A former Fort Hood soldier on Tuesday filed a $10 million administrative complaint against the Army, alleging it failed to protect her and other women living in the barracks as evidence pointed toward a serial predator sexually assaulting residents. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)
A former Fort Hood soldier on Tuesday filed a $10 million administrative complaint against the Army, alleging it failed to protect her and other women living in the barracks as evidence pointed toward a serial predator sexually assaulting residents.
Mayra Diaz, then a 19-year-old private, was alone in her barracks room on the night of July 15, 2022, when Sgt. Greville Clarke knocked on her door. Though his face was concealed by a medical mask, Diaz saw his rank on his uniform and opened the door. Clarke then pulled out a handgun and forced his way into the room. He tied her up, raped her, waterboarded her and then strangled her to near death with the cord from her Army-issued lamp.
Diaz filed the administrative claim through the Federal Tort Claims Act, the law that outlines procedures for presenting and resolving administrative monetary claims for personal injury, property damage, or death arising from the alleged negligence of officers and employees of the federal government. It is a required first step toward a lawsuit. In the paperwork, Diaz described the circumstances of the violent attack she survived and alleged the Army’s negligence allowed for it.
“What happened to my client is horrific — no one should ever have to endure what she went through,” Christine Dunn, Diaz’s attorney, said in a statement. “But it’s made even worse knowing that her attack could have been prevented if the Army had taken reasonable measures to protect her and others on base.”
Heather Hagan, a spokeswoman for the Army, confirmed it received Diaz’s filing but did not provide further comment.
Clarke was arrested three months after he attacked Diaz following an attack on another soldier. She escaped him, naked and screaming, after three hours held captive in her own room, drawing the attention of other soldiers in the building. As Clarke fled the scene, he dropped his cellphone, which led investigators to identify and arrest him later that day.
It was not until preparing for Clarke’s 2025 court-martial that Diaz learned he had attacked three other women at Fort Hood before her, according to the administrative complaint.
Clarke was convicted in April of attempted premeditated murder, rape, assault, kidnapping and burglary, among other crimes, and sentenced to life in prison. He died of an apparent suicide in his prison cell in September, according to the complaint.
The Army has an ongoing investigation into Clarke’s death at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and could not comment on the cause, Hagan said.
Diaz was attacked at Fort Hood less than two years after the Army received findings from the Fort Hood Independent Review Committee, which said Fort Hood’s environment was permissive for sexual assault to occur and that the base did not do enough to prevent crime. It noted women stationed at Fort Hood told them about male soldiers improperly entering barracks rooms as they were in various stages of undressing, as well as a need for better lighting and security measures.
The Army convened the committee to review the base after Spc. Vanessa Guillen was killed in April 2020 by a fellow soldier in an arms rooms on post. During the two-month search for Guillen, her family, veterans and soldiers shared stories of concern about the safety of Fort Hood.
“At the time of my attack, Fort Hood leadership had full and comprehensive awareness of the Committee’s 2020 findings, which demanded urgent action to rectify the numerous safety concerns plaguing the base,” Diaz wrote in the administrative complaint. “In spite of that awareness, the leaders at my base persisted in their failure to act. Only after my attack in July 2022 did Army leadership implement a ‘comprehensive approach to reinforce safety and security’ in the barracks, despite having had the 2020 Report’s data on security risks at Fort Hood for nearly two years.”
Army Criminal Investigation Division referenced those safety and security reinforcements triggered by Diaz’s attack in an October 2022 news release about Clarke’s arrest. Those measures included safety briefings, education on reporting suspicious activity, women’s self-defense classes and barracks inspections.
The measures did not include a clear warning that a woman had nearly died during a violent attack in the barracks. The base chose not to alert women out of fear of compromising the investigation or of causing undue alarm in the public, officials at the base said last year.
“Because the Army took no action to address the string of female soldiers attacked in their barracks in the year before my attack, Sgt. Clarke was empowered to continue preying on the female soldiers at Fort Hood, including me,” Diaz wrote in her administrative claim. “As a direct and proximate result of the Army’s negligence, I sustained life-threatening physical injuries, as well as severe and lifelong emotional distress. Ultimately, I was forced to voluntary discharge from the Army, forsaking the future I had dreamed of.”
