(NEWSnet/AP) — U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has terminated a woman whose whistleblower account of being assaulted at the agency’s headquarters prompted colleagues to come forward with complaints of sexual misconduct.
The woman’s attorney says the action is brazen retaliation.
CIA said the accusation was “factually inaccurate,” it wouldn’t comment further on the case. The agency declined to explain why the woman did not complete the agency’s clandestine officer training program and was not hired into another job.
“To be clear, the CIA does not tolerate sexual assault, sexual harassment or whistleblower retaliation,” CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp told The Associated Press.
Thorp said the agency uses “consistent processes to ensure the fair and equal treatment of every officer going through training.”
The termination came six months after she filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging CIA retaliated against her for reporting what she said was a stairwell assault in 2022 in Langley, Virginia, to law enforcement and testifying about it at a closed congressional hearing.
The lawsuit accused the agency of giving her harsher performance reviews and “slut shaming” her by improperly releasing her personal information during the state prosecution last year of Ashkan Bayatpour, a then-fellow CIA trainee convicted of assaulting her with a scarf.
The woman’s attorney, Kevin Carroll, told AP that CIA has “unlawfully ended a young woman’s career only because she had the moral courage, lacking in her managers, to stand up and be a witness about her sexual assault.”
The woman was credited with launching a reckoning, of sorts, at the CIA because hers is the rare allegation of sexual misconduct at the spy agency to make it into a public courtroom.
An AP investigation found the case helped to embolden at least two-dozen women to come forward to authorities and Congress over the past two years with accounts at CIA of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they contend is a campaign to keep them from speaking.
Follow NEWSnet on Facebook and X platform to get our headlines in your social feeds.
Copyright 2024 NEWSnet and The Associated Press. All rights reserved.