Is the Head of the IMF a Sex Criminal?

The New York Times
July 5, 2011
Still a Case for Trying Strauss-Kahn
By JIM DWYER

What is so wrong with the original plan to hold a trial for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to decide if he committed an act of sexual violence against a hotel housekeeper?

After all, it’s not as if the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has simply dissolved with the discovery that the woman who accused him has lied about her past, and had shady connections and a bank account with irregular cash deposits.

To begin with, there is evidence in the case that other people can provide, notably, crime lab results that show the semen of Mr. Strauss-Kahn was found on her clothing.

But that is only the beginning.

In the moments after the encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the housekeeper, four employees at the Sofitel New York each spoke to her, one after the other, and each was convinced that she was “shook up” and “in distress,” according to a person involved with that part of the investigation. “You had two former police officers who didn’t think she was making it up,” the person said.

Hotel records show the housekeeper had never before cleaned a room that Mr. Strauss-Kahn occupied during any of his visits. On the morning of May 14, records of her card-key entries show that she spent about an hour cleaning Room 2820, which was around the corner from the rooms occupied by Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Just after 12 p.m., a room service employee knocked on his door several times, got no answer, then entered to collect a room service wagon.

The housekeeper was told by the room service worker that there was no one in the suite, and she used her card key to enter at 12:06.

This would appear to undercut any theory that the housekeeper had chosen Mr. Strauss-Kahn because of his prominence.

During the next 20 minutes, the housekeeper and Mr. Strauss-Kahn had the encounter that is the subject of the criminal charges.

The housekeeper’s key was next used at 12:26 — when she returned to Room 2820, the same room that she had already cleaned. But she did not stay there long. Her supervisor arrived on the floor, she was met by the housekeeper, and the card-key records show that they then went into 2806, the Strauss-Kahn suite, also at 12:26. (The card-key records are accurate to the minute, not to the second.)

By then, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was on his way to the front desk, where he was seen checking out about 12:28. Hotel video turned over to the authorities shows him with toothpaste residue on his lips, and then entering a yellow cab.

His lawyers maintain that whatever happened between Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the housekeeper did not involve force or criminal behavior. They have also said that videotape of him at lunch, just after he left the hotel, would show a calm demeanor. With last week’s revelations about the housekeeper, the lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn have said the case should be dismissed.

There is little question that the police and Manhattan prosecutors had probable cause to arrest Mr. Strauss-Kahn: they believed a crime had been committed, and he had been involved.

Prosecutors do not have to abandon criminal cases simply over problems with witnesses’ backgrounds, said Bruce Green, a law professor at Fordham and an authority on legal ethics.

“If you think the case is still tryable, that the jury will understand that although the person has not been truthful about things in the past, you can proceed,” Mr. Green said.

With a jury trial, 12 people would decide the most important questions, which do not include who will run for president of France next year or if Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, messed things up. Bringing charges and then dropping them is not a dishonorable act. Letting criminals get away with ugly crimes is another story.

In the end, the only thing that matters is if Mr. Strauss-Kahn assaulted the housekeeper. His lawyers say he is innocent, a status he maintains until a jury finds otherwise. The housekeeper insists that she was the victim of a crime, said her lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson. He disputes the translation of a taped phone call, made the day after the encounter, that the authorities believe shows her to be thinking about exploiting Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s wealth.

“She wants to testify to the world what Mr. Strauss-Kahn did to her, and she is willing to be hammered on cross-examination,” Mr. Thompson said. “You don’t have to come over on the Mayflower to be the victim of a crime.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/nyregion/still-a-case-for-trying-strauss-kahn.html?_r=1

Lord I can just see the fun the New York Post lawyers would have getting her under oath and doing a detail questioning of this lady as well as being able to get court orders to look at all those strange bank accounts just to start with in defensing against a civil suit by her.

Yes I am sure she is as pure as Firefly try to paint her and the Post lawyers would come up with nothing, LOL and more LOL............

You need to face the fact that beyond all reasonable doubt or question the victim is this matter is DSK not the maid.

Quote:

The New York Times
“She wants to testify to the world what Mr. Strauss-Kahn did to her, and she is willing to be hammered on cross-examination,” Mr. Thompson said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/nyregion/still-a-case-for-trying-strauss-kahn.html?_r=1

Last year, federal authorities convicted a Somali man in San Diego who had been in the U.S. for more than a decade after ascertaining he had hidden a past criminal record and gave vastly different accounts of persecution when trying to obtain asylum in Canada and the U.S.

Also last year the FBI and ICE obtained a 40-month prison sentence for a Pennsylvania man convicted of bogus asylum claims for as many 380 people between 2003 and 2007.

In 2009 a federal jury convicted a suburban Washington, D.C., lawyer of charges of fabricating asylum applications for immigrants trying to stay in the United States. Prosecutors alleged the man coached clients from West Africa on how to make false but sympathetic claims for asylum.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, a top FBI counterterrorism official told Congress that authorities had evidence that an Algerian connected to terrorism had tried to enter North America on a bogus asylum claim.

You need to face the fact that, since you do not know what happened in that hotel suite, you cannot claim that DSK is "the victim in this matter".

relevant in the maid's libel suit against the NY Post, since that suit concerns their allegations she worked as a prostitute at two specific NY hotels, and the burden of proof would be on the Post to back up the truth of those specific allegations.

Those issues and many many more can and will be brought up in discovery as lawyers have a great amount of freedom of what matters they can look into during such a process.

Strauss-Kahn accuser sues NY Post for 'hooker' report
7/5/2011

NEW YORK, July 5 (Reuters) - The hotel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault filed a libel suit against the New York Post and five of its journalists on Tuesday for calling her a prostitute.

A front-page headline that said "Maid cleaning up as 'hooker'" and other statements branding her a "working girl" were false and the Post should have known that they were false, the lawsuit said.

The statements subjected the maid to "humiliation, scorn and ridicule throughout the world by falsely portraying her as a prostitute or as a woman who trades her body for money," it said.

The Post said in a statement: "We stand by our reporting."

The articles were published between July 2 and 4, in the days after prosecutors revealed problems with the maid's credibility as a witness in the case against the former IMF chief. Strauss-Kahn, who has denied the charges, was released from house arrest on Friday as the case against him appeared to unravel.

In her lawsuit on Tuesday, filed in New York state court in the Bronx, the 32-year-old Guinean immigrant sought damages, to be determined at trial, for the articles.

The Post reported on Saturday that the Sofitel housekeeper "was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests." An article the following day reported that the housekeeper "continued to work as a prostitute in a Brooklyn hotel where she was stashed by prosecutors."

The articles were published "in an apparent desperate attempt to bolster its rapidly plunging sales," the lawsuit said.

The woman used only her initials, not her full name, in the lawsuit. U.S. media have withheld her name in keeping with the practice of reporting on sexual assault cases, though her name has been widely reported in France.

Even if the criminal charges are dropped, the court could allow the libel suit against the Post to proceed anonymously, said Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School and co-director of the school's Center for Gender & Sexuality Law.

"A judge has to make the exception to allow a plaintiff to proceed anonymously, but in very sensitive cases, a judge can decide to do so, because taking away anonymity can cause more injury to a plaintiff," Goldberg said.

"That would make sense here, where the woman appears to have done all that she can -- including moving out of her home -- to keep her identity out of the media," she said.

The complaint was filed by Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor, two of the lawyers retained by the maid.

The libel case is N.D. v. NYP Holdings, Inc. et al, New York Supreme Court, Bronx County, No. 305953-2011.

For the plaintiff: Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor of Thompson Wigdor.

For NYP Holdings: Not immediately known.
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/New_York/News/2011/07_-_July/Strauss-Kahn_accuser_sues_NY_Post_for__hooker__report/

And finally, late Tuesday night, Peter Ward, president of the union representing the accuser, issued a statement, throwing the union’s weight behind its member, and announcing, for the first time, that the woman at the center of the case was referred to the Sofitel, where the maid said the sexual assault took place, by the highly respected humanitarian organization, The International Rescue Committee.

"Every sexual assault case is complicated and the victims are not perfect, but this woman was put on trial by the press as if she were [on an equal footing] with Dominique Strauss-Kahn," says Taina Bien-Aimé, a former Wall Street lawyer who now runs the non-profit Equality Now. "This is a woman who, from the time she was born, was a victim of abuse: [female genital mutilation], a child bride, possibly polygamous marriage. On her application for asylum she listened to shyster legal counsel. You are in crisis all the time to survive and don't necessarily know the consequences of your acts.

The maid's relationship with a mystery man in jail in Arizona may be a case in point. According to Bien-Aimé, who has had a detailed brief on the maid's situation, the man was a street vendor pushing imitation designer accessories. He gave her a few bags, started seeing her, then asked her if he could have the number of her bank account.

Not willing to let stand the idea of Strauss-Kahn as a victim, the accuser and her supporters are clearly fighting back, trying to assume control of the narrative.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/06/dominique-strauss-kahn-case-the-maid-fights-back.html

No, a libel suit is limited to the issues deemed as being libelous--and, in a civil suit, the NY Post must prove that their allegations regarding the maid's work as a prostitute were truthful and not, therefore, libelous. Looking into any other matters in her life, by the Post, would be totally irrelevant to the maid's claim that she was defamed by their assertion that she worked as a prostitute. It is the Post that is being sued and they must defend what they printed about her in that regard. Attacking her on other issues would provide them no defense to her claim of libel on the matter of her working as a prostitute.

When the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced last week that its star witness--the alleged victim--in the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn had lied on myriad different points concerning her background and the events of May 14 in the Sofitel hotel, the spotlight focused on Strauss-Kahn. The former director of the International Monetary Fund would be freed from house arrest, have his bail refunded, and his lawyers expected the charges against him would be dropped. But it was a watershed day for his accuser too, though far less joyous. Now some news reports are beginning to focus on the possible consequences for the Sofitel housekeeper who claimed Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her, should the prosecution's case fall apart.

Let's take a look at some of them.


She could be charged with perjury.
The housekeeper reportedly lied under oath when she testified to the grand jury that indicted Strauss-Kahn. In a letter to the defense, the district attorney's office said she told jurors that after the alleged assault, she "fled to an area of the main hallway" on the 28th floor and waited until Strauss-Kahn left before reporting it. But in their letter, prosecutors said the housekeeper "admitted that this account was false," and told them she cleaned another room after visiting Strauss-Kahn's. So far, no news reports have uncovered a perjury charge against the housekeeper, and no city officials have said such a move was in the works. But as the Telegraph's Jon Swaine points out, she did testify "under penalty of perjury," which is a felony punishable by seven years in prison.

She could be deported.
It sounds dramatic, but an immigration lawyer told The New York Times' Clyde Haberman that deportation was a very real possibility, "though for now it is firmly planted in the realm of the theoretical." The prosecution's letter to the defense last Friday also said the accuser had admitted to lying in order to gain political asylum in the United States when she immigrated from Guinea. In his City Room blog post, Haberman recalled the fate of another Guinean immigrant, Amadou Diallo, who was infamously killed by police in 1999. He, too, turned out to have lied on his asylum application, though that had nothing to do with his controversial death. "Still, immigration lawyers said at the time, whenever an asylum seeker in a high-profile situation is found to have lied, it can jeopardize the prospects of those with genuine claims of having escaped oppression. There is a similar risk now."

She could lose a lot of money.
The details of the housekeeper's contract with defense attorneys Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor aren't public, and they very could be working pro bono. But that seems unlikely, given that it's not exactly standard for the accuser in a criminal case to hire a lawyer in addition to the public prosecutors. A New York Times story last week said she had $100,000 in the bank, but on the outside, all we know is that she's a workaday housekeeper raising a daughter in New York. Even if she had that kind of money, several months' worth of attorney's fees would put a dent in it. The obvious way to regain the cost is to sue successfully someone in connection to the case. She's already sued the New York Post for reporting that she was a prostitute, and she may get money from that, but libel cases are notoriously hard to prove. Meanwhile, if the prosecution drops the charges against Strauss-Kahn or if he's found not guilty, a lawsuit against him or the Sofitel would have a long shot at success.

She could get in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service.
The District attorney's office says the accuser lied on her tax returns for the past two years, claiming her friend's child as a dependent in addition to her own. The Christian Science Monitor got ahold of a former IRS lawyer who said it was unlikely the service would pursue a criminal case against her. "They would simply assess against her the tax she should have paid, then add interest and penalties,” Cal Bomar told the paper. “They would not seek to prosecute.” Still, she could be on the hook for back taxes, and there's that $100,000 she reportedly has stashed away. "They might do an audit,” Bomar said. “It’s possible it could be tax evasion, especially if it’s linked to a boyfriend or husband or criminal enterprise.

There are others who should have known better. Who are paid to know better.

The New York Times
July 5, 2011
Before You Judge, Stand in Her Shoes
By MIKE McGOVERN
New Haven

REVELATIONS about the hotel housekeeper who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault suggest that she embellished claims of abuse to receive asylum, fudged her tax returns, had ties to people with criminal backgrounds, had unexplained deposits in her bank account and changed the account of the encounter she gave investigators. Yet those who would rush to judge her should consider the context.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser is from Guinea, also the home country of Amadou Diallo, the street peddler who was shot to death in the doorway of his Bronx apartment building by four New York City police officers in 1999. Guineans leave their country in large numbers, partly because of grinding poverty; 70 percent live on less than $1.25 a day , despite the fact that Guinea has almost half of the world’s bauxite (from which aluminum is made), as well as iron, gold, uranium, diamonds and offshore oil.

The same leaders whose theft and mismanagement have kept so many Guineans poor in the decades since independence from France, in 1958, have also been ferociously violent, massacring as many as 186 unarmed demonstrators calling for democratic reforms in 2007, and at least 157 demanding the same in 2009. After the latter massacre, members of the state security forces gang-raped dozens of women to punish them for protesting and to terrorize men and women into silence.

While the American government condemned the massacres, the bauxite kept shipping, supplying Americans with aluminum cookware and automobile parts. That’s no surprise; the biggest mining companies doing business in Guinea are based in the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia.

People fleeing state-sponsored violence and extreme poverty will do anything to leave. I receive requests every few weeks to write expert-witness affidavits for West African asylum claimants. As a personal matter of conscience, I will not write in support of an applicant whose testimony I believe contains inconsistencies.

Yet asylum claimants are often asked to perform an impossible task. They must prove they have been subject to the most crushing forms of oppression and violence — for this, bodies bearing the scars of past torture are a boon — while demonstrating their potential to become hard-working and well-adjusted citizens.

This is where the lies and embellishments creep into some asylum seekers’ narratives. Immigrants share tips and hunches about ways to outwit the system, even as immigration judges try to discover the claimants’ latest ruses. But I can say from experience that for every undeserving claimant who receives asylum, several deserving ones are turned down. So few Africans gain access to green cards through legal channels that the United States government grants about 25,000 spots annually to Africans selected at random through the diversity visa lottery.

Just as Mr. Diallo’s death resonated because it made the tribulations of many West African immigrants public, the case of Mr. Strauss-Kahn and his accuser has the aura of a parable. Many Africans feel the International Monetary Fund, which Mr. Strauss-Kahn led, and the World Bank have been more committed to the free flow of money and commodities like bauxite than to the free flow of people and the fulfillment of their aspirations.

Guinean press accounts, and recent conversations I’ve had with Guineans, suggest that they disapprove of the deceptions by Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser. But given the poverty and systemic violence in their country, they understand the circumstances in which such deception could occur — and we should, too.

As the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn seemingly disintegrates, he is enjoying a political renaissance at home, yet I keep asking myself: does a sexual encounter between a powerful and wealthy French politician and a West African hotel cleaning woman from a dollar-a-day background not in itself suggest a gross abuse of power?

Mike McGovern, an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale and the author of “Making War in Côte d’Ivoire,” is writing a book on Guinea.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/opinion/06mcgovern.html?hp

does a sexual encounter between a powerful and wealthy French politician and a West African hotel cleaning woman from a dollar-a-day background not in itself suggest a gross abuse of power?

Quote:

....................Not willing to let stand the idea of Strauss-Kahn as a victim, the accuser and her supporters are clearly fighting back, trying to assume control of the narrative.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/06/dominique-strauss-kahn-case-the-maid-fights-back.html