Kylie Moore-Gilbert vigorously defended her husband as she spent 804 days in Iranian prisons, only to discover his betrayal upon her return home.
It was the ultimate betrayal. Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert spent 804 days in Iranian prisons, mostly in solitary confinement in a 3m x 2m cell with not enough warm clothes or blankets for the freezing temperatures.
She also went through psychological torture, with other prisoners at the same jails saying that they were regularly forced into fake executions.
But back in Australia, her Russian-Israeli husband Ruslan Hodorov was having an affair with her University of Melbourne colleague and PhD supervisor Dr Kylie Baxter.
Despite sources revealing some other people were aware of the affair, Dr Moore-Gilbert would only learn of the betrayal after arriving back in Australia in November last year.
The University of Melbourne was informed of Dr Baxter and Mr Hodorov’s relationship on November 29 last year, two days after Dr Moore-Gilbert landed in Australia.
Dr Moore-Gilbert, 33, is now divorcing Mr Hodorov, who was next of kin and a point of contact for the Australian government advisers working on her case.
He kept up the facade of a doting husband to her family during her jail ordeal on spying charges she always strongly denied.
Friends of the couple revealed Mr Hodorov, 31, and Dr Baxter, 43, who was married with children, secretly began their affair about a year after Dr Moore-Gilbert’s arrest, which was in September 2018.