An OB-GYN has been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct. The state medical board let him continue practicing.

The woman, 52, was lying on the examination table at a clinic in Richland, Washington. Her legs were spread and supported.

The OB-GYN, Dr. Mark Mulholland, stood between her legs, inquiring about the woman’s sex life as he had done in previous visits, she wrote in a complaint filed with Washington state health care regulators.

She said Mulholland had previously asked her about her sexual pleasure and whether she had a boyfriend, a strange way to find out about a patient’s sexual activity, she thought. But it was her last checkup after her hysterectomy and the last time she expected to see Mulholland.

“Are you masturbating?” Mulholland asked the woman out on their last date, according to her complaint.

The question shocked her. She wrote that Mulholland explained that he wanted to “make sure the nerves were intact.”

Then, the woman wrote, he inserted his fingers into her vagina and pumped his hand back and forth in a manner that she said was “sexual and not medical.”

“Does it hurt?” The woman said Mulholland asked her, before ending their visit by saying “the game room is open” — a comment she interpreted as Mulholland allowing her to engage in sexual activity.

The woman said she left the room in shock. She walked to the parking lot of the Kadlec Clinic-Associated Physicians for Women, got in her car and sat in disbelief, she said in an interview with KUOW and ProPublica. What happened seemed terribly wrong to her, she said.

Mulholland did not respond to requests for comment for this article after receiving a detailed list of findings via email and letter. His lawyer declined to comment.

What the woman didn’t know was that at the time of her examination in February 2025, the Washington Medical Board had already received complaints from four other women since 2022 accusing Mulholland of sexual misconduct. And yet he was allowed to continue seeing patients.

The accounts recounted by the women, whom KUOW and ProPublica are not naming to protect their privacy, included descriptions of Mulholland touching them unnecessarily, using sexual language or performing painful or apparently sexual pelvic exams that involved moving his fingers in and out.

The commission also took testimony a year before the woman’s appointment in February 2025 from three of Mulholland’s colleagues with their own disturbing stories. These included overhearing or observing him telling his patients that they had “tight” and “nice” vaginas, touching and slapping his patients’ legs, and aggressively pulling down a patient’s pants without permission.

Washington law authorizes the commission to take emergency action and suspend a physician’s license while a disciplinary proceeding is pending. The law states that a suspension is defensible if it is more likely than not that the doctor poses an “immediate threat to public health and safety.”

In Mulholland’s case, the commission did not choose suspension. Instead, it released a formal statement of charges accusing Mulholland of abuse and unprofessional conduct in April 2025 — more than a year after the commission’s investigator submitted his reports on two of the complaints for review and 11 months after Mulholland was offered an informal settlement that he apparently did not sign.

Even after the commission declared its charges against Mulholland, he was allowed to continue practicing while the case progressed. He saw patients until May, before going on leave.

At least 84 patients have filed lawsuits against Mulholland or his employer since the state’s investigation became public. Court filings by Mulholland’s attorney, filed in response to the lawsuits, denied any wrongdoing or inappropriate conduct toward the women. He also denied the allegations made by the medical board and is entitled to a hearing to contest them.

Emily Volland, a spokeswoman for Kadlec and its subsidiary, Providence Health System, said Mulholland was no longer employed by Kadlec. Volland declined to comment on the allegations against him, but said via email: “We take the safety of our patients very seriously and are fully cooperating with the state in this matter.” »

Prosecutions against Mulholland, Kadlec and Providence are ongoing. Attorneys for Providence and Kadlec have denied allegations of negligence and wrongdoing in court filings.

While others media coverage described the commission’s prosecutions and actions in 2025, none focused on how the state handled complaints against Mulholland in the three years before he agreed to restrictions on his license.

Washington state has been criticized in the past for its handling of sexual misconduct complaints. A 2021 Seattle Times investigation found that in 282 cases of alleged sexual misconduct since 2009, state regulators took more than a year to impose disciplinary action.

Several other states have dealt with their own high-profile cases of sexual misconduct involving OB-GYNs in recent years. On March 10 for example, Columbia University in New York released a report detailing how a culture of silence within the facility allowed OB-GYN Robert Hadden to abuse more than 1,000 patients for decades.

States like Ohio and Delaware have moved aggressively to make it easier to remove patients from doctors accused of sexual misconduct.

In Washington, the medical board was not the only organization that allowed Mulholland to continue practicing.

A Kadlec risk management employee, through an attorney, acknowledged to the commission that the clinic had received patient complaints against the doctor and said they were investigated. (The letter did not describe the complaints but said they included “communication with patients regarding obesity.”) Mulholland’s privileges were never restricted or terminated, the statement said.

When local media covered the commission’s charges against Mulholland in June, it triggered a deluge of 18 new complaints over the next three months.

In September, the board placed restrictions on his license that prevented him from seeing female patients. Mulholland agreed while awaiting a hearing on his case.

Yanling Yu, former Washington medical commissioner and patient advocate with Washington Advocates for Patient Safety, would not comment directly on the Mulholland case. But she said it was ethically wrong to allow a doctor facing serious allegations of sexual misconduct to continue seeing patients while an investigation is underway.

“In an ideal regulatory system, if there is sufficient or strong evidence to support the claim, the physician’s practice should be temporarily suspended or at least summarily restricted to protect patient safety,” she wrote in an email.

Kyle Karinen, executive director of the Washington Medical Commission, said the agency was quick to act and must operate within the system created by lawmakers.

“I recognize that sometimes it takes longer than people would like, but we take this process very seriously,” Karinen said. “When we file a complaint and attend a hearing, we want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to be heard on a particular topic.”

The woman who saw Mulholland in February 2025 filed a lawsuit against the clinic and a lawsuit against the doctor, both in August. She said she was outraged after learning of the previous complaints.

She said the commission should have taken these women more seriously. “They just let him continue training,” she said.

2022: the first complaint

The first allegation of sexual misconduct against Mulholland landed in the commission’s inbox in January 2022. The perpetrator was a first-time mother who, at 41 weeks pregnant, went to undergo induced labor at Kadlec Regional Medical Center.

The woman said she had hoped a female doctor would deliver the baby. But Mulholland was the designated doctor on call the day he arrived. When she saw the doctor was a man, she asked if the nurse who was present could perform her pre-delivery cervical check, according to her complaint.

Mulholland insisted, she said. (He later told a commission investigator that because the woman was in induced labor, he had to personally know the dilation and consistency of the cervix, whether the fetus was in breech position, or whether its amniotic sac was intact. He also said that because she had high blood pressure, her delivery could not wait to be rescheduled with a female doctor.)

“I had no choice but to trust who was supposed to be trustworthy,” the woman said in an interview with KUOW and ProPublica.

In her complaint, she said Mulholland was inappropriate. When the nurse asked if she was still wearing his underwear, Mulholland joked that he was still wearing hers too, she wrote.

During the cervical check, with his fingers inside the mother-to-be, he pressed in different directions, according to her complaint. The woman said Mulholland told her he didn’t do exams that way because it hurt. Then he showed her what he described as the right path, she said in the complaint.

“The cervical check was the longest and most painful I have ever had,” she said in the complaint.

Three OB-GYNs, when presented with the woman’s description of the pelvic exam by KUOW and ProPublica, said the maneuver seemed unnecessarily painful.

“It seems strange,” said Alson Burke, an associate professor at the University of Washington who teaches medical students. how to perform pelvic exams. “Saying ‘I don’t do something because it hurts’ and then doing it makes no sense to me. »

Commission records show Mulholland said the allegation that her cervical exam took longer than usual was absurd.

“I try to be as careful, quick, gentle and efficient as possible when doing a pelvic exam, whether for gynecology or obstetrics,” he wrote in an email to a health care commission clinical investigator. “As for this being the most painful exam she has ever had, I am both surprised and sorry. I pride myself on trying to be as gentle as possible. I frequently receive compliments that my exams are less uncomfortable than most other providers, male or female.”

The nurse present during the woman’s examination told the commission that it seemed “no more painful than these types of examinations generally are.”

Until that day, the patient’s pregnancy had been a joyful experience, she said in an interview with KUOW and ProPublica. She was excited to meet her daughter and chose the outfit she would come home in.

The nurse was eventually able to recruit a midwife to assist the woman’s delivery in Mulholland’s place.

But her cervical exam with Mulholland made the childbirth experience “worse than we could have ever imagined,” the woman, now 27, said in an interview with KUOW and ProPublica. This caused depression and anxiety, she said.

“My daughter is an only child and I’m not sure if she will ever have a brother or sister because it’s been traumatic,” she told news agencies.

At the end of July 2022, the new mother’s case was closed without any disciplinary action.

At the time, it was an isolated complaint in the ad file. October who, records show, had never faced charges of sexual misconduct before the medical board before.

Then, a little over a year later, another complaint came in, this time filed by a woman who had worked for Mulholland for nearly a decade.

October 2023: A colleague and a patient speak out

According to an investigator’s report, the woman said she had worked at Kadlec Regional Medical Center for nine years and that her interactions as Mulholland’s co-worker had always been professional.

The complaint she filed in October 2023 concerned events she said occurred while she was Mulholland’s patient. She had her fallopian tubes and tissue lining her uterus removed and developed pain that was only present when she had her period.

On the day of her appointment, according to her complaint, she explained all of this to Mulholland when he began a series of questions.

“Does it hurt to have sex?” »

“No,” she replied.

Then, the woman wrote in her complaint to the medical board, Mulholland stood near her and asked in a lower tone. “Even when he’s deep inside you?”

“No,” she said.

Mulholland told the woman he needed to do a pelvic exam, according to the complaint.

While examining her, the woman wrote, Mulholland used one hand to press on her upper abdomen and with the other hand, he began to repeatedly and “forcefully” thrust his fingers into her vagina.

Burke, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said repeated “pushing” is neither a technique she uses nor something she has ever observed.

“The reason I wouldn’t recommend it is because it could be triggering and really uncomfortable for someone,” Burke said. “Does this actually help you gather information? And does the patient feel safe in the way you examine them?”

She said no part of the pelvic exam should be performed in such a way that its intent could be perceived as sexual.

According to the former co-worker’s complaint, every time Mulholland pushed his fingers inside, he leaned closer and asked, “Is this the same as the pain you felt?”

The woman wrote that Mulholland “effectively held her in place” on the exam table and she was unable to move to escape the pain. A medical assistant was nearby, she said.

After the pelvic exam, she said, the assistant left. Mulholland told the woman she had a “great vagina,” she wrote, and that he usually had to use three fingers, but with her he could only use two. Before leaving, the woman said in her complaint, the doctor asked her if she exercised and said he could tell.

Through an attorney, Mulholland later told the commission that he conducted all of his examinations “as respectfully as possible” and was “very aware of his patient’s reactions.”

The doctor was responding to a commission investigator’s December 2023 request for his version of what happened during the woman’s visit.

The same month, a third complaint arrived.

December 2023: Another review complaint

It was three weeks before the new year when the woman went to the medical board for help.

The patient, whose primary language is Spanish, requested an interpreter to join her in-person appointment virtually. A medical assistant had referred the woman to Mulholland to discuss a possible hysterectomy to relieve pain.

The woman later told a commission investigator that during her appointment, Mulholland entered the exam room and introduced himself. Then he lifted the sheet of paper that covered her bare lower half, looked at her genital area, then looked at her again, which made her uncomfortable. Without asking her to reposition herself, he grabbed her by the buttocks to get her off the examination table, she said.

Mulholland’s pelvic exam was aggressive, she said in her written complaint to the commission. The investigator who interviewed her wrote that the woman said he moved his fingers in and out and she felt a lot of pressure.

“I screamed at one point,” she wrote in her complaint.

A nurse was present but seemed fixated on the computer screen, the woman said.

Before the appointment ended, Mulholland said he was “can’t wait to see” the woman’s vagina again, laughed then said he couldn’t wait to see her womb again, the investigator quoted the woman as saying. When the Spanish-language interpreter on the computer screen went silent and asked Mulholland to repeat what he had said, the woman wrote in her complaint, the doctor told the interpreter there was no need to relay that last message.

The woman suffered for 12 days after her appointment with Mulholland, she told the investigator, adding that she did not want others to experience what she had experienced.

In response to that complaint, Mulholland’s attorney wrote to the commission: “At no time did he simply move his fingers multiple times with this patient or with any other.” »

(A separate report the woman filed with the Richland Police Department, which the department classified as a potential sexual offense involving “forcible touching,” was closed in 14 days. The responding officer wrote that he did not find facts indicating a crime had been committed “based on the alleged incident occurring during a medical examination.”)

The state medical board continued its investigations into the two 2023 complaints, both of which claimed Mulholland moved his fingers in and out during a pelvic exam.

The investigator in both cases turned to Mulholland’s current and former colleagues. Two said that although some patients complained about the way Mulholland communicated with them about weight concerns, they personally had no concerns. In the meantime, three other current or former colleagues described problems.

Alexis Tuck, an obstetrician-gynecologist who worked at Kadlec from 2017 to 2022, said in a statement to the commission that she noticed a trend of Mulholland’s patients switching providers because they wanted someone “except Dr. Mulholland,” and sometimes asked him for it.

She said that when she asked these patients about the reason for their change, they responded:

“He grabbed my stomach and shook it in front of my husband.”

“He called me fat and made fun of me.”

“He told me my vagina was tight during a pelvic exam.”

“He told me I had a nice vagina during a Pap test.”

“He made a comment about my tight vagina and I told my mom about it. Apparently she had a similar weird experience with him.”

Tuck told the commission that more than once, patients cried in his office while sharing their stories.

“These accounts were consistent in tone and content, painting a disturbing picture of a physician whose behavior repeatedly crossed the lines of professional and ethical conduct,” she wrote to the commission.

Tuck told the commission that the woman who filed the complaint in October 2023 was among those who described their experiences to him. Tuck said the woman was “visibly shaken and emotional” as she detailed what happened, which Tuck’s account said was generally consistent with the woman’s complaint to the medical board.

Another colleague told the commission that Mulholland once told him as a patient left the office, “I bet you were skinny like her when you were pregnant,” and another time he said he thought he saw her driving a BMW and that she looked “sexy.” Another said she found Mulholland’s comments about overweight women disrespectful.

Claims against Mulholland were piling up.

In February and March 2024, commission investigator Britta Fischer submitted the 2023 records for review.

The rest of the events were soon in the hands of the commissioners.

March-September 2024: a decision awaits

The medical board takes guidance from Washington laws, which prohibit doctors from engaging in a range of behaviors defined as sexual misconduct, on how to handle allegations against a doctor.

The law prohibits statements about a patient’s “body, appearance, sexual history, or sexual orientation” except for legitimate healthcare purposes. The law also prohibits behaviors, gestures or expressions that could “reasonably be interpreted as seductive or sexual.”

A physician may not remove a patient’s gown or drape without the patient’s consent, during emergency care or in a prison setting.

U A doctor cannot touch a person’s breasts, genitals, anus or any other “sexualized body part” unless it is “consistent with accepted community standards of practice for examination, diagnosis and treatment and within the healthcare professional’s scope of practice.”

Determining whether or not behavior is appropriate can be particularly difficult when it comes to OB-GYNs, said Emily Anderson, a professor at the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Healthcare Leadership and the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago.

“They have access to our naked female bodies, to our vaginas, to our breasts,” Anderson said. “They are allowed to do things that we don’t allow others to do, and that’s part of their job.”

There are standards for physical exams. The ethics committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists wrote that examinations should be explained appropriately, performed only with the patient’s consent, and “performed with the minimum physical contact required to obtain data for diagnosis and treatment.”

State medical boards may also review behavior patterns.

Two of the three complaints against Mulholland from 2022 to 2023 mentioned in and out movements during pelvic exams, while all three described painful pelvic exams and comments the women considered inappropriate. Three co-workers also reported hearing about or witnessing disrespectful or inappropriate comments from her, one of whom said they were directed at her.

Anderson, in a journal article, wrote that it is common to find repeated and lesser forms of misconduct among doctors who act blatantly.

“For example, sexual violations are almost always preceded by boundary violations such as inappropriate comments or touching,” the article states.

Anderson and his colleagues recommended that state regulators consider restricting a doctor’s license for several minor infractions.

Stephanie Loucka, executive director of the Ohio Medical Board, said if there are patterns of misconduct, the process will detect them, even when an OB-GYN’s actions occur under the guise of legitimate care. Ohio began its overhaul of sexual misconduct investigations seven years ago.

“If a complaint is filed, we’re going to build a factual pattern based on the assumption that there might be something there, and we’re going to put the evidence together and see where it takes us,” she said. “And that usually leads us clearly one way or the other.”

If there is a threat of immediate harm in sexual misconduct cases, Loucka said, Ohio acts “with a sense of urgency” to file an emergency stay. She estimates it took the Ohio board between six weeks and nine months to accomplish this.

In Washington, the medical board reviewed investigators’ reports on the 2023 cases and decided what it considered an appropriate solution.

It proposed an “informal way to resolve” the allegations against Mulholland.

A heavily redacted letter dated May 31, 2024, sent to Mulholland’s attorney by the commission does not reveal the terms of the settlement. But the letter said the settlement would not require admission of “any unprofessional conduct or wrongdoing.” Although settlements appear in the commission’s newsletter with brief summaries, the letter told Mulholland that a settlement would avoid a hearing, usually a public process.

All Mulholland had to do was sign.

The months passed. Mulholland’s lawyer requested the information collected on his client and the commission sent it. The deadline for him to accept the deal is June 2024, as is a later date in August. Nothing in the documents released by the commission indicates that he signed — or that the commission took disciplinary action.

Mulholland continued to see patients.

2018-2023: What the hospital knew

Long before the commission’s investigator filed his report with his superiors, Mulholland’s employer had also heard repeated concerns, according to Kadlec Clinic records acquired by attorneys in a lawsuit against Providence and the clinic. The lawyers submitted the documents as exhibits to the court.

(In court filings, Providence and Kadlec have denied negligence or knowledge or should have known of the abuse alleged by the plaintiffs.)

Kadlec’s records in the lawsuit show the clinic conducted a human resources investigation in 2018 into allegations that Mulholland had mocked a co-worker’s sexuality and religion, concluding it was “more likely than not” that the allegations were true. Afterward, records show, Mulholland’s employer provided him with “coaching.”

Kadlec’s records also indicate the clinic conducted a workplace investigation in 2019 into allegations that Mulholland made sexual jokes and condescending remarks, discriminated against women and challenged a co-worker who complained about him.

A labor nurse told a Providence investigator that year that Mulholland pursed a patient’s lips while she was in labor and asked her if she was in pain. A co-worker told the nurse that Mulholland had done the same thing with another patient who was in labor, according to the nurse’s account of the labor recorded by the investigator.

Another co-worker reported to an investigator at Kadlec’s workplace that a patient revealed that Mulholland told her to “masturbate more often,” according to Kadlec’s records.

Separately, Tuck, the obstetrician-gynecologist who worked alongside Mulholland, told a Kadlec investigator that a patient revealed that she felt Mulholland had assaulted her, but that the woman did not report it because she thought no one would believe her.

Following the 2019 workplace investigation, according to Kadlec records, Mulholland’s employer concluded in 2020 that he “engaged in multiple instances of inappropriate behavior” that violated the medical center’s expectations. He was made subject to a “behavior agreement” and required to complete harassment prevention training.

In 2022, according to Kadlec records, more emails were sent to clinic executives alleging that Mulholland was demeaning to patients and colleagues. They described a “toxic work environment” and said management failed to address employees’ concerns about the doctor.

Tuck left the clinic that same year. She later told the medical board that she left the position because management failed to take action against him.

Tuck raised concerns about Mulholland in an email to Chief Medical Officer Rich Meadows in July 2022, writing that patients “felt insulted/attacked” by Mulholland.

Kadlec’s records in the lawsuit show that Tuck also told an investigator at Kadlec’s workplace in 2019 that the clinic’s director, Lisa Mallory, was protecting Mulholland. In the statement she later made to the state medical board, Tuck said that when she raised concerns about Mulholland with Mallory, she responded, “He’s always been like that.” »

Mallory, in response to a request for comment from KUOW and ProPublica, said that statement was taken out of context. She refused to say more. Meadows, through a Providence spokesperson, declined to comment.

In June 2023, according to clinical records from the trial, Kadlec received a phone call from a patient who said Mulholland pushed his two fingers inside her so hard during a pelvic exam that she felt his knuckles smack against her vagina and anus.

“Rough, poking and prodding, like he was trying to turn me on or something,” according to Kadlec’s account describing the woman’s complaint.

She told Kadlec that she alerted Mulholland before the exam that her vagina was prone to tears and that she was experiencing vaginal pain with as little as a sneeze or cough.

Kadlec’s summary of the woman’s account states that after a rectal exam, Mulholland told the patient, “Well, you took that surprisingly well. It’s a good thing my fingers are small.”

The woman said her body, where Mulholland touched her, was inflamed for two and a half days.

When the commission finally contacted Mallory as part of the state’s investigation, the clinic director acknowledged there had been complaints within Kadlec. She didn’t seem to give them much credit.

“Dr. Mulholland has received his share of complaints over the years, just like every other provider here” at the Kadlec Clinic, she wrote in a statement to the state board. “From what I observed, he cared deeply about his patients and spent his career trying to educate women about their health. They didn’t always appreciate the way he did that.”

September 2024: resumption of the State investigation

As of September 2024, more than two years have passed since the state received its first complaint about a pelvic exam performed by Mulholland. Six months had passed since an investigator submitted her report on two other complaints related to a pelvic exam. That month, the commission learned of a new one.

“During the exam, he said that my vagina was very dry and that my husband was not doing his job,” the woman wrote in her complaint.

The woman also described her interaction with Mulholland to a commission investigator. During the appointment, the woman told a medical assistant she was concerned about a fishy odor, she said. Upon entering the exam room, she told the investigator, Mulholland said out loud, “Hey, I heard you have a vagina that smells like fish.” »

When he conducted her physical examination, the woman told the investigator, Mulholland penetrated her with his fingers and was “going in and out” and touching her clitoris.

The patient said she asked Mulholland to stop more than once. She was uncomfortable and what Mulholland did reminded her of his past sexual abuse, she wrote in her complaint. She said he eventually stopped.

Then, according to an investigator’s note describing the interview with the patient, Mulholland asked her if she masturbated and if she used toys. exuals or his fingers to do it. When the patient said no, Mulholland encouraged her to buy toys and use them on her own, she said. Then, according to the memo describing the woman’s account, Mulholland rubbed her shoulder and told her, “You’re too young not to have good sex.”

A mandatory reporter filed a complaint supplementing the woman’s at around the same time.

At that point, the woman’s account brought to four the number of women alleging sexual misconduct by Mulholland since 2022. Counting one woman who reported crude behavior in a communication that was not marked as alleging sexual misconduct and which the commission had closed, Mulholland had been named in six complaints.

Only 11 doctors and licensed physician assistants were the subject of six or more complaints during that period, the commission spokesperson said. Last year, 41,256 people held this type of license in Washington.

A week after the obligatory reporter contacted the commission, Kelly Elder, an attorney for the Washington Medical Board, referred the two cases pending for 2023 to Freda Pace, the commission’s director of investigations.

Elder asked Pace to have investigators try to reach people whose statements had not previously been taken.

Medical board records show that investigator Britta Fischer also began investigating the new allegation.

Fischer’s investigations produced statements from colleagues attesting to Mulholland’s good character and stating that they were unaware of the concerns raised by patients.

Mulholland himself, in a statement his lawyer made to the commission, said he had no “clear recollection” of the appointment the patient described in her complaint. He said he would never tell a patient that her husband wasn’t doing his job. He said he discussed masturbation with patients who complained of sexual dryness or pain during intercourse, and he denied stroking the patient’s shoulder in a “suggestive” manner.

Due to “unsubstantiated allegations,” the statement said, Mulholland changed the way he worked with patients. The release says these changes include always trying to have a chaperone present instead of just physical exams. He also began creating greater physical distance from the patient during counseling and exploring “tangential issues, such as sexual health and well-being” only when the patient brought them up.

“Dr. Mulholland is truly sorry if his long-standing practice habits have caused any patient any type of duress or distress due to a misinterpretation of what Dr. Mulholland was trying to accomplish: excellent patient care,” the statement sent to the commission said.

Yet the commission also had prior adverse statements from colleagues and patients. In April 2025, the agency formally charged Mulholland with abuse and unprofessional conduct. (The allegations will later be amended to include sexual misconduct.)

Neither the medical board nor the Washington State Department of Health, which oversees it, have posted a press release on their websites. Members of the general public could have known about the charges – if they had known to search Mulholland’s name on the Department of Health’s “provider credential search” page. Stephanie Mason, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the statement of charges will also be sent to anyone who subscribes to the commission’s quarterly email updates.

It is only when a story from the June Tri-City Herald that the commission’s assertions appeared to be widely known.

The influx of new patient complaints that followed echoed what the commission had already heard.

Their accounts included allegations that Mulholland peeked at their pubic hair under the sheet, physically pulled them off the examining table, used sexual language and performed extremely painful vaginal exams.

Two of the women who filed lawsuits against Mulholland or his employers told KUOW and ProPublica that they attended appointments with him after the commission received several complaints and before he agreed to restrictions on his license.

One said she was angry she hadn’t heard about the allegations against Mulholland sooner. After a hysterectomy, she was asked to see him every four months for a year for Pap tests.

She last saw Mulholland on May 1, 2025, two days after the commission filed its allegations against him. She became aware of the commission’s case after media coverage began.

“I don’t know if I expected the lady at the counter when you arrived to warn you and say, ‘Hey, you’re going to see Mulholland, and he’s gotten some complaints,'” she said in an interview with KUOW and ProPublica. “I don’t see any company or anything else doing this, but it would have been nice to know. I would have chosen another doctor.”

Another woman who filed the complaint, Torryn Kerley, said she was angry with Kadlec to learn that all the women had filed lawsuits after already complaining to Mulholland’s clinic.

“No one listened to me and I did everything I should have done,” said Kerley, who asked to be identified by name for this article. “I reported it. I told people about it. I told the doctors at the office about it.”

Karinen, the medical board director, said it was highly unusual for the board to file a statement of charges and then receive dozens of similar complaints against the same doctor, as happened with Mulholland.

“This is unheard of,” he said.

Mason, the commission spokesman, called the influx of new complaints a positive result of the commissioners’ actions against Mulholland.

“That’s what opened the door for these women to come forward, because at that point, comparatively, not many people had said anything,” Mason said.

No date has yet been set for a hearing at which Mulholland can challenge the commission’s allegations against him.