Former CIA officer found guilty of assaulting colleague at an office gathering

(CNN) — A former CIA officer has been found guilty in a Virginia court of assaulting a female subordinate at an office party last year, the latest in a string of public court cases documenting what victims allege is a systemic failure by the agency to properly adjudicate cases of sexual assault and harassment.

Donald James Asquith was convicted of misdemeanor assault and battery in Loudoun County District Court on Wednesday morning and was sentenced to six months, with all but 24 hours of that sentence suspended if he abides by the law. He has appealed.

In disturbing testimony from the stand, the victim, identified in court only as “Margaret T,” recounted that Asquith, her boss at the time, drunkenly groped her after making a series of sexually graphic and demeaning statements to and about her during an office gathering for his 50th birthday in June 2023.

According to a statement from a CIA spokesperson, “Within days of receiving a report of this incident, CIA acted swiftly to restrict Mr. Asquith’s access to, and contact with, the victim.”

According to multiple sources, Asquith was eligible for retirement at the time of the incident and, afterwards, moved to do so — something the victim’s attorney, Kevin Carroll, suggested was a failure on the part of the agency to take disciplinary action against him. Asquith, he said, was “allowed” to retire; the CIA spokesman said in a statement only that Asquith had “separated from the Agency in September 2023.”

In a victim impact statement delivered to the court, T described seeking justice in “a Byzantine and ultimately useless process with the employer.”

According to Carroll, T “sought guidance from CIA for months about how to securely report her assault to law enforcement without jeopardizing her colleagues’ Agency covers and mission. CIA never provided her such guidance.”

The CIA was not named in public court; statements from both Carroll and the agency as well as multiple sources confirm that the workplace in question was a satellite office facility belonging to the agency in Loudoun County, Virginia.

An attorney for Asquith did not respond to a request for comment.

T testified that on June 9, 2023, she attended a birthday celebration for Asquith in a conference room at the CIA facility. She and other CIA employees testified that Asquith appeared to have been drinking heavily by the time she arrived around 4:15 that afternoon. Asquith, T said, almost immediately grabbed the lanyard around her neck with her photograph on it and said: “Can you believe how sexy she is?”, referencing her age. As the party went on, according to T, he began to ask her how often she and her husband had sex, pantomimed oral sex, asked questions about her personal grooming — asking about her bikini area and “if I was clean and bare,” T said — and then, began to touch her legs. T, who was seated next to Asquith, testified that she repeatedly sought to move her chair away, but that Asquith would pull it back close to him. At one point, she testified, he lifted his legs in the air, bent his knees, and said to the room: “Look at me, I’m [T].”

T testified that she didn’t leave because she thought she could deescalate the situation with Asquith, whom she said she was keenly aware was her boss.

But eventually, she testified, he leaned over and “forcibly shoved” his hand beneath her skirt, “exposing my underwear.” At that point, T said, she “froze,” and a colleague made the decision that they should leave. As she departed the room, she testified, Asquith grabbed her and rubbed their chests together in what he termed a “boobie hug,” and forcibly kissed her.

A female colleague of T’s, identified only as Kendall G, offered a similar account of a litany of graphic sexual remarks and invasive questions. G confirmed that Asquith compared the breast sizes of women in the office, thrust his hips at the tabletop in a pantomime of the sexual act, and asked female colleagues in the room, including T, about their and their partners’ use of Viagra. G, as well as a third male colleague, testified that they had seen Asquith reach under T’s skirt.

“I felt small and powerless and mortified,” T testified, clearly holding back tears.

Asquith’s attorney told the court that Asquith did not remember the events in question. He argued that because T had not verbally articulated her nonconsent to his physical touching and because she had stayed a long time at the party — and because Asquith was too intoxicated to have recognized more subtle expressions of nonconsent — he could not be said to have intentionally assaulted T. He was, his attorney argued, not required to read her mind.

The court was unmoved.

“This was unwanted touching,” Judge Lorrie Sinclair Taylor said. There is “no doubt in the court’s mind that the defendant is guilty.”

CIA under scrutiny

The trial comes as the CIA has faced an increasingly public reckoning about its handling of sexual assault cases.

Wednesday’s trial follows a decision by the US District Court in Washington, DC, last week to sentence a former CIA officer to 30 years in prison for drugging and sexually assaulting multiple women; and another misdemeanor conviction, also under appeal, of a former CIA trainee accused of assaulting another trainee in a stairwell at Langley.

Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have been hearing testimony from alleged victims of sexual assault and harassment at the agency in a multi-year investigation that has spawned legislation reforming CIA processes for handling such cases.

In April, the House panel released an eight-page report that found the CIA had “failed to handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment within its workforce” in a “professional and uniform manner,” and appeared to mete out “little to no accountability or punishment” for perpetrators.

The report found that there was “confusion and disorder in the process for reporting” allegations. Victims, the report found, were “deterred from coming forward because victims did not have anonymity and were unable to seek confidential assistance.”

T, in her victim impact statement, spoke obliquely about her frustration that “no one nor any institution has yet been willing to hold Mr. Asquith accountable for his grievous decisions and actions.”

“It is a travesty that people who take an oath to serve their country are exactly the people who have in turn ignored and thereby facilitated environments in which a drunken boss can and does use his power to humiliate, belittle and even assault someone in what should be a safe workplace — all the while hiding behind claims of ‘privacy’ and ‘secrecy,’” she said.

“If we keep treating these cases like they are parking violations, we all lose,” she said.

The agency has sought to streamline its reporting processes for victims, including establishing a dedicated office last year to receive allegations of assault and harassment. In February, the agency announced it had put in place a federal law enforcement officer tasked with working with that office to facilitate investigations, “including referrals to the appropriate law enforcement entity or investigatory process,” according to a July statement from CIA Director Bill Burns.

Some victims have alleged that they have been discouraged by the agency from reporting instances of assault to law enforcement because their affiliation with the agency is covert. Burns in his statement insisted that while “we understand that employees may have questions about how to engage with law enforcement … Agency employees do not need permission to contact law enforcement to report a crime.”

“The fact that a sexual assault or sexual harassment has occurred is not classified, although surrounding circumstances, including the identities of any clandestine employees or facilities related to the allegations, may be,” Burns said.

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