WASHINGTON (AP)– A long time CIA policeman that drugged, photographed and sexually attacked greater than 2 loads females in posts around the globe was punished to thirty years in government jail Wednesday after a psychological hearing in which sufferers defined being tricked by a guy that showed up kind, enlightened and component of a company “that is supposed to protect the world from evil.”
Brian Jeffrey Raymond, with a graying beard and orange jail one-piece suit, rested heavily as he heard his penalty for among one of the most outright misbehavior situations in the CIA’s background. It was narrated in his very own collection of greater than 500 pictures that revealed him in many cases straddling and searching his naked, subconscious sufferers.
“It’s safe to say he’s a sexual predator,” UNITED STATE Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly claimed in enforcing the complete sentence district attorneys had actually asked for. “You are going to have a period of time to think about this.”
Prosecutors say the 48-year-old Raymond’s assaults date to 2006 and tracked his career in Mexico, Peru and other countries, all following a similar pattern:
He would lure women he met on Tinder and other dating apps to his government-leased apartment and drug them while serving wine and snacks. Once they were unconscious, he spent hours posing their naked bodies before photographing and assaulting them. He opened their eyelids at times and stuck his fingers in their mouths.
One by one, about a dozen of Raymond’s victims who were identified only by numbers in court recounted how the longtime spy upended their lives. Some said they only learned what happened after the FBI showed them the photos of being assaulted while unconscious.
“My body looks like a corpse on his bed,” one victim said of the photos. “Now I have these nightmares of seeing myself dead.”
One described suffering a nervous breakdown. Another spoke of a recurring trance that caused her to run red lights while driving. Many told how their confidence and trust in others had been shattered forever.
“I hope he is haunted by the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life,” said one of the women, who like others stared Raymond down as they walked away from the podium.
Reading from a statement, Raymond told the judge that he has spent countless hours contemplating his “downward spiral.”
“It betrayed everything I stand for and I know no apology will ever be enough,” he said. “There are no words to describe how sorry I am. That’s not who I am and yet it’s who I became.”
Raymond’s sentencing comes amid a reckoning on sexual misconduct at the CIA. The Associated Press reported last week that another veteran CIA officer faces state charges in Virginia for allegedly reaching up a co-worker’s skirt and forcibly kissing her during a drunken party in the office.
Still another former CIA employee — an officer trainee — is scheduled to face a jury trial next month on charges he assaulted a woman with a scarf in a stairwell at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. That case emboldened some two dozen women to come forward to authorities and Congress with accounts of their own of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they contend are the CIA’s efforts to silence them.
And yet the full extent of sexual misconduct at the CIA remains a classified secret in the name of national security, including a recent 648-page internal watchdog report that found systemic shortcomings in the agency’s handling of such complaints.
“The classified nature of the activities allowed the agency to hide a lot of things,” said Liza Mundy, author of “Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA.” The male-dominated agency, she said, has long been a refuge for egregious sexual misconduct. “For decades, men at the top had free rein.”
CIA has publicly condemned Raymond’s crimes and implemented sweeping reforms intended to keep women safe, streamline claims and more quickly discipline offenders.
“There is absolutely no excuse for Mr. Raymond’s reprehensible, appalling behavior,” the agency said Wednesday. “As this instance reveals, we are devoted to involving with police.”
But a shroud of privacy still borders the Raymond instance virtually 4 years after his apprehension. Even after Raymond begged guilty late in 2014, district attorneys have actually tiptoed around the specific nature of his job and decreased to divulge a total checklist of the nations where he attacked females.
Still, they supplied an unchecked account of Raymond’s conduct, defining him as a “serial offender” whose attacks enhanced gradually and end up being “almost frenetic” throughout his last CIA uploading in Mexico City, where he was uncovered in 2020 after a nude lady shrieked for assistance from his house veranda.
united state authorities searched Raymond’s digital tools and started determining the sufferers he had actually noted by name and physical features, every one of whom defined experiencing some kind of amnesia throughout their time with him.
One target claimed Raymond felt like a “perfect gentleman” when they fulfilled in Mexico in 2020, remembering just that they kissed. Unbeknownst to the lady, after she passed out, he took 35 video clips and close-up images of her busts and genital areas.
“The defendant’s manipulation often resulted in women blaming themselves for losing consciousness, feeling ashamed, and apologizing to the defendant,” district attorneys created in a court declaring. “He was more than willing to gaslight the women, often suggesting that the women drank too much and that, despite their instincts to the contrary, nothing had happened.”
Raymond, a San Diego indigenous and previous White House trainee that is well-versed in Spanish and Mandarin, inevitably begged guilty to 4 of 25 government matters consisting of sexual assault, threat and transport of profane product. As component of his sentence, the court purchased him to pay $10,000 per of his 28 sufferers.
Raymond’s lawyers had actually looked for kindness, competing his “quasi-military” operate at the CIA in the years adhering to 9/11 ended up being a breeding place for the psychological callousness and “objectification of other people” that allowed his years of preying upon females.
“While he was working tirelessly at his government job, he ignored his own need for help, and over time he began to isolate himself, detach himself from human feelings and become emotionally numb,” defense lawyer Howard Katzoff created in a court declaring.
“He was an invaluable government worker, but it took its toll on him and sent him down a dark path.”
___
Goodman reported fromMiami Contact AP’s worldwide investigatory group at Investigative @ap. org.
