A longtime CIA officer who drugged, photographed and sexually assaulted greater than two dozen girls in postings around the globe 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 one of the crucial egregious misconduct circumstances within the CIA’s historical past.
It was chronicled in his personal library of greater than 500 pictures that confirmed him in some circumstances straddling and groping his nude, unconscious victims.
“It’s protected to say he’s a sexual predator,” United States Senior Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly mentioned in imposing the total sentence prosecutors had requested. “You’re going to have a time period to consider this.”
Prosecutors mentioned the 48-year-old Raymond’s assaults date to 2006 and tracked his profession with the intelligence company in Mexico, Peru and different international locations, all following an identical sample.
He would lure girls he met on Tinder and different courting apps to his government-leased condo and drug them whereas serving wine and snacks. As soon as they had been unconscious, he spent hours posing their bare our bodies earlier than photographing and assaulting them.
One after the other, a couple of dozen of Raymond’s victims who had been recognized solely by numbers in court docket recounted how the longtime spy upended their lives. Some mentioned they solely discovered what occurred after the FBI confirmed them the photographs of being assaulted whereas unconscious.
“My physique seems like a corpse on his mattress,” one sufferer mentioned of the photographs. “Now I’ve these nightmares of seeing myself lifeless.”
One described struggling a nervous breakdown. One other spoke of a recurring trance that brought about her to run crimson 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,” mentioned one of many girls who like others stared Raymond down as she walked away from the rostrum.
Studying from a press release, Raymond instructed the decide that he has spent numerous hours considering his “downward spiral”.
“It betrayed every thing I stand for, and I do know no apology will ever be sufficient,” he mentioned. “There aren’t any phrases to explain how sorry I’m. That’s not who I’m, and but it’s who I grew to become.”
Raymond’s sentencing comes amid a looking on sexual misconduct on the CIA. The Related Press reported final week that one other veteran CIA officer faces state costs in Virginia for allegedly reaching up a co-worker’s skirt and forcibly kissing her throughout a drunken get together on the workplace.
Nonetheless one other former CIA worker — an officer trainee — is scheduled to face a jury trial subsequent month on costs 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 total extent of sexual misconduct on the CIA stays a categorized secret within the title of nationwide safety, together with a current 648-page inner watchdog report that discovered systemic shortcomings within the company’s dealing with of such complaints.
“The categorized nature of the actions allowed the company to cover loads of issues,” mentioned Liza Mundy, writer of Sisterhood: The Secret Historical past of Girls on the CIA. The male-dominated company, she mentioned, has lengthy been a refuge for egregious sexual misconduct. “For many years, males on the high had free rein.”
The CIA has publicly condemned Raymond’s crimes and carried out sweeping reforms meant to maintain girls protected, streamline claims and extra shortly self-discipline offenders.
“There’s completely no excuse for Mr Raymond’s reprehensible, appalling behaviour,” the company mentioned on Wednesday. “As this case reveals, we’re dedicated to partaking with regulation enforcement.”
However a veil of secrecy nonetheless surrounds the Raymond case practically 4 years after his arrest. Even after Raymond pleaded responsible late final 12 months, prosecutors have tiptoed across the precise nature of his work and declined to reveal an entire record of the international locations the place he assaulted girls.
Nonetheless, they provided 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 closing CIA posting in Mexico Metropolis, the place he was found in 2020 after a unadorned lady screamed for assist from his condo balcony.
A “excellent gentleman”
US officers scoured Raymond’s digital gadgets and started figuring out the victims he had listed by title and bodily traits, all of whom described experiencing some type of reminiscence loss throughout their time with him.
One sufferer mentioned Raymond appeared like a “excellent gentleman” after 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 photographs of her breasts and genitals.
“The defendant’s manipulation typically resulted in girls blaming themselves for dropping consciousness, feeling ashamed, and apologizing to the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in a court docket submitting. “He was greater than keen to gaslight the ladies, typically 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, finally 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 grew to become a breeding floor for the emotional callousness and “objectification of different folks” 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 turn into emotionally numb,” defence legal professional Howard Katzoff wrote in a court docket submitting.
“He was a useful authorities employee, but it surely took its toll on him and despatched him down a darkish path.”