An Army obstetrician entrusted with the most intimate care of his patients spent five years, prosecutors allege, turning their examinations into opportunities for abuse, and secretly filming them as he did.
Major Blaine D. McGraw, 48, will face a general court-martial after the US Army referred nine charges against him spanning 272 individual specifications and 93 alleged victims, in one of the largest sexual-abuse cases the military medical system has ever confronted.
The alleged offences, which include abusive sexual contact, sexual assault and the indecent recording of patients, are said to have taken place between 2021 and 2026 at two Army hospitals.
The Charges Referred to a General Court-Martial
The Army's Office of Special Trial Counsel announced on 4 August that it had referred the case for trial. Referral is the military equivalent of an indictment, the formal step that sends a case to court-martial after review.
The nine charges break down into 272 specifications, the discrete allegations underpinning them. According to the Office of Special Trial Counsel, they comprise 91 specifications of abusive sexual contact and sexual assault, 66 of indecent recording, 91 of assault consummated by a battery and 18 of conduct unbecoming an officer.
This sits alongside single counts of attempted sexual assault, attempted subornation of perjury, solicitation to commit perjury, extramarital sexual misconduct, wilfully disobeying a superior officer and dereliction of duty.
The path to referral ran through a preliminary hearing earlier this year. An Article 32 hearing officer, whose role is to weigh whether a case should proceed, found probable cause for the majority of the charges and specifications and recommended a general court-martial, the most serious tier of military trial. The case will next be assigned to a military judge to set dates for arraignment and trial.
An Abuse Case Uncovered by a Patient's Husband
The investigation began, according to the Army, with a single moment of vigilance in a treatment room. In October, the husband of a patient at Fort Hood's Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center caught McGraw recording video on his phone during a transvaginal ultrasound without consent.
McGraw then agreed to let investigators search his phone, the newspaper reported, and that search is said to have uncovered evidence of sexual abuse against multiple patients. He was suspended from providing care, and in December was placed in pretrial confinement at the Bell County Jail near the base; his medical licence is no longer active, according to online records.
The alleged offending was not confined to Texas.
Prosecutors say McGraw's crimes were committed against women while he served first at Tripler Army Medical Centre in Honolulu and later at Fort Hood, and the Army has said it notified roughly 3,000 patients as part of the criminal investigation, a measure of how many people passed through his care during the years in question.
A Reckoning for the Army's Medical System
The case has expanded relentlessly since it first became public, and the growth of the victim count tells its own story. Earlier charging documents referenced 44 women, then 73, then more than 90, before the referred case settled at 93 alleged victims, each addition reflecting further patients who came forward or were identified as the inquiry widened.
The scale has prompted institutional soul-searching. The Army and its inspector general opened a review of medical policies following the criminal charges, and lawyers for the women have argued that the service must account for the oversights that allowed a single physician to treat patients for years before the alleged abuse was discovered. More than 50 patients are pursuing a separate civil claim tied to the case.
For now, the proceedings move to a military courtroom, where the 93 allegations gathered over five years and two hospitals will be tested one specification at a time.
A doctor once trusted to guard his patients' well-being stands accused of exploiting that trust on a scale the Army medical system is still struggling to comprehend.
If you have been affected by sexual assault, confidential support is available. In the US, the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached on 800-656-4673. In the UK, the Rape Crisis national line is 0808 500 2222.
