Three young women have filed a lawsuit against a Detroit-area doctor alleging he used hidden cameras to film them naked in the changing room of a private swimming school where he brought his young sons for lessons.
The three, who are also suing the Goldfish Swim School in Rochester, Michigan, for unspecified damages, appear to be the first alleged victims of Dr. Oumair Aejaz to file a civil lawsuit against the physician, who is currently in jail accused of filming himself molesting a 6-year-old and using hidden cameras to record women and children.
And they are not likely to be the last.
“As more evidence comes to light in this disturbing case, we anticipate additional individuals will come forward to join the litigation against Dr. Oumair Aejaz and Goldfish Swim,” said Megan Bonanni, an attorney representing the three women anonymously identified as Jane Does 1, 2 and 3.
Aejaz, 40, is suspected of secretly recording hundreds of other people without their consent, as well as filming himself sexually assaulting unconscious hospital patients, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said at a press conference in August.
“This individual potentially is one of the worst I’ve ever seen,” Bouchard said at the time. “Because there’s no particular 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. The victimization is so broad, and the perversion so great, that we’re just beginning to wrap our arms around it.”
In August, Aejaz was charged with 10 counts, including one count of sexual abuse of a child, one count of using a computer to create and/or reproduce child sexual abuse material, and four counts of capturing or recording children under 18 and two women while they were nude.
And then earlier this month, the doctor was hit with 17 new felony charges of allegedly videotaping himself molesting a 6-year-old child on at least six occasions in 2023 and this year. If convicted on the most serious two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges, he faces anywhere from 25 years to life in prison.
“We know that there are additional victims, and we ask anyone with information to contact the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office,” county prosecutor Karen McDonald said earlier this month in a statement. Aejaz’s lawyer, Mariell Lehman, did not respond to a request for comment on this new lawsuit.
Police said Aejaz, originally from India, was working in the U.S. on a visa since arriving in 2011. A specialist in internal medicine, Aejaz completed his residency at Detroit Sinai Grace Hospital before moving to Dawson, Alabama. He returned to Oakland County in 2018.
The three Jane Does suing Aejaz and the swim school said they were unaware their privacy had been invaded until they were notified by investigators and asked to confirm that the images allegedly captured by the doctor’s cameras were of them, the court papers state. One of the women may have been a minor at the time of the alleged incidents.
They said the swim school failed to protect them from an alleged predator by insisting that they change in an open area instead of providing them with a private changing area.
“Goldfish failed in its basic duties and obligations to protect them from such harm,” states the lawsuit, which was filed in the Oakland County Circuit Court.
“There’s nothing we can say about this right now,” a woman who identified herself as a manager at the Goldfish Swim School in Rochester said when contacted Wednesday by NBC News.
Aejaz, who lives about 2 miles south of the swim school in Rochester Hills, Michigan, is being held on a $2 million bond.
Acting on a tip from Aejaz’s wife, police arrested the physician some two weeks after raiding his home Aug. 8 and seized six computers, four cellphones and 15 external storage devices.
Investigators alleged that Aejaz had allegedly used secret cameras to record children as young as 2 and women of all ages recovering from operations at the hospitals where he had been working for at least six years.
Aejaz allegedly placed the cameras in hospital changing rooms, closets, bathrooms and private rooms. Police also alleged that he placed cameras in the swim club’s changing room.
The physician had privileges at Henry Ford Macomb Hospital in Clinton Township and Ascension Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc Township. Both hospitals are cooperating with investigators.
“Due to the lengthy time that he’s been involved in this activity and the large amounts of storage that we have in our possession, we believe there’s obviously a lot more to be uncovered,” Bouchard said after Aejaz was arrested.