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This was the first case in history CIA’s #MeToo moment – When a group of women came to Capitol Hill starting in early 2023 to report to Congress that they were victims of sexual assault or harassment while working at the agency.

Intern Rachel Cuda was first. Dozens more would follow.

Her story was heartbreaking: She claimed a fellow intern had “choked” her in the stairwell at the agency. That summer, a judge in Virginia’s Fairfax County found her alleged attacker guilty of misdemeanor assault at a court hearing.

In the more than a year since then, courts in Virginia and Washington, D.C., handed down two more guilty verdicts in the cases of CIA officers accused of sexual harassment. The congress published a declaration a bunch of damn reports — and passed a law that would reform the agency’s processes for handling allegations of assault and harassment. For the first time, what victims say is a culture that protects predators has seeped into the public eye.

Cuda’s story started a movement.

“I’m the first person through the door. I can remove this effect for you. Someone has to do this. “Someone needs to step outside the institution to shed light on this issue because this didn’t just happen to me,” he said. report It was published via Elle earlier this week.

But in the end, the first case turned out to be one of the most complicated.

A jury in Virginia on Wednesday unanimously overturned the original conviction, declaring Ashkan Bayatpour not guilty of assaulting Cuda.

“Sexual harassment is a true national security issue that threatens the integrity of units and keeps good people from serving our country,” Bayatpour said in a statement released Wednesday after the decision. “Such allegations need to be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. “But we need to find a better way to separate credible claims from lies.”

The hearing highlighted the difficulties of adjudicating such allegations between close colleagues in any workplace, not just the CIA. And he singled out Cuda, the woman who defined the issue more than any other in the agency, as a complex hero of a movement she helped start.

A lunchtime walk between two co-workers (“work soul mates,” as Cuda calls them) ended with an encounter in the stairwell that left her “choked” but ended with what Bayatpour said was the slight flutter of a scarf around her shoulders. as part of a misguided effort to cheer him up.

This came after months of instant messages filled with friendly banter between the two that defense attorneys said were marked by clearly double-sided statements; This was a pattern of business relationships that led Bayatpour to believe that a sexual joke would be funny.

Victims’ rights advocates point out that women who come forward with allegations of sexual assault are often not believed.

But during closing arguments, even the state prosecutor seemed to tacitly acknowledge that Cuda’s account of the incident appeared riddled with minor inconsistencies; A slowly developing narrative that Bayatpour’s defense attorney had just discussed at length became more dramatic with each retelling.

“Let’s summarize: Ms. Cuda is a liar. Check,” the prosecutor said, referring to the defense team’s stance.

Despite this, he argued to the jury: “You can still find him guilty. It’s an unwanted touch.”

Cuda and Bayatpour had not known each other for a long time. Both were new recruits to the CIA and were training to become case officers. But they quickly became colleagues and chatted endlessly over Skype, the internal instant messaging service used at the agency.

Cuda stated in court that the two were not close; That Bayatpour pursued her romantically but he was married and she rejected him.

But numerous internal Skype messages between Bayatpour and Cuda suggest the presence of two new colleagues who talk constantly. Cuda would often send him heart emoticons and tell him he “loved” her. Cuda responded enthusiastically to Bayatpour’s messages suggesting social activities.

They took frequent walks on agency grounds, and Bayatpour testified that Cuda often seemed to be going through a difficult time. She confessed to difficulties in her marriage to him, testified, and then began sharing with him explicit details about a sexual relationship she said she had had with another colleague at the agency, whom they referred to as the “tall man”. messages. According to Bayatpour, the “will they, won’t they” issue arising from the alleged affair with the “tall man” became a frequently discussed topic between the two, as did arguments about their sexual preferences. He enjoyed being “choked”.

Cuda denied telling Bayatpour that he enjoyed being choked, denied the relationship, and denied sending a sensational text message — presented as a screenshot at trial — detailing an alleged encounter Cuda had with a “tall man” in May, Bayatpour testified.

Skype messages between the two were often filled with sexual innuendos. Bayatpour openly admitted that although their relationship was platonic, they often made flirtatious jokes and jokes with sexual innuendos, and she now describes herself as embarrassed. He said he enjoyed hearing all the dramatic details of his life because it was fun — like watching “The Bachelorette.” She said she sees her role as his cheerleader and often cheers him up.

“What would I do without you,” he wrote in a Skype message.

Cuda repeatedly insisted that either their banter was not sexual in nature, or if it was, he was uncomfortable with Bayatpour’s language. He said these were all examples of “disturbing laughter”, although he often responded with “lmao”, “hahahahahaha” and similar expressions of online fun.

She said she sometimes expressed discomfort to Bayatpour about “having more than one man attacking me” at the agency.

On July 13, 2022, both parties testified, Cuda wanted to go for a walk on the agency grounds. During this walk, Bayatpour gave him a dark blue scarf, a lightweight, shawl-style garment. Bayatpour testified that it was given to him free of charge by some friends affiliated with the Blue Angels (the Navy’s flight demonstration squadron) and was gathering dust in his office until he decided to give it to Cuda on a whim. At the end of the walk, he led her up the stairs to his office on the fifth floor.

The two sides offered strikingly different interpretations of the encounter in the stairwell.

Cuda told the jury that Bayatpour wanted the scarf back. As she walked up the stairs, she testified, she saw the scarf coming over her head from behind. She turned around, she said, and he began aggressively crossing the ends of his scarf. He said Bayatpour made “a face I will never forget”; This face showed that he was trying to harm her. Cuda stated that he said to her, “This is what I want to do to you” and leaned in to kiss her. He said he untied himself and continued walking towards his office. He claimed that Bayatpour wrapped the scarf around his head from behind again at the top of the stairs and said, “This has many benefits.” When she climbed the stairwell to the fifth floor, she said Bayatpour “grabbed me by the arm, spun me around, leaned over” and kissed her on the cheek.

Bayatpour said that almost none of Cuda’s claims are true.

In the first recorded interview with internal CIA investigators a few days after the incident at trial, Cuda calmly described Bayatpour draping the scarf over her head and crossing its ends, but said she “didn’t understand” what he said. He didn’t mention that he “caught” her at the top of the stairs and kissed her on the cheek.

In Bayatpour’s version of events, Cuda had spent most of his long walks talking to her about his love life and struggles at the agency — something he said he did often. She said that at the end of the walk, he asked her how she was doing. Bayatpour said he was in love with her and thought he had found the woman he would marry. Suddenly, she said, she stopped walking and immediately felt as if she were insensitive, gushing about her happy life while he was struggling.

“I was in the stairwell thinking I had to do something funny to break the mood,” Bayatpour told the jury.

Bayatpour said she asked Cuda for the scarf back and, standing almost face to face with her, gently wrapped the scarf around her neck and shook both ends, saying, “Hey, there are a lot of uses for this” — a reference she thought they were laughing at her admissions to having been strangled in the past. Cuda rolled his eyes and spoke. They walked up the stairwell and left.

His lawyer said it was a joke; perhaps it was a bad joke or an inappropriate joke, but it did not intend to cause bodily harm or express hostility towards Cuda in any way.

Cuda, who sat in the first row of the courtroom with her husband and a small number of supporters, cried at the beginning of her testimony and then nodded repeatedly as she described the encounter and their relationship.

The jury was initially deadlocked at 6-1, citing the complexity of the case; There was no indication which direction they were going. However, within an hour they unanimously decided he was not guilty.

What will Cuda’s story, including the acquittal of the man she claimed attacked her, mean for the movement of survivors and lawyers during the three-day trial?

Bayatpour’s attorney appeared to address some advocates’ fears in his closing statement: Sexual harassment in the workplace is a real problem, and female victims have historically been silent in a male-dominated society. He said it’s a good thing that society is starting to wake up to this reality.

“However, unfounded accusations overshadow this,” he said. “It’s no use.”

Cuda’s attorney, Kevin Carroll, said in a statement that the CIA “put its finger on this criminal case” by requesting that Cuda provide multiple videotaped statements about the alleged assault, which were then used in court. Bayatpour’s defense.

“The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division urgently needs to investigate how the CIA systematically discriminated against female sex crime complainants in favor of their alleged male assailants,” Carroll said.

Senior CIA officials say the agency is taking the issue seriously.

“While we have more work to do, I am proud of the progress we have made in significantly improving our response to reports and significantly expanding the resources available to individuals who witness or are victims of sexual assault or sexual harassment,” said Director Bill. Burns said in a statement earlier this year.