UPDATE: The civil suit was settled out of court in January 2014 with the terms confidential.
By Mike Rogoway & Laura Gunderson | The Oregonian
One of Oregon’s most active technology investors faces a
accusing him of a brutal sexual assault in 2012
Nitin Khanna
Prosecutors in Yamhill County
Nitin Khanna, 42, after considering investigative reports on the allegations, including a DNA match that links him to the alleged victim. The decision was reviewed and approved by the Oregon Department of Justice at the request of local prosecutors after they sparred with the lawyer representing the alleged victim.
Attorneys representing Khanna vehemently deny the allegations, which were first reported Wednesday by Willamette Week. Portland lawyer David Markowitz, who is representing Khanna in the civil case, issued a statement noting that local and state prosecutors did not charge him.
“When someone is falsely accused with something like this, whether criminally or in a civil suit, it is devastating,” Markowitz wrote. “Mr. Khanna will defend this case on the facts, and we expect the result here will be the same as it was in the criminal investigation.”
Nitin Khanna
Age
: 42
Background
: After growing up near New Delhi, Khanna moved to the U.S. in 1988 and attended Purdue University. He started Saber Corp. in 1997 and sold it for $420 million in 2007.
Current job
: CEO of the boutique investment bank MergerTech, which helps broker the sale of startup companies.
Investments
: Khanna has backed a number of Portland’s best-known startups, including AthletePath, Cloudability, Geoloqi, Meridian and VendScreen.
Khanna is chief executive of a boutique investment bank called MergerTech, which helps broker the sale of startups and other small companies. Previously, he was co-founder and chief executive of Saber Corp., a Portland business that developed management software for government agencies. Saber sold to EDS Corp. in 2007 for $420 million.
That deal made Khanna wealthy and he’s become an important mentor and enthusiastic backer of entrepreneurs in Portland’s tight-knit startup scene. A boisterous figure, Khanna held regular cigar and whiskey nights for the hard-charging tech crowd. He serves as both a social and business hub for the tech community.
Portland makeup artist Lori Fale, 34, who knew Khanna and his wife socially, filed her civil suit January 6 seeking nearly $2.3 million in damages. She describes the alleged assault in lurid detail on a crowdfunding webpage where she seeks to raise $11,500 to finance her lawsuit. (The Oregonian does not typically identify alleged victims of sexual assault, but is naming Fale because she identifies herself on the public webpage raising money for her suit.)
On Wednesday, attorneys for both sides said they have scheduled a mediation session on Jan. 28 to begin settlement talks.
On her webpage, in this month’s suit, and in a similar account contained in a police report filed four days after the alleged assault, Fale reported that she was hired to do the makeup for Khanna’s wife and other members of their wedding party at an elaborate weekend in September 2012 at the luxurious Allison Inn in Newberg.
In her account, Fale says she went to Khanna’s room in the early morning hours following the rehearsal dinner looking for a friend. She says that Khanna raped her there while others were apparently sleeping in the room. She told police he then took Fale to her room where he attacked her again, more violently.
Investigators’ reports show that police found DNA from Khanna’s semen on a black dress Fale wore that night. According to police reports, logs tracking hotel door locks show that key cards opened Khanna’s door at 1:20 a.m., 1:46 a.m. and 3:40 a.m. Fale’s door, across the hall, opened at 3:07 a.m.
In her account to police, Fale says that she believes she may have been drugged and that she awoke in her room around 10:30 the next morning. She remained at the wedding, continuing to work. According to police, Fale told them she had sex with one of the wedding guests the following night.
Scott Upham, a former Washington County district attorney representing Fale, said his client was responding to a highly traumatic event.
“Imagine the stress, the fear, the anxiety, the need for attention, for love,” he said. “Those things are heightened to the nth degree when someone is abused like this, especially under these circumstances: He did this on same day he was getting married to her friend.”
While Khanna declined to meet with investigators, or answer their questions on advice of his defense attorney Kevin Sali, some witnesses disputed elements of Fale’s story. Portland tech executive Josh Friedman – a close friend of Khanna who shared his room the night of the alleged assault – said in an interview Wednesday that “There’s no way this happened.”
Both Fale and Friedman say they spent much of the evening together following the Friday night rehearsal dinner, partying past midnight. They agree that Fale later came to the room where Khanna and other members of the wedding party were staying.
By Friedman’s account, though, Khanna answered the door and told Fale that Friedman would see her the next day and sent her away: “Then he closed the door and we went to sleep.”
Khanna did not return a phone call seeking comment. Fale’s attorney said she did not want to speak to the media.
Yamhill County deputy district attorney Lisl Miller declined to prosecute. In a May 2013 memo explaining her decision to the Newberg police, Miller wrote that “Sexual assault cases are by nature difficult to prove, because often the crimes occur behind closed doors, where there are no witnesses other than the victim and the offender.”
While prosecutors know from DNA tests that there was “sexual contact” between Khanna and Fale, Miller continued, that doesn’t prove the activity was nonconsensual.
“This is not to say that the sexual assault didn’t happen exactly as the victim describes,” Miller wrote. “The problem is that we cannot prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt. Decisions to decline prosecution are not made lightly.”
Oregonian news researcher Lynne Palombo and reporter Kimberly A.C. Wilson contributed to this report.
-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; phone: 503-294-7699
-- Laura Gunderson