A rape charge against a Rappahannock Community College professor and local businessman was dismissed last week after a Gloucester Circuit Court jury found him not guilty of the crime.
The defendant, Mahmood Kalantar, was acquitted after a jury of six men and six women deliberated less than 30 minutes. The proceedings began Dec. 6 and stretched to almost noon the next day before the panel was asked to decide the case.
Kalantar’s accuser, an RCC student who said she was introduced to him in the fall of 2010, testified that she met him one evening in early April at a vacant house he had offered to rent to her. She said while they were inside the house, Kalantar knocked her to the floor and raped her.
After the alleged sexual assault, the woman said Kalantar followed her as she ran to her vehicle, then leaned inside the window and asked her not to say anything to anybody before he gave her $40 and said "that ought to cover it." She testified that she then went home to the house she shared with her family, but said nothing about the incident.
The woman said after she told a classmate about the alleged assault the next day, he insisted she tell an RCC counselor. After she related the alleged incident to the counselor and an RCC administrator, the RCC officials contacted police.
Under questioning by Gloucester Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert D. Hicks, the woman said she agreed to meet Kalantar at the house because she did not see him as a threat. She testified she did not tell her family about the assault because she was afraid they would confront Kalantar and because she was not mentally prepared. She told Hicks she ultimately reported the alleged assault because she knew if she did not report it, Kalantar may hurt someone else. She also said she had never asked Kalantar for money nor threatened to sue him.
Although she was admittedly reluctant to come forward at first, Hicks said the woman had been consistent with her emotional account of the alleged sexual assault. "That emotion can simply not be faked," Hicks said. He also said if she had not been raped, the woman would not have subjected herself to the subsequent lengthy and painful physical exam that followed her police report.
Kalantar’s attorney, Devin Hensley, suggested the accuser, who had two judgments totaling almost $4,400 pending against her, fabricated the story in order to get money from his client. He said she may have also been angry because she could not afford the house Kalantar showed her, which she had said was "perfect" for her.
"When he told her what the rent would be, she got mad. She started spinning a story to (her classmate), and it got out of hand. She kicked a snowball over the ledge and now it’s created an avalanche," Hensley said.
Hensley also pointed out the woman had no defensive injuries after the alleged assault, and there was no evidence that Kalantar had any physical contact with the accuser. Kalantar, who pleaded not guilty, did not testify, but in a videotaped interview with a Gloucester Sheriff’s investigator he admitted being with the woman at the house but denied any physical contact between them.
Cell phone records, Hensley said, indicated that the woman received a call from her father while she was preparing to exit the driveway of the house in which the alleged attack had just occurred. The woman said her father wanted her to bring dinner home from a nearby restaurant.
Hensley said the woman called the restaurant eight minutes later, a call she did not remember making, then called her father back from the restaurant to confirm his order. She did not mention the alleged attack in any of the calls. "If you’re assaulted, do you call to order sandwiches on your way home?" Hensley asked the jury.