Is the Head of the IMF a Sex Criminal?

You are acting as though they lack evidence of a forcible sexual assault

It was, or so it seemed, a familiar story: the lecherous, power-drunk old man who’s used to getting away with taking advantage of women, until he doesn’t. But with the news that the sexual-assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is crumbling in the face of the accuser’s own checkered past, the narrative has taken an abrupt about-face. Suddenly, the Sofitel maid has gone from helpless immigrant suffering life’s latest cruel blow to a different stock character: the dodgy gangster’s girlfriend who knows an opportunity when she sees one. Prosecutors, once certain the details were on their side, have discovered they are dealing with an unreliable narrator. But then again, so are we all.
We Americans pride ourselves on the presumption of innocence, when in fact everything about our culture works to spin the arrow the other way around. In the court of public opinion, what matters is not facts but story lines, and especially with a defendant like DSK, it is easy to see signs of guilt. The French were horrified by the way he was paraded before the press, droopy-eyed and stubbly as Khalik Sheihk Mohammed; our mayor, conceding the humiliation point, argued that “if you don’t want to do the perp walk, don’t do the crime,” as many a New Yorker nodded along. He left the hotel in a rush, maybe. He was on suicide watch, said a leak out of Rikers. When the history emerged of the terrible way DSK has treated women — as if he were a Duke lacrosse player all grown up and handed the keys to one of the world’s elite institutions — we built the case a little more in our heads. This was imperious entitlement at its very worst, a modern-day morality play. Also: He’s French.

It bears noting that along with the tabloid excesses, the media’s protocols for reporting about sex crimes also paradoxically plays a role in shaping how we perceive this kind of scandal. Out of respect for her privacy and because of the particularly fraught nature of the crime, in the American press, we don’t name the accuser. (The French lack a similar guideline, which is why photos of the housekeeper are now easily found on the Internet, for those who wish to draw further inferences from her appearance.) It’s a noble principle, certainly, but the shield afforded the woman has a way of making us automatically categorize her as a victim, not simply an accusing witness.

Now that we know this hardworking immigrant mother is at the very least a more complicated figure, the presumption of guilt plays out in the opposite direction. DSK has been released on his own recognizance. Even if an otherwise duplicitous witness is telling the truth about the alleged attack, the district attorney’s job may have just become impossible. But really, the central mystery endures. On May 14, a rich, well-connected white man had sex in a hotel suite with a younger, poorer, black woman who is not his wife. We can conjure all sorts of narratives to fill in the blanks, but that fact may be the only aspect of this affair that we’ll ever be sure of.

This Friday former Chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn (generally called DSK in France -- and now in the international media) has been released from the house arrest under which he has been for more than a month. The prosecution has found significant credibility issues with the chambermaid who claimed that he raped her on May 14th this year, first chasing her naked through the luxury suite he was occupying, then forcing her to have oral sex with him.

She is reported to have been repeatedly lying about a number of issues, including a number of bank-accounts on which she has been receiving significant cash deposits, among others from a man convicted of possession of 400 pounds of marijuana.

We do not yet know what the final verdict of the DSK case in New York will be. He may yet turn out to be guilty, even though the prosecution's case seems to be teetering. But all of us should pause for a minute to realize that, beyond all rationalizations about the public's right to know and the importance of a free press, we have primarily been privy to today's variation of the Roman Circus.

Ancient Rome's wisdom was that the masses should be ruled by bread and circuses. Nowadays democracies no longer feed people to lions; but we still have our arenas. The new victims are those who are accused of criminal misconduct. The new arenas are newspapers, websites and TV stations; the lions have been replaced by cameras. And while cameras don't tear the flesh off the victims' bones, the damage to their lives is often exorbitant and irremediable.

The coverage of the DSK affair had a strong taste of a gladiatorial event. It started with DSK's so called "perp walk" -- the procedure in which defendants are walked through a public area that allows for the press to take pictures in New York. Of course DSK is not unique in having been put through this public humiliation: since Rudolph Giuliani liberalized the rules for this practice in New York, everybody can be subject to it.

The circus continued with lurid details of the accusations spread over every newspaper in the world, starting with the precise sexual act DSK supposedly forced the maid to perform to where exactly she had spit on the carpet.

It doesn't get much juicier: one of the world's most powerful men, head of the IMF is about to enter the race for the French Presidency; polls show that he would trounce the incumbent Sarkozy. He is taken off an Air France plane about to depart from New York's JFK. He is first held in custody for a few days. His (expensive and prominent) lawyers then negotiated exorbitant six million bail to have him under house arrest.

The luxury conditions of the arrest were described in great detail: the loft he rented costs S50,000 a month; the security arrangements $200.000 a month. All this was made possible by the wealth of his wife Anne Sinclair. Once the story unfolds, previous allegations for sexual harassment surface. DFK resigns from his post at the IMF; his political career, poised to go for its pinnacle, seems to be over.

The punditry had its field day. You could pretty much predict the angles that were taken by looking at the pundit's general orientation. Feminists lambasted the ways in which French alpha males always are allowed some extra grace in their sexual behavior. In France the favorite theory was that DSK had been set up by his political rivals; other conspiracy theories linked the setup to his activities at the IMF. Then there were the friends who said that DSK certainly had a taste for women, but was incapable of rape. Feminists retorted that, of course, the coterie of powerful men would stick together.

Let us face the truth: even though DSK's ordeal is terrible, he is privileged: if he is cleared of charges, or the prosecution decides to drop the case, this will be on the front pages of papers and websites around the world. And while the damage to his life and career cannot be mended, he will at least be publicly vindicated, and there is a good chance that, at least in France, his honor will be restored.

Not all victims of the press's hunger for scandal are as lucky. Within the context of my psychological practice I have seen what happens to those sufficiently well-known to be of interest to the press when charges are pressed, but not sufficiently famous to command interest in the long run.

I have seen from close how the lives of such people have been ruined. They had been accused of embezzlement, fraud or sexual misconduct on the front pages. A few weeks later, their cases were dismissed -- in some cases with the express statement by the court that charges should never have been pressed to begin with. But this was of no interest to the press anymore. If the papers were forced to do so, there was a brief note, buried somewhere in the back-pages, reporting that X had been cleared of all charges.

I saw how they suffered, when people on the street said, 'Oh this is X, the corrupt bastard!' obviously making their comment loud enough for X to hear them. Little did they know that charges had not even been pressed against him, because the papers who had carried the suspicions -- of course making sure that they could not be sued for libel -- had never bothered to clear X's name on a spot even comparable in visibility to the original accusations.

I saw people who had been accused of rape: charges were not only dropped, but the court reprimanded the police for its carelessness in disregarding evidence in favor of the defendant. But, even years later, they felt that their image had forever been tainted, and unfortunately their feelings reflected reality. Such is human psychology that memory stores salient negative information much better than the, far less interesting, fact that somebody turns out to be innocent.

I have seen how some of them never recovered from the trauma they underwent; and never recovered their abilities to lead rich and productive lives; how their children were damaged for life because of their parent's public humiliation; and how their marriages fell apart, because the strain was too great to bear.

Let us have the intellectual and moral decency not to say that this is the price of having a free press. We should be lucid enough to distinguish between the press's essential democratic function and its provision of entertainment. Let us see reporting about the scandals of famous and the not-so-famous for what it is: the modern day circus arena that feeds the insatiable human appetite for gossip, scandal and the Schadenfreude of seeing the mighty fall. Without this destructive joy, media wouldn't have clients for this kind of material.

Of course we cannot know in advance who will turn out to be guilty and who will go free. In deciding to release the names of those indicted, we should always ask whether there is genuine public interest in releasing their identities. In many, many cases there is no genuine public interest except for the desire for entertainment and the media's hunger for reporting it.

We must remember that some of those who unwillingly provide such entertainment, because they have been falsely accused of crimes, are harmed forever, for no other reason that humans love seeing fellow humans being torn to pieces. Maybe this will raise the question, once again, whether privacy laws should not be reconsidered: the human appetite for gossip is not good enough justification for inflicting grievous harm.

It appears that the New York Times story that broke last night is correct, that the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is crumbling. Bloomberg is reporting that the former IMF head will be released on his own recognizance while facing charges that he raped a hotel maid on a visit to the United States in May. As the Times reported last night, “investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper.”

Mind you, the woman still says she was attacked, and nothing in the Times article indicates that she lied about what happened between Strauss-Kahn and her, except a vague statement that prosecutors don’t “believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances.” And there is still the incontrovertible DNA evidence that something happened between them.

The problems appear to be that 1) the woman has “possible links to people involved in criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering”; 2) she spoke with an imprisoned acquaintance about “the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him” and 3) there are some discrepancies between her asylum application and what she told investigators about that application.

As for those: 1) having links to “people involved in criminal activities” does not by itself make one a criminal; 2) is it really so wrong to wonder aloud how one might benefit from being raped by a rich and powerful man? Rape turns your life upside down, makes you feel battered and fearful to be alone. It might not be the smartest decision, no. But it’s not like they have her on tape two days BEFORE the incident talking to someone about how to blackmail an innocent man with a rape allegation. The third issue—the discrepancies between her asylum application and what she told police they would find in her application are confusing and perhaps mildly troubling, but they do not change what happened in that hotel room.

It would be nice to think that we lived in a country where even those who run afoul of the law were entitled to the same protections as the rest of us. Having a few unpaid parking tickets doesn’t mean that muggers have a right to your wallet, and a teenage past full of shoplifting busts doesn’t mean you should be subjected to a hit-and-run or get beat up walking down the street.

But the judicial process does not make it easy to pursue rape charges. Emily Bazelon and I researched false rape allegations for Slate in 2009, when a Hofstra student garnered headlines for recanting after claiming that she was gang-raped by five men in a bathroom. What we learned is that, whatever the percentage of false rape allegations is (a number that’s surprisingly hard to discern), they do a disproportionate amount of damage. One of our sources told us that, first off, police are highly suspicious of accusers, because they’ve either been burned by a false accuser or have heard similar stories from colleagues. That doesn’t appear to be the case with Strauss-Kahn’s alleged victim—the police reacted quickly and seriously. But even if a woman manages to file a police report and her accuser is charged and the case goes to trial, there’s another hurdle. Juries are similarly hard on rape accusers. Steve Cullen, an Army attorney who's worked extensively as a prosecutor, explained it to us:

Often in sexual assault prosecutions there's no debate as to the sex, but everything falls on proving lack of consent—and can only be proven through a convincing and persuasive victim's testimony. Often, that victim's testimony has to overcome some less than ideal circumstances—she was drinking, people observed her flirting with the perpetrator etc.

No, the victim in this case wasn’t drinking or flirting. But the questions about her integrity would have the same effect on a jury. If she could lie about her asylum application, for whatever reason, then she might be lying about her attack. As such, what prosecutor wants to stake his or her career or reputation on a case that the jury is probably going to laugh at? It’s an unfortunate reality. There’s an old saw that “it’s better to let 10 guilty men go free than convict a single innocent man.” Maybe, but it’s frustrating when a case can’t even be brought to trial.

And pity the next woman who tries to bring rape charges against a powerful man.

The fact that DSK partner in the affair charge misconduct that was not found to be true

Vance has nothing. He should drop the charges, not next week, NOW

DSK, after an internal investigation, was found guilty of "poor judgment" in having

Quote:

Vance has nothing. He should drop the charges, not next week, NOW

.

Agree and bring whatever charges is possible under New York law against the maid for lying during a police investigation.

BTW Bill, I guess we know now why Ophelia felt the need to have so many lawyers to protect her don't we....

I am because they do lack such evidence, they can prove the she had fluids on her, which supports the story that they had oral sex, what else?...Absent a recording of the event they can not possibly have proof that an assault took place,

Her lawyer claims there was medical evidence of vaginal bruising and a torn ligament, among other injuries

.....Even if Vance drops the charges, the maid's lawyer may still pursue DSK--that lawyer is angry enough at Vance to want to try to show him up by getting a conviction in a civil trial....

Again, there is no evidence that the maid lied regarding her allegations of sexual assault by DSK

Attorney: DA has evidence Strauss-Kahn bruised maid’s vagina
Posted on 07.1.11
By David Edwards

The attorney for the maid allegedly raped by Dominique Strauss-Kahn surprised experts with a half-hour press conference Friday after The New York Times reported that his client had lied to prosecutors.

Kenneth Thompson said that the New York County District Attorney had an “obligation” to prosecute Strauss-Kahn because the physical evidence of a violent attack was irrefutable.

“Dominique Strauss-Kahn came out running out of one of those rooms naked, towards her and he grabbed her breasts first and started to attack her,” Thompson explained. “He then grabbed her vagina with so much force that he hurt her. He grabbed her vagina with so much force that he bruised her vagina.”

“The next thing that shows that their claim of consentual sex is a lie is the fact that when Dominique Strauss-Kahn threw the victim to the floor, he tore a ligament in her shoulder. That is a medical fact,” he continued. “The other third point to show you she was violently attacked in that room is that Dominique Strauss-Kahn ripped her stockings. There are holes, rips in her stockings and the D.A. knows that.” http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/07/attorney-da-has-evidence-strauss-kahn-bruised-maids-vagina/

Perjury charges against her may be pending,

This needs more fleshing out...there are multiple accounts that say that she changed her story of what happened between her and DSK,

Even DSK's lawyers wouldn't dismiss evidence of forcible assault as you foolishly try to do. Nor would they suggest that an alleged consenting, spur-of-the-moment sexual encounter also involved "rough sex"--since no jury would buy that one either.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance made it clear that they were proceeding with prosecuting Strauss-Kahn, but admitted that today's decision was an indicator of a weakening of the case. "The bail amount was based in part on the strength of the case," Vance said. "But today's proceedings didn't dismiss the case or change any charges. We will proceed with the case and continue to keep the victim safe.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2081204,00.html#ixzz1QtMa3ovN