The morning of Bill Rausch’s latest hearing in DC Superior Court on a charge of felony sex abuse, another woman filed a report with Metro police detectives, claiming she was sexually and physically abused by Rausch for years and that she was being stalked by him as recently as this summer. Police are investigating and are attempting to serve him with a restraining order today. These new allegations are the most violent I’ve heard so far and could lead to further charges.
Here's what is alleged:
- Their relationship began when she worked under Bill Rausch at a DC office. The inappropriate behavior began with sexually-charged gchat messages. Bill asked her to stay in the office after work. He invited her into his personal office and closed the door behind her. He threw her up against the wall hard and began to kiss her. Afterward, Bill walked her to her desk and then deleted their gchat messages and said, this never happened.
- Later, Bill began to hit her, sometimes leaving big bruises. Once he backhanded her so hard he chipped her tooth. He asked her to send him pictures of the bruises.
- On two occasions he choked her and called her Maura, the name of his girlfriend who went missing in 2004. He’d call her Maura and say, “You’re a bitch. You’re a whore. You’re a cunt.” After these expressions of violence, he would shower her with affection, buying her gifts, taking her to expensive restaurants. And he would promise not to hit her again. But he could never keep his promise.
- On Valentine’s Day, 2018, Bill tossed her into the air in her apartment. The woman’s head hit a light, resulting in a large gash which spilled blood everywhere. Bill called 9/11. Bill insisted on riding with her in the ambulance to the hospital and would not leave when she spoke to doctors and nurses. When she got the stitches out, he insisted on coming with her, too. He told the nurse to make him her emergency contact.
- Some of these assaults took place at an overseas military base while Bill was deployed, which could result in charges through military court channels.
- The victim officially broke off her relationship with Bill on March 6 of this year, when Bill was still deployed in East Africa. He did not accept no for an answer and began a campaign of stalking and harassment, which she documented thoroughly (see insert).
These are broad strokes of the allegations. These stories (the choking, calling her Maura) echo stories I’ve been told by his other alleged victims and a patternof behavior is becoming clear. This victim appears to have solid footing in the way of documents, texts, emails, and photographs.
A court hearing is taking place today in DC to address the restraining order against Rausch.
An additional allegation came out last week from a credible source close to Rausch: Bill used fake social media accounts to steer the narrative of the Maura Murray investigation online and to harass civilian journalists while deployed in East Africa. His job there, by the way, was using Twitter to monitor enemies of the state. Using that software and hardware on Americans is a kind of a big deal. Read that story here.