Sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is falling apart
By Virginia SmithJuly 1st, 2011, 10:00 amComments (18)
The sexual-assault case against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is rapidly falling apart thanks to serious questions regarding the credibility of his accuser, reports The New York Times. According to the Times, though forensic evidence indicates sexual contact between Strauss-Kahn and the hotel maid who accused him of assault in May, the thirty-two-year-old Guinean woman has "repeatedly lied" to officials throughout the case, may have criminal ties, and "prosecutors do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself." One anonymous source summed the whole thing up simply by saying "it is a mess."
Apparently, Strauss-Kahn's accuser may have been receiving money from people tied to drug dealing and money laundering:
According to officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded. That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years.
Meanwhile, the judge for the case is said to be considering loosening the terms of Strauss-Kahn's bail, though in the meantime the politician is still under house arrest and was already forced to resign from his position as chief of the IMF.
Further details on the story are sure to emerge over the next few days, and if this is all true, it's awful both for Strauss-Kahn and for actual victims of sexual assault whose own claims are so often belittled by these kinds of false accusations.
Commentarium (18 Comments)
Looks like Ben Stein wasn't wrong. I thought he actually made some pretty salient points in the article about us automatically siding with the maid against Strauss-Kahn, he just went about it in a way that put people's hackles up.
Umm... what does connections to drug-dealing, as a relatively poor immigrant, have to do with whether or not she was telling the truth about sexual assault? I know tons of rich people who use drugs, or break the law in other ways. If we found out that Dominique liked to do cocaine when he partying, would you suddenly assume he was lying? Isn't that a bit nonsensical? Especially on a "liberal" site?
Then you should hope you never need those rich friends to testify on your behalf. Illegal behavior is particularly impeaching.
I would vouch that /most/ rich people have done illegal things, actually. Just like most people, period, have done illegal things.
Yeah, that will help.
I don't think this man assaulted the maid. I was in NY when it happened, one of my friends there works at the U.N. She said it was all a set up because StrausKahn is/was all set to make some sort of upward move in the diplomatic corps/world. It is a mess for everyone involved and, of course, as the writer here pointed out, for victims of sexual assault.
Read the times article nn - it appears the house keeper spoke to her "connections" prior to her deciding to bring the accusation to the police. Not saying DSK is actually innocent or whatever, but its highly damaging to the accuser's credibility. Not good for anybody involved in this particular case, and bad for sexual assault victims generally.
Everytime there is a sexual assault case involving a powerful man, there are lots of people lined up to call the woman a liar, and pointing out the various ways she could be looking to profit from it. I'm not saying that there could never be lies involved, but when you consider that upwards of 1 in 10 men have at some point assaulted a woman, some of those stories are bound to be true. Yet you will /never/ find a case involving two people with such vastly different amounts of societal power, in which what happened is clearcut and obvious to everyone. You're naive if you think otherwise.
It is not at all uncommon for CEOs of big businesses to pay people to get them out of trouble, either though. He'd have the spending power to work some elaborate fabrications, no doubt. All I'm saying is we'll never know.
And if you can prove ANYTHING that you allege, nn, you'll be on every weekend show broadcast. As it is, you're just tilting at windmills. Admit it, you're simply wrong.
Wrong about what? Your post is very vague. I don't think I'm wrong about anything I said, what I'm doing is injecting a healthy degree of uncertainty about what happened, period. DSK's job in this case is actually easier than the accuser's, because he doesn't have to prove that he /didn't/ rape her. All he has to do is create uncertainty as to whether he did, and then he's free.
I wasn't trying to be vague but I see your point. My point was that DSK didn't have anything to do with the conduct being attributed to the alleged victim.
She has possibly been a prostitute, apparently contacted people to see how she could profit from the situation and has been connected with dealing drugs.
Presumably, some or all of these have some merit or the prosecutors would be laughing them off. If they've all been created by DSK's legal team and the prosecutors are not laughing them off, shame on them.
When the story first broke it was reported she was living in a housing project designated for people living with AIDS. She apparently doesnt have AIDS. To me that reads as though she knows how to work the system. I've doubted her story ever since. He may be a lascivious old scum but I doubt someone so high profile believes they'll get away with rape in this media landscape.
I'd like to see these 2 people switch jobs for some period of time. DSK would clean up hotel rooms, thereby hopefully developing some sort of respect for the servant class. His accuser (whose name I don't know) would help run the world economy, or whatever it is that DSK did. She can't be any worse at it, and might even have some original ideas.
Why would DSK do that?
Now that he's out of the slammer, it would give him something constructive to do, and might look good when he's hauled into court. Or it might meet a community service requirement, if that's what he gets.
I'm not so sure about the woman, though. The IMF's HR weenies might have a problem with what's recently been learned about her.
Nah. Doing anything even close to what was suggested would be entirely inappropriate.
It looks like he was framed, pure and simple.
Reading the times report on this was very intriguing and certainly convinces me of the errors in the American media whirlwind of guilty until proven innocent. It is really frightening to think of being anyone on any side of this case when reading immediate coverage of news breaks and then only learning the facts weeks or months later. Lets hope justice prevails over media and no one's life is ruined unless they truly committed a crime.
Now you say something