Several women have accused a prominent British-Iranian anthropologist who recently fled Iran of being a sexual predator who should not be allowed to continue working with women or vulnerable groups who are the focus of her research.
Kameel Ahmady, known for working in child marriage, female genital mutilation and LGBT communities in Iran, denies allegations of sexual assault and harassment that have led to her suspension from the Sociology Association of Iran.
But in a now-deleted post on social media dealing with the allegations, he apologized for “mistakes” in the workplace and for “hurting people with my relaxed attitude towards relationships.”
Four women have separately sued the Guardian who assaulted them and others have reported repeated sexual harassment.
Friends and colleagues of the women support their accounts, saying they were informed of three of the alleged assaults and multiple cases of alleged harassment before survivors made their stories public.
The women spoke to The Guardian after Ahmady, who was recently sentenced to nearly a decade in prison for unrelated national security charges in Iran, skipped bail, fled the country and conducted several interviews with media in the UK, including The Guardian, telling a heroic story of his escape from the clutches of a brutal regime.
They say they fear that when the investigation is restarted, other women may be at risk. While unable to return to Iran, many of the issues he has studied affect cross-border communities in the region, where he could continue to work.
“It simply came to our notice then [alleged] the victims and the fact that they were largely ignored, not to mention completely ignored, could no longer be bottled, ”said one woman, who is speaking for the first time about her experience.
“Everything I know [Ahmady] makes his testimonies credible. It is a predator and a serial abuser. I am so afraid that I will continue to have other opportunities to work with vulnerable women and hurt them in the same way that it hurt me. ”
Ahmady said in a statement that the allegations were “baseless slander” organized by professional rivals and the Iranian state in an attempt to tarnish him and undermine his work.
He also said two accusers had maintained consensual relations with him. He did not say which ones or how he had identified them from anonymous accounts.
Some of the claims were first made public last year, when the global #MeToo movement found a voice in Iran in an outpouring of accusations against prominent figures, including Ahmady. At least seven complaints against him were posted anonymously on social media accounts in August and September last year.
This led to an investigation by the Association of Sociology of Iran, which suspended his membership and ended his role as secretary of the Group of Sociological Studies of Childhood after finding that “at least s ‘had caused some abuse of power’.
“His behavior provoked the sexual abuse of several young researchers and violated the ethical codes governing scientific and research activities,” said the group, which has no political affiliation.
Ahmady said the allegations had not been proven in court and described them as part of a campaign to “silence my voice,” which involved Iranian security forces and personal enemies of the academy.
“Since my flight from Iran, rival individuals and groups have been endangered with the sole intention of destroying me, my research, as well as my professional and personal position,” the statement said. , which did not address any specific details of the allegations.
“The press is being manipulated by them and those who fear them, and those who want to displace me as a scholar in my field.”
A woman with whom the Guardian spoke described allegations of serious assault that she said had occurred more than 15 years ago outside of Iran. The others detailed alleged attacks they say took place while doing fieldwork in Iran over the past decade.
Golshan * says she was baffled when Ahmady started a sexually explicit conversation over lunch on the first day of work as a researcher and then tried to offer her lemonade with alcohol the second day.
He worked for an admired man, who had a self-proclaimed mission to “protect the vulnerable,” so it never crossed his mind that he might be at risk. She says she only understood it when it was too late, after he took her to an empty apartment for what he thought was a business meeting, closed the door and pulled out the key. He was a college student, about 36 hours from his first job.
“When I found out what was happening, it was too late, there was no way out of this building. I was drunk and I didn’t really fight because I thought it would hurt me, “he said.
In a statement Ahmady posted on social media shortly after the first allegations appeared last year, he admitted “mistakes” and apologized to “anyone I have hurt,” but said all his sexual relations had been consensual.
“There are massive differences between involuntarily injuring someone and raping, abusing and forcing a person to maintain a non-consensual relationship. I want to say unequivocally that I am not a rapist or an abuser, ”he said.
He stated in the same statement that cultural differences and his “relaxed attitude” led to allegations of misconduct.
“I now accept all justified criticism, especially in those cases where I did not have the correct understanding of the culture and could not observe the appropriate social protocols due to my different opinions about relationships and relaxed attitude in the workplace. “.
Women who report aggression and others who worked with him suggest that this argument is familiar. They claim that Ahmady often made sexual jokes, directed the discussion to sexually explicit topics and asked intrusive questions about his sex life.
According to several of them, if they protested, she said feminists should support sexual liberation and insisted that sexualized conversations reflected their modernity. When women resisted their sexual advances, he mocked them for being “conservative.”
A woman described her shock when Ahmady apologized for going to the bathroom during what she thought was a work meeting and came out naked again.
“He started laughing and said,‘ what are you afraid of, is this a really natural thing? If you’re scared of me when I’m naked it means you’re conservative, provincial and small-minded, “she said.” After that, she said, “If you want to be a real feminist and want to resolve your contradictions, you should agree to look me when I’m naked “.
Samaneh Savadi, a UK-based gender equality activist, said he received threats from Ahmady’s Twitter and WhatsApp accounts after linking him to an anonymous complaint against “KA” on social media.
At the time, Ahmady was facing national security charges for cooperating with a “hostile state power” in his research projects. He has described the Iranian state as ideologically opposed to his work on sensitive issues.
However, messages to Savadi suggest that he would explain to the security forces details about the accuser and her work in one of these sensitive fields, which could lead to her facing charges if the site is not removed. .
“In my previous interrogation I was asked about her,” the message said, indicating that he acknowledged the incident and knew the woman’s identity, although the message described her story as “incomplete”.
“Now I am in a very difficult situation, if I decide to tell them the truth, it will hurt us all. Please delete the post before it goes viral and causes us problems. We can also talk tomorrow. Thanks.”
Among the communities of activists and researchers where she worked, anger at the claims has been exacerbated by disgust at the suggestion that she exploit feminism and the idealism of young women to create situations where abuse could occur.
“He has taken advantage of the confidence of these young women who are idealists … they thought that working with him was a way to further their wider cause of women’s rights,” said Sussan Tahmasebi, one of the leading women rights activists. “She must end her access to vulnerable women, as a scholar who claims concern for women’s well-being and empowerment.”
It could also have the potential to hold back research in critical areas. Negative stereotypes about feminists and activists can hinder the trust of conservative communities such as those who practice FGM / C and child marriage.
The charges against Ahamdy could reinforce the worst of them, Savadi said, which could lead to them cutting off access that other people need to conduct vital investigations in the future.
“We trusted him to work on a very sensitive issue and he betrayed us all,” he said. “And I wonder: did you choose these specific topics so you could establish a relationship with women and then take advantage of them?”
Another woman who worked with Ahmady said she did not witness sexual violence, but ended her professional relationship so according to her it was her inappropriate behavior.
He claimed that this included highly sexualized language, alcohol and hashish use, and sexual relations with young researchers he considered an abuse of power, all in a work environment.
He also claimed that, despite describing himself as committed to social issues, he failed on several occasions to fully accredit female couples for their contribution to their work.
Ahmady said he would like a jury of his colleagues to prove the allegations. There is little chance that he would have faced trial in Iran, even if he had not fled; the women who were assaulted there said they did not feel they could file complaints within the Iranian judicial system.
Iran criminalizes consensual sex outside of marriage, so that if rape victims report assaults, but the authorities do not believe them, they risk being prosecuted by themselves. And if a case goes to court, the mandatory punishment for convicted rapists is execution, which is a heavy burden for survivors seeking justice.
There is a pattern of behavior between alleged attacks on Iran that survivors described in the Guardian. They all claim that Ahmady targeted young women he worked with.
They allege that he would engineer situations when he was alone with women, under the pretext of meeting to work. They hoped to be part of a group, but came to find only Ahmady. Several said he offered them illegal intoxicants in Iran, including alcohol or hashish, or tricked them into consuming them.
Most women continued to work with Ahmady for a period after suffering assaults or harassment, they said, because there were few other career options available to them in the small, sensitive fields where they worked.
They said they tried to warn other women where they could, but part of the reason they made the difficult decision to tell their stories in public, at the risk of being identified, was to help protect others.
“What can moderate my pain is that at least even if a person believes what has been done to me and is prevented from doing anything like that to another woman,” one indictment said.
* Not their real names.