First of 3 women in assault case against ex-fed testifies
WAUKESHA - The first of three women expected to testify against a former federal agent charged with sexually assaulting them told a jury Tuesday that she lived in near-constant fear of the man over most of a 20-year relationship.
“He has a very volatile personality,” she said. “He goes from zero to 60 over nothing.”
The woman, 52, said she never told police about David Scharlat, 55, of Oconomowoc, because she worried no one would believe her over him. “I had no proof,” she said through tears.
The Journal Sentinel does not typically name people who say they are victims of sexual assaults.
When a Hartland detective came to her in 2018, as part of an investigation spurred by another of Scharlat’s girlfriends, the woman said she felt some relief and some hope.
“There’s power in numbers,” she said. “I thought maybe now he’d be held accountable.”
The woman said she had begun a sexual relationship with Scharlat when they each lived in his father’s rental property in Milwaukee in 1998. At one point, she moved to Washington state, had children and married.
The marriage was one of convenience, she said, and she continued seeing Scharlat during trips and visits. In 2012, she said, she moved back to Waukesha County on his promise to help her out. She said he paid part of her rent for a house on Okauchee Lake, and gave her thousands of dollars for other expenses while she got on her feet.
“I respected what he did for a living,” she said, “and felt he was offering a life that was appealing. I wanted to believe, and I’d forgive and forgive and forgive.”
Scharlat is charged with forcing the woman to give him oral sex at a hotel and her home in Oconomowoc in the summer of 2012 and Valentine’s Day 2013 over her repeated objections. She said there were other times he did so in other states.
She said he often kept his gun nearby during sex, and that his badge, worn around his neck, would often strike her face. She said he once said he could push her off a cliff and easily make it look like an accident.
“He’d throw me on the bed, take advantage of his size and my fear,” she said.This type of encounter seemed to arouse him sexually, she said. He would become very charming and attentive for a while after forcing sex — but it wouldn’t last.
On cross-examination, Scharlat’s attorney, Paul Bucher, repeatedly asked the woman if she told police, or anyone else, about the sexual assaults. He also asked about a time Scharlat engaged in oral sex with the woman at her home about a year after the Valentine’s Day 2013 incident.
She said that was a consensual act. Scharlat, who was fired from the Diplomatic Security Service, an arm of the U.S. State Department, in 2015, was charged in March 2018 after a different woman reported that he’d assaulted her in 2017.
He faces two counts of second-degree sexual assault involving Tuesday’s witness; another count of the same offense against another woman in August 2013 at his home; and counts of first-degree sexual assault, causing great bodily harm; and third-degree sexual assault against a third woman at her home in Hartland and a home in Brookfield in October 2017.
Scharlat says all the sexual encounters were consensual. In his opening statement to the trial, Bucher suggested the three women sought vengeance against his client when they realized none of them were his exclusive girlfriends.