A longtime CIA officer who drugged, photographed and sexually assaulted greater than two dozen girls in postings world wide has been sentenced to 30 years in federal jail.
Brian Jeffrey Raymond, with a greying beard and sporting an orange jail jumpsuit, sat dejectedly as he heard his punishment on Wednesday for some of the egregious misconduct instances within the CIA’s historical past.
It was chronicled in his personal library of greater than 500 photographs that confirmed him in some instances straddling and groping his nude, unconscious victims.
“It’s secure to say he’s a sexual predator,” United States Senior Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly stated in imposing the complete sentence prosecutors had requested. “You’re going to have a time frame to consider this.”
Prosecutors stated the 48-year-old Raymond’s assaults date to 2006 and tracked his profession with the intelligence company in Mexico, Peru and different nations, all following the same sample.
He would lure girls he met on Tinder and different relationship apps to his government-leased condo and drug them whereas serving wine and snacks. As soon as they have been unconscious, he spent hours posing their bare our bodies earlier than photographing and assaulting them.
One after the other, a few dozen of Raymond’s victims who have been recognized solely by numbers in court docket recounted how the longtime spy upended their lives. Some stated they solely discovered what occurred after the FBI confirmed them the pictures of being assaulted whereas unconscious.
“My physique seems like a corpse on his mattress,” one sufferer stated of the pictures. “Now I’ve these nightmares of seeing myself useless.”
One described struggling a nervous breakdown. One other spoke of a recurring trance that triggered her to run purple lights whereas driving. Many testified of how their confidence and belief in others had been shattered.
“I hope he’s haunted by the results of his actions for the remainder of his life,” stated one of many girls who like others stared Raymond down as she walked away from the rostrum.
Studying from an announcement, Raymond instructed the decide that he has spent numerous hours considering his “downward spiral”.
“It betrayed all the things I stand for, and I do know no apology will ever be sufficient,” he stated. “There aren’t any phrases to explain how sorry I’m. That’s not who I’m, and but it’s who I turned.”
Raymond’s sentencing comes amid a counting on sexual misconduct on the CIA. The Related Press reported final week that one other veteran CIA officer faces state expenses in Virginia for allegedly reaching up a co-worker’s skirt and forcibly kissing her throughout a drunken social gathering on the workplace.
Nonetheless one other former CIA worker — an officer trainee — is scheduled to face a jury trial subsequent month on expenses he assaulted a lady with a shawl in a stairwell on the company’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. That case emboldened about two dozen girls to return ahead to authorities and Congress with accounts of their very own sexual assaults, undesirable touching and what they contend are the CIA’s efforts to silence them.
And but the complete extent of sexual misconduct on the CIA stays a labeled secret within the identify of nationwide safety, together with a latest 648-page inner watchdog report that discovered systemic shortcomings within the company’s dealing with of such complaints.
“The labeled nature of the actions allowed the company to cover lots of issues,” stated Liza Mundy, creator of Sisterhood: The Secret Historical past of Girls on the CIA. The male-dominated company, she stated, has lengthy been a refuge for egregious sexual misconduct. “For many years, males on the prime had free rein.”
The CIA has publicly condemned Raymond’s crimes and applied sweeping reforms supposed to maintain girls secure, streamline claims and extra rapidly self-discipline offenders.
“There may be completely no excuse for Mr Raymond’s reprehensible, appalling behaviour,” the company stated on Wednesday. “As this case reveals, we’re dedicated to partaking with legislation enforcement.”
However a veil of secrecy nonetheless surrounds the Raymond case practically 4 years after his arrest. Even after Raymond pleaded responsible late final yr, prosecutors have tiptoed across the precise nature of his work and declined to reveal a whole checklist of the nations the place he assaulted girls.
Nonetheless, they supplied an unbridled account of Raymond’s conduct, describing him as a “serial offender” whose assaults elevated over time and have become “nearly frenetic” throughout his remaining CIA posting in Mexico Metropolis, the place he was found in 2020 after a unadorned girl screamed for assist from his condo balcony.
A “good gentleman”
US officers scoured Raymond’s digital units and started figuring out the victims he had listed by identify and bodily traits, all of whom described experiencing some type of reminiscence loss throughout their time with him.
One sufferer stated Raymond appeared like a “good gentleman” once they met in Mexico in 2020, recalling solely that they kissed. Unbeknownst to the girl, after she blacked out, he took 35 movies and close-up pictures of her breasts and genitals.
“The defendant’s manipulation usually resulted in girls blaming themselves for shedding consciousness, feeling ashamed, and apologizing to the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in a court docket submitting. “He was greater than prepared to gaslight the ladies, usually suggesting that the ladies drank an excessive amount of and that, regardless of their instincts on the contrary, nothing had occurred.”
Raymond, a San Diego native and former White Home intern who’s fluent in Spanish and Mandarin, in the end pleaded responsible to 4 of 25 federal counts together with sexual abuse, coercion and transportation of obscene materials. As a part of his sentence, the decide ordered him to pay $10,000 to every of his 28 victims.
Raymond’s attorneys had sought leniency, contending his “quasi-military” work on the CIA within the years after 9/11 turned a breeding floor for the emotional callousness and “objectification of different individuals” that enabled his years of preying upon girls.
“Whereas he was working tirelessly at his authorities job, he ignored his personal want for assist, and over time he started to isolate himself, detach himself from human emotions and grow to be emotionally numb,” defence lawyer Howard Katzoff wrote in a court docket submitting.
“He was a useful authorities employee, nevertheless it took its toll on him and despatched him down a darkish path.”
