was a sexual assault survivor.

When McGraw entered her exam room, Megan said she asked for a chaperone from the medical staff to join the appointment – something patients have a right to during sensitive exams. McGraw told her everyone was busy, she said.

Megan said McGraw kept putting his hand on her knee, even though she told him he was making her uncomfortable, and he pressured her to have a vaginal exam.

“I looked at him like he’s crazy because it’s a sinus infection. I don’t need an exam,” Megan said. “He said. ‘It’s perfectly fine, (you’re) due for one. It’s mandatory.’”

Four times he pressured her to let him examine her and four times she refused, Megan said. She consented to an external exam of her abdomen. But McGraw insisted she allow him to do a breast exam and instructed her to pull up her shirt above her breasts.

When she refused, he pulled her shirt up, she said. She pulled it back down and McGraw grazed her breasts as he examined her stomach. He measured her stomach from her pubic bone, then told her that he needed to go lower.

“No, you don’t,” she said she told him, but he pulled down her leggings, his hand grazing her vulva. “If you don’t remove your hands from my body I will punch you in the face. This exam is over,” Megan said she then told him.

She immediately approached a woman working behind the front desk of the clinic and, tears streaming down her face, told her what had happened.

“Oh,” she replied, nonplussed, according to Megan, who asked to report the incident.

She said the woman told her everyone who could take a report was busy. She could either come back later or call a number. Megan left, and over the course of the next few weeks tried to file a formal complaint about what happened four times, only to be constantly transferred between departments at Fort Hood and disconnected. None of them ever took her report.

Megan gave up reporting McGraw, she said, had her baby, and eventually moved with her husband to his next assignment, leaving Fort Hood behind, but not the trauma of her experience there.

When the story of McGraw’s suspension broke in the news, Megan’s husband showed it to her on his phone.

“It’s that doctor you told me about,” he told her. “He’s being investigated.”

“No f***ing way,” she responded in disbelief. “No, he’s not. No one cares.”

A couple days later, an Army investigator contacted Megan to see if McGraw had ever mistreated her as a patient.

Fort Hood has long had a reputation for being plagued by misconduct. The base was previously forced to confront significant cultural and policy shortcomings in the wake of Guillén’s murder in 2020.

The highly publicized tragedy kicked off a reckoning within the Army, and military more broadly, in how the services handle sexual assault and harassment and the related reporting and investigation mechanisms.

An independent review of Fort Hood in the wake of Guillen’s murder resulted in 70 recommendations, including many specifically addressing shortcomings within the Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program at Fort Hood, or SHARP, the Army more broadly, and US Army Criminal Investigation Command.

The review found that the SHARP program at Fort Hood was “structurally flawed” and “ineffective, to the extent that there was a permissive environment for sexual assault and sexual harassment.”

The Defense Department also undertook its own 90-day review of sexual assault in the military in 2021, resulting in 82 recommendations to improve accountability, victim support and prevention.

Last year the number of reports of sexual assault involving service members fell 4%, according to the Pentagon. Hough, the founder of Shield of Sisters, the advocacy group, said that’s in part because “people don’t feel like they’re going to be believed, just like this.”

Given Hegseth’s public comments about anonymous complaints in the military, which made up more than a third of sexual assault reports in the military last year, advocates and defense personnel alike believe an already cumbersome reporting process could become more complicated.

“The number of reports is going to drop significantly lower,” said Hough.

The lawsuit also claims that McGraw’s alleged behavior goes back to his assignment at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, his duty station prior to Fort Hood where he completed his residency.

The Army is sending letters to 1,600 patients McGraw came into contact with at Tripler to inform them of the investigation. CNN spoke to one military spouse who claims she was a victim of McGraw’s from his time at Tripler, but she has not yet received a letter.

CNN is identifying the woman as Lisa, a pseudonym, to protect her identity.

In late summer of 2021, Lisa went to the hospital for a fetal heartrate test while full term with the pregnancy of her fourth child. She said she encountered McGraw as she was leaving the facility.

“I could check your cervix really quick,” she says he told her, urging her to come to the OB-GYN clinic.

Lisa, who initially liked and trusted McGraw, says she tried to decline the exam, but that he repeatedly pressured her and she finally acquiesced.

During the exam, Lisa said McGraw had his cell phone in his breast pocket, camera faced out.

“He said he was waiting on a phone call since he was the only one in the clinic,” Lisa told CNN. “Since every exam his phone was in his pocket, it didn’t register as weird.”

She said it was a very rough examination – so much so that her “water broke and amniotic fluid gushed out on the floor.”

“He said to me with a wink and a smile, ‘We’re having a baby today,’ then directed me not to tell anyone that my water had broke until I was off base because we both could get in a lot of trouble,” since the exam wasn’t scheduled, Lisa said. She went home and came back to the hospital with her husband.

When it recently came to light that an unnamed obstetrician at Fort Hood was alleged to have been secretly recording his patients during exams, Lisa saw the name of a law firm that was representing victims in a news story and made a plan to call the next morning.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. She was replaying every moment that she had come into contact with McGraw, dry heaving, running back and forth to the bathroom.

In the morning, Lisa called the reception line and asked, “Is the doctor Blaine McGraw?” Yes, she was told.

“One day, my son will ask me about when he was born, and I don’t want to talk about it. It makes me want to throw up,” she said. “He took that from me and I’m never going to get that back.”

EDITOR’S NOTE:  This story has been updated with additional information.