The Army suspended a doctor from a Fort Hood, Texas, medical center last week, while a Texas law firm says it is representing over a dozen patients from the base who say the OB-GYN doctor took photos and videos of them during exams.
Fort Hood officials announced last week that a doctor at the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center was no longer seeing patients and that the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, CID, had begun an investigation “within hours” of a patient’s allegations.
Army officials did not confirm the doctor’s identity, details of their suspension, or directly respond to the allegations due to the ongoing investigation.
Andrew Cobos, a former Army officer and personal injury attorney with The Cobos Law Firm, told Task & Purpose that he is representing 12 patients of the dismissed doctor. Christine Dunn, a lawyer with Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, said she represents three of the doctor’s patients and has been contacted by others.
Both attorneys told Task & Purpose that they are preparing to file Federal Tort Claims Act complaints against the Army. These FTCA complaints can lead to civil lawsuits, and if filed, the Army would have six months to investigate them and then decide whether to settle or deny the claim, which could kick off a civil lawsuit.
FTCA claims are separate from a potential criminal case under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
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Cobos’ firm said in an email that some of the patients allege the suspended doctor “covertly” photographed and video recorded them during OB-GYN exams and suggested “unnecessary medical procedures.”
The two lawyers also alleged that the doctor kept a personal cell phone in their breast pocket during examinations, which was the source of the photos and videos.
Dunn said her clients “didn’t have any inkling that this had gone on,” until they met with Army Criminal Investigation Division officials and were shown screenshots of themselves from the videos.
According to an anonymous witness statement provided to Task & Purpose by Cobos, one patient received a call from CID on Oct. 23 requesting that she come in and answer questions about her current medical provider. On Oct. 24, the patient met with CID agents who showed her a screenshot of a video taken by the doctor during her appointment in mid-October. The patient said she left “without getting any real answers” because the investigation is ongoing. She was handed a pamphlet with support services and was told that CID would reach out if they needed more.
“When I got to my car, I broke down. I sat there crying — trying to process what had just happened. This was a doctor I trusted. A doctor who made me feel heard and cared for,” the patient wrote in her statement. “I was left questioning everything — the care I received, the system that was supposed to protect me, and whether I or my daughters could ever truly be safe in a doctor’s office again.”
Fort Hood officials said in their statement last week that they were contacting “all patients” of the provider at the Fort Hood medical center and Army CID agents were contacting patients who were “potentially affected.”
“It’s hard to believe that it could happen to this many patients without there being some red flags, without someone seeing something that this should have caused concern,” Dunn said.
