“A sexual predator” is how a US judge has described former CIA agent Brian Jeffrey Raymond, who until October 2020 was an employee of the US Embassy in Mexico City and who this Wednesday was sentenced to 30 years in prison for sexually assaulting at least 28 women in Mexico and probably also in his native country. Raymond, 48 years old, had been arrested in the Mexican capital in 2020 after local authorities helped a naked woman who was screaming for help from the balcony of Raymond’s residence. The veteran former CIA agent was arrested, but due to his diplomatic immunity he avoided being prosecuted in Mexico and a day later he returned to the US, where authorities discovered hundreds of photographs and videos in his files showing him abusing his victims.
Brian Jeffrey Raymond was the first secretary of the United States Embassy in Mexico City from 2018 to 2020 and was also a CIA agent. He used his official residence, located in Polanco, one of the wealthiest areas of the city, to drug, abuse and photograph women he met, mainly, through the Tinder dating app. In May of that year, the case of a woman screaming from her balcony set off alarm bells for the authorities who, once in the United States, began an investigation for which they seized his mobile phone and computer, in which they found some 500 photo and video files.
On Wednesday, federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly imposed the 30-year prison sentence and said: “It is safe to say that [Raymond] He is a sexual predator (…). He will have plenty of time to think about this,” the news agency reported. APadding that the defendant had attended the session with a grey beard and an orange suit as he heard his sentence. According to prosecutors, the diplomat’s assaults date back to 2006, while he worked in countries such as Peru and Mexico, always following a similar pattern: he would lure women he met on Tinder and other dating apps to his government-rented apartment and drug them while serving them wine and snacks. Once they were unconscious, he would spend hours looking at and posing the bodies and then photograph the women naked while also assaulting them.
Some of Raymond’s victims recounted how the CIA agent, who worked for more than 20 years, turned their lives into nightmares. Some of them said they learned what had happened to them after the FBI showed them photographs of them being sexually assaulted and abused while they were completely unconscious. “My body looked like a corpse in his bed,” one of the women said of the photos. “I now have nightmares about myself being dead.” Another victim who has testified spoke of a recurring trauma that caused her to run red lights while driving her car. “I hope the consequences of his actions haunt him for the rest of his life,” said another of the testifiers, as the defendant walked away from the podium in court.
All of the victims have reported experiencing some form of memory loss during their time with him.
Sexual assaults within the CIA
Wednesday’s sentencing of Brian Jeffrey Raymond comes amid a flurry of “sexual misconduct” cases within the U.S. agency. Just days ago, AP reported on another veteran CIA officer facing charges in Virginia for allegedly reaching under a female coworker’s skirt and forcibly kissing her at a party. Another former employee is set to stand trial in October for allegedly assaulting a woman in a stairwell at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. The latter case has prompted dozens of other women to come forward with accounts of their own experiences of assault, unwanted touching and also to accuse the CIA of allegedly trying to silence them.
The CIA has publicly condemned Raymond’s crimes: “There is absolutely no excuse for Mr. Raymond’s reprehensible and atrocious behavior,” they said. “As this case demonstrates, we are committed to cooperating with law enforcement.”
Yet nearly four years after Raymond’s arrest and even after he himself pleaded guilty late last year, prosecutors have not revealed the exact nature of his work and have declined to release a full list of the countries in which he assaulted women.
The accused’s legal defense has asked the authorities for clemency, arguing that His “quasi-military” work at the CIA in the years after 9/11 “became a breeding ground for emotional insensitivity and ‘objectification of other people’ that allowed him to engage in years of harassing women,” he says. AP. “While he worked tirelessly in government, he ignored his own need for help and over time began to isolate himself, distance himself from human feelings and become emotionally numb,” defense attorney Howard Katzoff wrote in a court filing. “He was an invaluable government employee, but it took a toll on him and sent him down a dark path.”
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