Oakland County doctor charged with sexually abusing women, taking nude photographs of children • Michigan Advance
An Oakland County doctor accused of filming children undressing and sexually abusing unconscious women in hospital beds may have claimed more victims than disgraced Olympia doctor Larry Nassar, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said at a news conference Tuesday.
In one of the worst cases of sexual violence he has seen in nearly 40 years of service with the police, Bouchard said that unlike Nassar, 40-year-old internist Dr. Oumair Aejaz has no personal or medical relationship with his victims. Hundreds of women and children came forward with their stories of abuse in the Nassar case before he was sentenced to what were effectively three life sentences by a federal court and two state courts between 2017 and 2018.
“This person is possibly one of the worst I’ve ever seen because there’s no specific category. It’s not just children, it’s not just women, it’s not just men. It goes from a 2-year-old to a grown woman, and the victimization is so comprehensive and the perversion is so great that we’re only just beginning to comprehend it,” Bouchard said. “There’s no one who’s off limits because of this sick, sick activity.”
Aejaz is accused of using hidden cameras to film children as young as 2 and adult women of various ages in hospital rooms, bathrooms, locker rooms, bedrooms and closets. As a contract doctor, he had access to patients at Ascension Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc Township and Henry Ford Macomb in Clinton Township, according to the sheriff’s office.
He is accused of child sexual abuse, four counts of photographing an unclothed person and five counts of computer use to commit a crime. He was arraigned in Rochester Hills court last week.
Bouchard expects that many more victims will be identified as the case progresses, as the sexual assault is believed to have occurred at least six years ago. Aejaz is an Indian citizen and has been working in the United States on a visa since around 2011. She moved to Dawson, Alabama, in 2018 and returned to Michigan some time later.
He is currently in jail on $2 million bail.
“As a mother, this case is very heartbreaking to me,” said Oakland County District Attorney Karen McDonald, as the crimes charged involve reports that Aejaz targeted a mother and her two- and four-year-old children at the Goldfish Swim School in Rochester Hills in August 2023.
“These allegations stem from a mother who took her young children to a swim school, took them into a changing room and changed them there,” McDonald said. “And the allegations are that the defendant filmed them from a nearby changing room. As a mother, this is terrifying and we will do everything we can to hold him accountable.”
Bouchard and McDonald repeatedly praised the swim school for its cooperation in the investigation, and there is no evidence that anyone at the Goldfish knew what was going on.
It was Aejaz’s wife who presented the clear materials to support the charges, McDonald said.
Aejaz has two young sons, Bouchard said, and he “wouldn’t put it past him” to use his sons to reach out to other children at swim school and elsewhere.
Law enforcement seized six computers, four cellphones and 15 external storage devices during their search, including a hard drive containing 13,000 videos that law enforcement must review, Bouchard said. The review process could take up to six months.
“It’s hard to watch the videos of this operation where a woman is lying practically unconscious in a hospital bed and he rapes her in front of a two-year-old because they think they’re having a great day at the pool and they’re being filmed naked,” Bouchard said.
Aejaz did not appear to have specific victims, Bouchard said. Unlike Nassar, there could be virtually nothing linking a victim to Aejaz other than proximity. Women and girls said in their victim impact statements that Nassar was their friend or a trusted doctor who treated Olympic athletes, and they felt lucky to have been seen by him before the abuse.
“Given Nassar’s incredible perversion and destructive power, you have to say he had a much smaller group of potential victims,” Bouchard said. “The perversion of this individual knows no bounds, so we need the help of the public and the victims, because many of them we may not even be able to identify because we have so many videos of people. We have no idea who they are … (or) where the location is.”
Bouchard said the scope of the investigation is broad and could extend across Michigan, other states and even countries.
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