A Georgetown University professor sued for sexually harassing a former female student has filed a countersuit accusing that student of defamation. 

Lawyers for Dr. Peter Turkeltaub, a professor in the departments of neurobiology and rehabilitation medicine, filed the countersuit Feb. 1 in a Washington, D.C. federal court, alleging that the student, Candace van der Stelt, knowingly spread false and defamatory statements about Turkeltaub sexually harassing her. The countersuit states that van der Stelt spread these statements to current and former members of Turkeltaub’s on-campus Cognitive Recovery Lab (CRL), current and former Georgetown graduate students, the media, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other members of his professional community. 

The countersuit calls for financial compensation for Turkeltaub, who told The Hoya he has spent more than $130,000 in legal fees to defend himself since van der Stelt filed her lawsuit and an internal Title IX complaint against him.

Turkeltaub said the countersuit has allowed him a platform to tell his side of the story, but he does not intend to retaliate against van der Stelt.

“I worried a lot about the appearance of a professor suing a student for defamation, a male professor suing a student, a female student, and I just want to be clear about that, that it’s not about punishing her,” Turkeltaub told The Hoya. 

Van der Stelt denied The Hoya’s request for comment through her lawyers. 

In July, van der Stelt filed a legal complaint against Turkeltaub and Georgetown, accusing Turkeltaub of sexually harassing her and the university of retaliation against her when she came forward with her sexual harassment claims. In her original suit, van der Stelt claimed that Turkeltaub attempted to stroke her inner thigh and subjected her to multiple jokes that were sexual in nature while she was a member of his lab, first as lab manager, then as a Ph.D. student in Georgetown’s Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN), from 2020 to 2022. 

The Georgetown Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action (IDEAA), the body which investigates allegations of sexual harassment on campus, conducted a 14-month investigation, ending in December 2023, before holding hearings Dec. 13 to Dec. 15, 2023 to judge van der Stelt’s allegations against Turkeltaub. The body found Turkeltaub “not responsible” for committing the alleged harassment against van der Stelt, according to the countersuit.

Gary Gilbert, who represents van der Stelt, said Turkeltaub’s countersuit is retaliation against van der Stelt for her claims against him. 

“Actions such as this by University faculty are often intended to silence victims of Title IX violations, resulting in a serious chilling effect and discouraging others from pursuing their rights,” Gilbert wrote to The Hoya. 

Turkeltaub’s lawyer, Ann Olivarius, said van der Stelt’s lawsuit caused Turkeltaub both personal and professional damage, forcing him to respond with a defamation suit. 

“Candace decided that she would try to do as much harm as she could to Dr. Turkeltaub,” Olivarius told The Hoya. “His reputation has been marred. There’s no doubt about it. He’s been painfully hurt.” 

The countersuit responds to many of van der Stelt’s allegations in her lawsuit, characterizing them as misleading or false, including the alleged incident where Turkeltaub attempted to stroke her inner thigh.

Turkeltaub said he touched van der Stelt’s skirt, not her thigh, to compliment her outfit and denied that the incident was inappropriate.

“The inner thigh? I mean, that is absurd,” Turkeltaub said. “It’s not even physically possible based on where we were. We were standing up in a hallway where people walk by, and it’s just absurd.”

Van der Stelt’s lawsuit also cites an incident said to have occurred at Turkeltaub’s home in Arlington, Va., during a party, in which Turkeltaub entered a bathroom she was in. The countersuit alleges that van der Stelt told another graduate student in April 2023 that Turkeltaub had intentionally followed her into the bathroom. 

Turkeltaub said he had entered the bathroom to show van der Stelt a feature of the house in the bathroom and denied that the incident was inappropriate. 

He said he was confused by the initial accusation in the lawsuit. 

“I was very shocked when I saw it for the first time because I remember the party very well,” Turkeltaub said. “And there was nothing uncomfortable that happened at all. I mean, it took me a while to figure out what that was.” 

In August, van der Stelt told The Hoya that she initially did not raise concerns about this but said it made her uncomfortable.

Ten former lab members, departmental faculty and staff who have worked with Turkeltaub told The Hoya that the version of events described in the countersuit align with their own memory of what occurred in the lab. 

One of these individuals, Carolyn Gershman (GRD ’25), a student in the neuroscience and cognitive science Ph.D. program who rotated in the lab in 2020 and continues to work with Turkeltaub, who is a member of her thesis committee, said the countersuit aligns with her memory of the events. 

“It felt like a breath of fresh air in terms of fitting what I had observed,” Gershman told The Hoya. 

Another Ph.D. student, Sara Dyslin (GRD ’25), who worked in the lab starting in 2020 and shared an office with van der Stelt after she started the Ph.D. program in 2021, also said the countersuit portrays events as she remembers them. 

“The countersuit seemed to align much more closely with my experiences and my perceptions of events and dynamics within the lab,” Dyslin told The Hoya. 

Van der Stelt’s lawsuit also includes claims of sexually inappropriate jokes in a group chat between herself, Turkeltaub and Sachi Paul, another member of the lab. 

In one incident, van der Stelt’s suit said text message jokes Turkeltaub sent about sexually transmitted diseases made her uncomfortable. Messages obtained by The Hoya show Turkeltaub, van der Stelt and Paul exchanging messages in a group chat with comments about sexually transmitted diseases including syphilis and anal warts. 

Turkeltaub said van der Stelt and Paul’s participation in these jokes encouraged him to further engage. 

“I let my guard down, I guess,” Turkeltaub said. 

Turkeltaub said he was never aware any jokes made van der Stelt uncomfortable. 

Paul said she agreed with the countersuit’s characterization that van der Stelt encouraged the jokes.

“She was a lot more bothered that he wouldn’t make jokes or wouldn’t share things,” Paul told The Hoya. “She was a lot more bothered that he had boundaries in the first place.” 

In an August interview with The Hoya, van der Stelt said she had not initially realized these texts were meant to be jokes and that she had felt pressure to engage in them for fears of being labeled a “killjoy,” something Turkeltaub and Paul denied occurring.

The countersuit also alleges that van der Stelt knowingly disseminated false claims about Turkeltaub’s alleged sexual harassment to multiple Ph.D. students in the neuroscience program, including Shiva Hassanzadeh-Behbahani and Alix Fetch, who allegedly discussed van der Stelt’s lawsuit outside the lab. Van der Stelt’s lawsuit does not name Hassanzadeh-Behbahani or Fetch.

The countersuit also claims van der Stelt spread defamatory statements about Turkeltaub to Rachel Galginaitis, the manager of the Georgetown Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery, the center within Georgetown’s medical school where the CRL is based. 

According to the countersuit, Galginaitis circulated van der Stelt’s lawsuit to members of Turkeltaub’s lab, writing to one member, “You may want to take the day off after reading this,” and “If you didn’t know anything, it can be a shock to the system.”

Fetch and Galginaitis declined to speak with The Hoya. Hassanzadeh-Behbahani did not respond to requests for comment. 

Lára Stefansson (GRD ’28), a Ph.D. student in Georgetown’s IPN program, said she disagrees with the allegation that van der Stelt made false claims about Turkeltaub to Ph.D. students. 

Stefansson, who said she believes van der Stelt’s allegations, said that when van der Stelt initially began to disclose details that she had been harassed, she did not say who had harassed her. 

Another IPN Ph.D. student, who also believes van der Stelt’s allegations and asked not to be named to prevent retaliation, also disagreed with the characterization that van der Stelt spread defamatory statements to Ph.D. students about Turkeltaub. 

The countersuit alleges that individuals understood van der Stelt was speaking about Turkeltaub when making her allegations, even if she did not name him directly. 

Gershman said in conversations she had with other Ph.D. students, many were aware that van der Stelt had been making some form of allegations against Turkeltaub. 

Dyslin said some Ph.D. students were aware of the allegations, but said the information they had was often based on assumptions and speculation. 

“It was clear that word did spread to a considerable amount of students within the IPN program,” Dyslin said. 

“I had several conversations with other students where it was clear that there were a lot of details and nuances that were being missed or misrepresented,” Dyslin added. 

A major aspect of the countersuit involves the culture of the lab while van der Stelt was employed and when she began to make allegations after starting classes as a Ph.D. student. 

According to the countersuit, van der Stelt was initially a “capable and dedicated” lab manager who had a “healthy professional relationship” with Turkeltaub. However, the countersuit claims that van der Stelt began to have conflicts with other lab members once she started her Ph.D. in 2021.

Van der Stelt made multiple claims in her lawsuit that inappropriate hugging occurred in the lab and that Turkeltaub often pressured her to give him hugs. Turkeltaub and other members of the lab who spoke with The Hoya said that van der Stelt had herself encouraged hugging.

In one instance, the countersuit claims that one member of the lab was uncomfortable with van der Stelt hugging them. 

In August, van der Stelt told The Hoya that she had indicated to Turkeltaub that instances of hugging had made her uncomfortable. 

The countersuit also claims repeatedly that van der Stelt was “jealous” of other members of the lab, including Paul, for their closeness with Turkeltaub. The countersuit alleges that this behavior began once van der Stelt entered the Ph.D. program.

According to the countersuit, in an email to Paul with the subject line “A long time coming,” van der Stelt wrote, “Have I felt jealous? Absolutely.” The countersuit characterizes this email as proof that van der Stelt described herself as feeling envious of other lab members’ closeness to Turkeltaub. 

Turkeltaub said he distanced himself from van der Stelt beginning in 2021, when she switched roles from lab manager to Ph.D. student, both because he wanted to create a student-teacher relationship, rather than what he described as a friendship, and because their working relationship became strained. 

Olivarius said this drove van der Stelt to make allegations against Turkeltaub. 

“She got very jealous of Sachi, of other women in the lab having any proximity to him,” Olivarius said. “She got very, very possessive about all of this and then decided that she would lash out and get even and file a complaint without talking to him about it at all.”

In August, van der Stelt told The Hoya that other colleagues labeled her as “jealous” or stated she had made up the allegations in her head when she came forward to them with her concern over Turkeltaub’s alleged behavior. 

The countersuit also alleges that when van der Stelt did leave the lab in the fall of 2022, she committed a data breach, allegedly refusing to hand over a file that contained confidential patient information. 

The countersuit comes two months after the conclusion of the IDEAA’s investigation into van der Stelt’s complaint against Turkeltaub. According to the countersuit, IDEAA interviewed 29 individuals as part of the investigation. 

Turkeltaub said he was pleased with the results of the Title IX investigation, which the countersuit says found him “not responsible” for committing the alleged harassment.

“It was very, very vindicating,” Turkeltaub said. “I knew I hadn’t sexually harassed her. But it was a year of thinking about this and trying to make sure that it was clear that that was the case. And so it just felt very, very vindicating.” 

Van der Stelt withdrew her complaint from IDEAA Dec. 11, 2023, two days before the hearings, and elected not to attend any of the Title IX investigation hearings, according to the countersuit. Despite this, the IDEAA office decided to continue with their investigation. 

Gilbert, van der Stelt’s lawyer, said his client chose to withdraw her complaint because the university was unwilling to accommodate her final exam schedule, which prevented her from attending the IDEAA hearings. 

“Instead of seeking the truth by rescheduling the hearing and allowing Ms. van der Stelt to present her case, Georgetown decided to go forward with a one-sided, kangaroo court,” Gilbert wrote. 

A university spokesperson said Georgetown does not comment on pending litigation. 

Gilbert said van der Stelt instead chose to pursue her case in her pending federal case against Turkeltaub. 

Turkeltaub said this period of time, when she began to make her accusations, has been difficult for his lab. 

“It’s been the worst period of my life,” Turkeltaub said. 

Van der Stelt has since transferred to the University of Pittsburgh to complete her Ph.D., living away from her husband, who resides in the D.C. area. 

Federal court proceedings between the parties are ongoing. Van der Stelt’s attorneys must submit a response to Turkeltaub’s countersuit by April 8, after which the parties can schedule full court hearings.