Federal prosecutors in Alexandria have asked a judge to dismiss charges accusing a U.S. State Department official of raping his maid while stationed in Bangkok because the maid will not travel to the United States to testify.
David E. Fountain was taken into custody from his Burke home in December, eight months after his maid accused him of raping her in Fountain’s U.S. Embassy-owned Bangkok apartment. According to an indictment, the 49-year-old Fountain rapedthe victim, referred to only as P.K., by “threatening and placing victim P.K. in fear that she would be subjected to death, serious bodily injury or kidnapping.”
In a motion filed Thursday asking U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris to dismiss the charges, prosecutors said P.K. had initially told investigators she would travel to the United States testify. But now, prosecutors wrote, P.K. says “that although she was raped by the defendant, she feels unable to come to the United Sates to testify for religious reasons and because of concerns about her employment.”
On April 21, P.K. told Thai police that she had been raped by Fountain that day, court documents said. An ensuing medical examination found no signs of physical abuse. When Fountain was questioned by authorities in early May, he told them he had sex with her, but it was consensual.
After the interview with law enforcement, Fountain asked for a room on the 16th floor of a Bangkok hotel, authorities said. Inside, he wrote out his will, “in which he vehemently denied” raping P.K. but “stated he did not feel he could defend himself against the charges,” Fountain’s attorney wrote in court documents. Fountain then jumped from the hotel window.
But he survived, crashing onto the heavily insulated roof above the hotel’s 10th-floor spa, court documents said.
He returned to the United States to recover and continued to work for the State Department in Washington.
“My client is embarrassed and ashamed in his conduct of engaging in a sexual relationship with this woman,” Fountain’s attorney Andrew Carroll told The Examiner. “He is also dismayed that he won’t have the opportunity to prove his innocence in court.”
