A female soldier who was attacked and raped by a convicted serial predator at Fort Hood has filed a $10 million personal injury complaint against the U.S. Army, alleging that the service was aware of sexual crimes and physical abuse but did nothing to warn others or to put additional safety measures into place.
Mayra Diaz, 22, filed the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) administrative complaint on Jan. 20 based on what she endured earlier this decade at Fort Hood (known as Fort Cavazos at the time) at the hands of Sgt. Greville Clarke, an Army noncommissioned officer who after three weeks of court-martial proceedings was sentenced to life in prison for multiple sexual assaults and physical abuse. In total, Clarke attacked five female soldiers in the Fort Hood barracks over a 19-month period, from March 16, 2021, to and Oct. 2, 2022.
He was apprehended on Oct. 3, 2022, and held in pretrial confinement throughout the duration of the investigation and court-martial. Clarke, 31 years of age at the time of his sentencing, was convicted on 29 counts including rape, sexual assault, attempted premeditated murder, indecent visual records, robbery, physical assault, intent to commit kidnapping, and obstruction of justice. He was also found guilty of 29 separate specifications, and not guilty of two specifications (one specification of attempted premeditated murder and attempted fraudulent use of an access device).
He was ultimately sentenced to 112.5 years in prison. His sentence included a rank reduction in rank to E-1, a dishonorable discharge from the Army, and a total forfeiture of pay and allowances. Also, he refused to attend court and the trial in person.
While serving his life sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Clarke was found dead in his prison cell on Sept. 19, 2025 due to apparent suicide.
Military.com reached out to the Army and Pentagon for comment.
A Brutal Attack
Mayra Diaz enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 2021, serving as a carpentry and masonry specialist at Fort Hood in Texas from approximately February 2022 to August 2023.
She was 19 years old when she moved to Fort Hood in February 2022 as an Army private, saying in her complaint that peers warned her to heed caution for purpose of safety due to being a woman living on base.
As she recounts, on the night of Friday, July 15, 2022, Diaz was alone in her barracks room when she heard loud knocking at her door. When she looked through the peep hole, she saw an individual wearing an Army uniform. Unsure whether to open the door to an unidentified soldier in uniform at night, but simultaneously told by sergeants that room checks should be expected, Diaz opened the door and saw not one of her sergeants "but rather a man I did not know, whose face was obscured."
"He lifted his uniform shirt to reveal a handgun and then forced himself into my room," reads the complaint shared with Military.com. "He tied my hands together above my head with tactical cord and blindfolded me. I saw under the blindfold that he had put on a condom."
He threatened to kill me if I looked again. I begged him to stop what he was doing. He proceeded to violently rape me.
The situation escalated as she "begged him to stop what he was doing." After raping her, Clarke forced her to shower. Then, per the complaint, he put her on her bed, poured water on her face, and waterboarded her to the point of choking.
Clarke then wrapped a cord around her neck, which she stepped on in an apparent attempt to kill her.
"I remember smelling bleach and hearing him going through my cabinets," the complaint reads. "He took with him my room key, military and state IDs, wallet, car keys, electronic devices, bedding and pillows and left my room."
Near-Death Experience
The situation became life threatening after Clarke, whose identity at the time was obviously unknown, left her room. She recalled being in and out of consciousness on her bed for approximately 1 1/2 days, waking up briefly to vomit.
Her friends checked on her the following Sunday afternoon, July 17, after receiving silence in response to their messages. They found her semi-conscious in bed, in the same place she was left by Clarke roughly 36 hours prior, with bruises on her face and neck.
"At that time, I was experiencing lapses in memory and could not explain exactly what had happened to me," said Diaz, per the complaint. "My friend called our team leader, who called our platoon leader, who called the military police.
"As we waited for the police, I looked into a mirror but could not see myself clearly as my vision was extremely blurry. Eventually the police arrived, and I was taken to the hospital on post, Darnell Army Medical Center, where I first started to recall details of the assault."
Diaz's assigned Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention Program (SHARP) representative met her at the emergency room, leading to the filing of an unrestricted report. Agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) arrived at the hospital later that day to begin their investigation, all while Diaz was still processing the assault and struggling to come to terms with her memories of what happened.
She spent four days in the hospital due to extensive injuries.
I had linear wounds across my neck, red pinprick spots on my chin, and blood-red eyes from subconjunctival hemorrhaging—all signs of strangulation—as well as injuries on my wrists from the restraints.
"A strangulation expert confirmed that my confused state and missing memories were symptoms of anoxia—total oxygen deprivation to the brain," she added. "I had to be observed as my lungs were not adequately absorbing oxygen, and there was blood in my urine. While in the hospital I was prescribed medications for sexually transmitted infections, an emergency contraceptive pill, and pain medications."
Leaving the Service
She was released from the hospital on or about July 21, 2022, and returned home to recover in California, where she remained on leave until Aug. 22, 2022.
"While a small number of my friends on base were aware of my attack, Army officials made no official warning to the broader Fort Hood community about what had happened to me," she said.
Diaz returned to Fort Hood in August 2022 after her leave concluded, living in the barracks again but briefly due to fear and the fact that her attacker at the time had not yet been caught. She requested to move off post into family housing "but faced resistance from my major."
She also learned something else: Between Clarke’s 2022 arrest and his 2025 trial, she was only aware that he had attacked her and another female soldier in October 2022.
"I was not aware of any other victims of Sergeant Clarke during this period," she said. "In Spring 2025, my then-attorney informed me for the first time that Sgt. Clarke had attacked three other women at Fort Hood before me."
'Horrifying' Suffering by Diaz, Victims
Diaz is represented in the matter by Christine Dunn of the law firm Sanford Heisler, who is also co-chair of the firm’s Sexual Violence, Title IX, and Victims’ Rights Practice Group, and associate Jillian Seymour.
Dunn told Military.com on Tuesday that while Clarke was culpable in his actions, the Army is as well because they "failed her."
"What happened to her was preventable, Dunn said. "She should never have had to go through the horrific events that she went through. And so, she wants the Army to be held accountable so that this kind of thing never happens to anyone else.
"Women on Fort Hood have historically been very unsafe. There's instance after instance of women being victimized at Fort Hood, so the Army needs to take accountability so that this stops happening."
The timing of Diaz's complaint, Dunn added, is tied to Clarke's court-martial in the spring of 2025 when she understood "the full scope of the Army's negligence" which was the first time she heard about all the other victims. She had only known about one other one.
It also took her time to come forward and reliving the nature of what happened to her, Dunn said. Asked about the scope of what she endured, Dunn said that what happened to her and others was "horrifying."
"I was even more horrified when I learned that this had been going on for a year-and-a-half and that the Army was not taking any measures to protect women in the barracks," Dunn said. "They weren't warning them, they weren't putting security cameras in place."
There were measures that could have been taken to prevent this, and they didn't do it.
Asked about the after-effects, Dunn said that Diaz had her military dream "derailed" and will likely struggle emotionally for the remainder of her life.
Sexual assaults at Fort Hood over the years have garnered widespread attention, all the way to the halls of Congress. It's been an unfortunate trend Dunn and Seymour have closely followed.
"We would definitely consider the sexual violence crisis and the Army at large, but especially at Fort Hood, to be an epidemic," Seymour said. "And there have been numerous reports that really provide data that establishes the rate of sexual assault is higher at Fort Hood compared to other spaces.
"Part of that I think really has to do with safety measures that are put in place, especially in the barracks to make sure that these female soldiers are protected. Time and again, we've just seen the Army fail on doing that and keeping the premises safe there at Fort Hood."
As previously reported by Military.com, on Dec. 15, 2025, the firm filed FTCA complaints against the Army on behalf of seven Jane Does—all of whom were sexually abused or non-consensually videotaped by Army doctor Blaine McGraw during medical appointments at the Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood and the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
