CNN
—
This was the first case of the CIA’s #MeToo moment. Since early 2023, women have lined up to come to the Capitol to tell Congress about sexual assault and harassment they suffered while working for the department.
Trainee Rachel Cuda was first. Dozens more will follow.
Her story was harrowing. She claimed that a fellow trainee “strangled” her on the stairs of her office. That summer, a judge in Fairfax County, Virginia, found the suspect who attacked her guilty of misdemeanor assault in a courtroom trial.
Over a year since then, courts in Virginia and Washington, D.C., have handed down two more guilty verdicts in trials of CIA employees accused of sexual misconduct. Congress has released a series of damning reports and passed legislation reforming the agency’s processes for dealing with allegations of assault and harassment. For the first time, the culture of protecting predators, as described by victims, has leaked out to the public.
Cuda’s story sparked a movement.
“I’m the first guy through the door. I’ll take this shock for you. Someone has to do it. Someone has to step outside the facility to draw a line under this issue. “Because this didn’t just happen to me,” she said in an Elle interview published earlier this week.
But in the end, the first incident turned out to be one of the most troubling.
On Wednesday, a Virginia jury unanimously overturned the original conviction of Ashkan Bayatpour and found him not guilty of assaulting Khuda.
“Sexual harassment is a true national security issue that threatens the cohesion of our troops and drives good people away from serving our country,” Bayatpour said in a prepared statement released after Wednesday’s sentencing. “These types of allegations should be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. But we must find better ways to distinguish between credible allegations and lies.”
The trial revealed the difficulty of adjudicating these types of allegations among close colleagues, not just at the CIA but in any workplace. And he cast Cuda, a woman whose assault charges more than any other woman brought the authorities’ problems into sharp focus, as the complex heroine of the movement she started.
Two work friends, who, in Khuda’s words, were “work-hardened soul mates,” were out for a walk during the day when they ran into each other on the stairs and ended up being “strangled,” but Bayatpur’s life ended with them being “strangled.” According to her, her scarf fluttered lightly over her shoulders. In a misguided effort to cheer her up.
Over the next few months, the pair exchanged instant messages filled with friendly banter, but defense attorneys say it was clearly a prank with a dual purpose. It was a pattern of working relationships that led Bayatpour to believe that sexual jokes could be funny.
Victim rights advocates say women who come forward with sexual assault allegations are often not believed.
But during closing arguments, even the state prosecutor appeared to tacitly acknowledge that Khuda’s account of the incident appears to be riddled with small inconsistencies, which Bayatpur’s defense attorneys have argued at length. The slowly unfolding story became more dramatic with each retelling.
“Let me summarize: Mr. Cuda is a liar. Check it out,” the prosecutor said, referring to the defense team’s position.
Still, she insisted to the jury: That’s unwanted contact. ”
Kuda and Bayatpur had known each other not very long. Both men were new recruits to the CIA, training to become case officers. But they quickly became work friends, chatting endlessly on Skype, the internal instant messaging service used at the agency.
Cuda testified in court that the two were not close. Bayatpour pursued her romantically, but she was married and rejected him.
However, a large number of internal Skype messages between Bayatpour and Cuda suggest that the two new colleagues were constantly talking. Cuda often sent heart emojis to say “I love you.” Khuda responded enthusiastically to Bayatpour’s message suggesting social activities.
They frequently took walks on government grounds, and Bayatpour testified that Khuda often appeared to be in difficult situations. He said she confessed to difficulties in her marriage and then began telling him explicit details about a sexual relationship she had with another colleague at the agency, who was known internally as “The Tall Man.” I testified. message. Bayatpour said her desire to have a relationship with a “tall man” became a frequent topic of discussion between the two, as did discussions of her sexual preferences. She liked to “suffocate”.
Khuda denies ever telling Bayatpour that he likes to be strangled, denies having an affair, and details a graphic video Bayatpour allegedly had with a “tall man” in May. He also denied sending the text messages (which were presented as screenshots at trial).
Skype messages between the two contained many sexual innuendos. Bayatpour candidly admitted from the stand that although their relationship was platonic, they often exchanged flirtatious banter and banter with sexual overtones, which he now feels embarrassed about. He said he enjoyed hearing all the dramatic details of her life, because it was interesting and like watching “The Bachelorette.” He said he considered his role to be her cheerleader and often gave her a pep talk.
“What would be the world without you,” she wrote in a Skype message.
Kuda repeatedly insisted that their banter was not sexual in nature, and even if it was, he was uncomfortable with Bayatpour’s language. She frequently responded with expressions of amusement online such as “lol” and “hahahahaha,” all of which were examples of “uncomfortable laughter,” she said.
She said there were times when she expressed her displeasure with Bayatpour, saying there were “many men who were trying to make advances on me” at the agency.
On July 13, 2022, both parties testified, Cuda was asked to take a walk around government property. During the walk, Bayatpour gave her a royal blue scarf, a light pashmina-style garment. Bayatpour testified that he had received it for free from some friends associated with the Blue Angels, and while it was gathering dust in his office, he decided to give it to Khuda on a whim. . At the end of the walk, he took her back up the stairs to his office on the fifth floor.
Both men offered dramatically different interpretations of the stairwell encounter.
Mr Kuda told the jury Mr Bayatpour asked for the scarf back. She testified that as she was walking up the stairs, she saw a scarf put over her head from behind. When she turned around, he began to aggressively cross the ends of her scarf, she said. Bayatpour had a “face you’ll never forget,” she said. She said his face showed he was trying to hurt her. Cuda testified that he said, “This is what I want to do to you,” and then leaned in and kissed her. She untangled herself and continued walking towards the office, she said. At the top of the stairs, she claimed Bayatpour came behind her and put the scarf back over her head and said, “There are many ways to use this.” When she came out of the stairwell to the fifth floor, Bayatpour “grabbed my arm, spun me around, leaned over” and kissed me on the cheek, she said.
Bayatpour said there was little truth to Cuda’s claims.
In his first taped interview with a CIA internal investigator days after the case went to trial, Khuda calmly explained that Bayatpour wore a scarf over her head with the ends crossed. , she said she “couldn’t understand” what he said. She did not mention that he “grabbed” her on the stairs and kissed her on the cheek.
In Bayatpur’s version of events, Khuda spent most of the long walk venting to him about her love life and struggles at the agency – something he said she often did. At the end of the walk, he said, she asked him how he was doing. Bayatpour told her that he was in love and thought he had found the woman to marry. When she suddenly stopped walking, he said he immediately felt that he had been insensitive for smiling about his happy life while she was struggling.
“I thought I had to do something interesting in the stairwell to break up the atmosphere,” Bayatpour told jurors.
Bayatpour said he asked Khuda to give her the scarf back, stood almost face-to-face with her, draped it loosely around his neck, shook the ends and said, “This has many uses.” He thought they had laughed at her past confession about choking. Kuda rolled his eyes, he said. They exited the stairs and separated.
His lawyer said it was a joke, perhaps a bad joke or an inappropriate joke, but it was not intended to cause any physical harm or to express any hostility toward Cuda in any way. .
Ms. Cuda, who was seated in the front row of the courtroom with her husband and a small group of supporters, cried at the beginning of her testimony, then shook her head repeatedly as she described the encounter and their relationship.
Hinting at the complexity of the case, the jury initially deadlocked 6-1, with no idea which side they were leaning on. However, within an hour, a unanimous verdict of not guilty was returned.
What Ms. Cuda’s story – including the acquittal of the man who claimed to have assaulted her – will mean for a movement built by survivors and advocates who waited for proceedings during the three-day trial. Probably.
Bayatpur’s lawyers appeared to allude to the concerns of some advocates in their closing arguments. Sexual harassment in the workplace is a real problem, and female victims have historically been left without a voice in a male-dominated society. It’s good that society is starting to wake up to that reality, he said.
“But baseless accusations undermine that,” he said. “That doesn’t help.”
Cuda’s attorney, Kevin Carroll, said in a statement that the CIA requested multiple videotaped statements from Cuda about the alleged assault, which were later used at trial. Bayatpur defense.
“The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division will urgently investigate how the CIA systematically discriminates against the agency’s female sex crime accusers in favor of female alleged male perpetrators,” Carroll said. There is a need.”
CIA officials said the agency takes the matter seriously.
“While we still have work to do, we are making progress in greatly improving our response to reports and greatly expanding the resources available to those who witness or are victims of sexual assault or harassment. I’m very proud of that,” Director Bill said. Burns said in a statement earlier this year.
