(CNN) — It was the first case in the CIA’s #MeToo moment — when a line of women who came to Capitol Hill beginning in early 2023 to report to Congress that they had been the victims of sexual assault or harassment while working at the agency. Rachel Cuda, a trainee, was the first. Dozens more would follow.
Her story was harrowing: She claimed that a fellow trainee had “strangled” her in a stairwell at the agency. That summer, a judge in Fairfax County, Virginia, found her alleged attacker guilty of misdemeanor assault in a bench trial. In more than a year since, courts in Virginia and Washington, DC, have returned two more guilty verdicts in trials of CIA officers accused of sexual misconduct.
Congress issued a series of damning reports — and passed legislation reforming the agency’s processes for handling allegations of assault and harassment. For the first time, what victims say is a culture that protects predators had leaked into the public eye. Cuda’s story had started a movement.
“I’m that first guy through the door. I can take this impact for you. Somebody’s gotta do it.
Somebody has to go outside of the institution to shine a line on this—because this didn’t just happen to me,” she said in an interview with Elle published earlier this week. But in the end, the first case became one of the messiest. On Wednesday, a Virginia jury unanimously overturned the original conviction of Ashkan Bayatpour, declaring him not guilty of assaulting Cuda.
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