In reality, this is a story about a banal, deplorable attempt to blackmail a wealthy man and deceive the public — an attempt that received enormous support from the media during the beginning of the scandal.
The biased coverage of the Strauss-Kahn case on The New York Times’ opinion page was not limited to Dowd. In his May 31 column, “DSK and Conspiracy Theories,” columnist Roger Cohen also expressed no doubt of Strauss-Kahn’s guilt. For Cohen, it was “a young African woman’s voice raised against violent abuse by the powerful.” But before she proudly raised her voice, the young African woman decided to ask her curator in jail how much money she could earn from Strauss-Kahn.
The Strauss-Kahn arrest corresponded in a curious way with the fierce political battle in France for the presidency and the future of the dollar as a reserve currency and the future of IMF policy. But for the overwhelming majority of U.S. newspaper columnists and television commentators, none of this was important. It is much more important to sweep away all doubts and questions in this case for the sake of declaring — yet again — the unyielding righteousness of the United States and its superiority over the rest of the world. Is this journalism or propaganda?
Russian journalism, despite what people say and write about it in the United States, is much more distrustful of statements made by authorities. Largely because of the Soviet legacy, Russians are more skeptical than Americans of the government’s version of events. On the whole, Russians better understand that there are two sides to every scandal. In this sense, Russian journalists seem to be more open-minded than U.S. journalists, who are all too eager to believe that a “God-fearing maid,” thanks to America’s democracy, stood up to one of the world’s most powerful men.
From the very beginning, Russians viewed the allegations against Strauss-Kahn with great suspicion. Likewise, most Russians do not believe for one second that John F. Kennedy was killed by a lonely maniac. Or that the reason the United States invaded Iraq was because Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction. It would seem that both Russian media and society have a better ability to put together facts and come up with logical conclusions from the story that is unfolding.
Similarly, Russians also do not believe that former President Boris Yeltsin was a “democrat” whose rule benefited the country, although this is the official version that is eagerly supported by the West. It was telling that when President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled a statue in Yekaterinburg in February in honor of Yeltsin, only a handful of local citizens were present for the ceremony. The Russian media have a number of weaknesses, but political correctness is certainly not one of them
July 12, 2011
The Tabloid and the Housekeeper
Posted by Amy Davidson
How solid, or how cheap, was the New York Post’s charge that the hotel housekeeper who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of raping her, in the Sofitel in midtown, was a prostitute—or “hooker maid,” as the paper put it (in a headline), or “maid/hooker” (in a caption)? The woman is suing the paper for libel, so a more detailed answer to that question may emerge. But for now, on the Washington Post’s Web site, Erik Wemple writes that the paper may have had information on hand that undermined the prostitution charge—maybe a lot more. Questions about her credibility—for example, lies on an asylum application and on her taxes—may lead to the dismissal of charges against Strauss-Kahn (which he denies). Of course, just as liars can really be raped, even lying about rape does not make one a prostitute.
This is what the New York Post said:
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s accuser wasn’t just a girl working at a hotel—she was a working girl.
The Sofitel housekeeper who claims the former IMF boss sexually assaulted her in his room was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned.
And, in the same article:
The woman was allegedly purposely assigned to the Midtown hotel by her union because it knew she would bring in big bucks.
“When you’re a chambermaid at Local 6, when you first get to the US, you start at the motels at JFK [Airport]. You don’t start at the Sofitel,” the source said. “There’s a whole squad of people who saw her as an earner.”
This is referred to as “damning evidence.” It is only more than twenty paragraphs later that the Post article notes,
A spokesman for the hotel union denied it placed the victim at the Sofitel.
“These allegations are absurd,” spokesman Josh Gold said. “She never registered at our hiring hall. We never sent her for a single interview. We absolutely did not place her at the hotel and we do not track tips.”
So the Post had two sources who disagreed. But it also, as Wemple notes, had more: her employment file, which the union passed on. It includes information that indicates that the whole J.F.K.-motel-earner scenario is simply false. She had not previously been a member of the union when the Sofitel hired her; nor had she worked at a series of cheap hotels. The union hadn’t “assigned” her; instead of being proffered by some labor-activist pimp, she was referred to the hotel by the International Rescue Committee, which helps find jobs for asylum seekers. She made a good impression at the interview; she spoke French.
In other words, the Post did something apart from just attack the housekeeper; it painted a picture of an entire union and profession that was unsavory, with what appears to be bad information. What is it like to be a housekeeper at the Sofitel—one not involved in this case—and have your neighbors read that it helps to get the job you have if you’re a prostitute?
That first story was not the only one in which the Post called the woman, with little or no qualification, a prostitute. Another story said that she “routinely traded sex for money with male guests.” And there is this, in yet another story:
She was turning tricks on the taxpayers’ dime!
The Sofitel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of a sex attack in his suite wasn’t just a hotel hooker—she continued to work as a prostitute in a Brooklyn hotel where she was stashed by prosecutors, The Post has learned. The so-called victim, whose web of lies has crippled the Manhattan DA’s case against the former International Monetary Fund boss, played host to a parade of paying male visitors in the weeks after Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, a prosecution source said.
“While she was under our supervision, there were multiple ‘dates’ and encounters at the hotel on the DA’s dime,” the source said of her paid hotel room. “That’s a great deal for her. She doesn’t have to cover her expenses.”
She “wasn’t just a hotel hooker”—as though that were not even in dispute. But note that here the Post is saying that its source is with the prosecution. Several paragraphs later, there’s this:
“I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that it’s not true,” a senior prosecutor said about whether the woman was turning tricks while at the hotel.
A named senior prosecutor had something different to say, in a story in the Times:
Asked if the housekeeper had engaged in prostitution, Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, the lead prosecutor on the Strauss-Kahn case, said in an interview on Sunday, “I do not have one scintilla of information in that regard.”
What’s a scintilla when you have a story? The Post, perhaps not incidentally, is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which is not having a very good week.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2011/07/the-tabloid-and-the-housekeeper.html?printable=true¤tPage=all
Posted at 12:13 PM ET, 07/06/2011
New York Post libel suit: A quantitative analysis
By Erik Wemple
A libel suit is nothing but a tract of media criticism with a demand for damages at the end. By that measure, the civil suit filed against the New York Post by lawyers for the accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case succeeds:
“In an apparent desperate attempt to bolster its rapidly plunging sales, Defendant New York Post ran a series of defamatory articles regarding the Plaintiff. . .”
The objectionable stories cited in the suit ran over the July 4th holiday weekend. They allege that the accuser works as a “prostitute,” a “hooker” and a “working girl.” The complaint, drafted by attorneys Kenneth P. Thompson and Douglas H. Wigdor, provides a thorough inventory of what it terms “repeated acts of defamation” and states repeatedly that the New York Post “knew, or should have known” that the statements were false before publication.
What the libel action doesn’t do is deploy the Erik Wemple Blog Quantitative Defamation Meter. Fancy name notwithstanding, the Erik Wemple Blog Quantitative Defamation Meter performs the simple function of placing the number of potentially defamatory statements in a given story alongside the number of named sources and documents buttressing those statements. Below, the meter takes on but one of the New York Post stories subject to the suit.
Story: “Maid Cleaning Up as ‘Hooker’”
Byline: Laura Italiano
Date: July 2, 2011
INVENTORY OF POTENTIALLY DEFAMATORY STATEMENTS:
1) “Maid Cleaning Cleaning Up as ‘Hooker’ ”
2) “Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s accuser wasn’t just a girl working at a hotel — she was a working girl.” (Disclosure: The Erik Wemple Blog Quantitative Defamation Meter does not judge the triteness of newspaper copy or whether it is offensive per se to women. Those questions are beyond the scope of this exercise.)
3) “The Sofitel housekeeper who claims the former IMF boss sexually assaulted her in his room was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned.”
4) “ ‘There is information . . . of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean.’ ”
5) “The woman also had ‘a lot of her expenses — hair braiding, salon expenses — paid for by men not related to her.’ ”
6) “Allegations that she worked as a hotel hooker may explain why Strauss-Kahn insists their encounter was consensual. His defense attorneys refused yesterday to comment on the damning evidence — or say whether he paid her for sex.”
7) “Sources also told The Post Strauss-Kahn’s probers uncovered evidence that she was part of a pyramid scheme that targeted immigrants from her native Guinea. ‘We have people who have been victimized, who have claimed she ripped them off. Nice working people from her neighborhood,’ a source said.”
NUMBER OF ON-THE-RECORD SOURCES:
0
Explanation: Repeated contentions that the accuser was/is a prostitute rest on information from a single, unnamed source. The most that the New York Post reveals about the source is that it is “close to the defense investigation.” Yet that same source is quoted as an expert on the activities of the union that represents hotel workers: “ ‘When you’re a chambermaid at Local 6, when you first get to the US, you start at the motels at JFK [Airport]. You don’t start at the Sofitel,’ the source said. ‘There’s a whole squad of people who saw her as an earner.’ ”
So the single, unnamed source is both close to the defense investigation and an apparent expert in union chambermaid assignments.
There is an on-the-record source in the New York Post piece. It’s a union official who chimes in to dispute the New York Post’s reporting on the union situation. The quote is buried many paragraphs after the paper airs its prostitution allegations.
ERIK WEMPLE BLOG QUANTITATIVE DEFAMATION METER READING
7/0
Elementary school math teaches us that any fraction with a denominator of zero is undefined, a word that also works well for the editorial standards of the New York Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/new-york-post-libel-suit-a-quantitative-analysis/2011/07/06/gIQASR3g0H_blog.html
Posted at 02:30 PM ET, 07/06/2011
New York Post libel suit: Part 2
By Erik Wemple
The unnamed accuser of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is suing the New York Post for libel, which means it has been a busy day for the Erik Wemple Blog Quantitative Defamation Meter. That device, which puts potentially defamatory statements alongside their sourcing, got a workout in assessing a July 2 New York Post story that called the accuser a prostitute.
Now comes the same treatment for a story alleging that the accuser “turned tricks” while in official custody following the May 14 incident at the Sofitel Hotel.
Story: “Maid ‘laid’ low as DA paid for digs”
Byline: Brad Hamilton and Larry Celona
Date: July 3, 2011
INVENTORY OF POTENTIALLY DEFAMATORY STATEMENTS:
(1) “She was turning tricks on the taxpayers’ dime!”
(2) “The Sofitel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of a sex attack in his suite wasn’t just a hotel hooker — she continued to work as a prostitute in a Brooklyn hotel where she was stashed by prosecutors, The Post has learned.”
(3) “The so-called victim . . . played host to a parade of paying male visitors in the weeks after Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, a prosecution source said.”
(4) “ ‘While she was under our supervision, there were multiple ‘dates’ and encounters at the hotel on the DA’s dime,’ the source said of her paid hotel room. ‘That’s a great deal for her. She doesn’t have to cover her expenses.’”
(5) “The woman has a regular fleet of gentlemen callers who range from wealthy clients she met at the Sofitel to counterfeit-merchandise hawkers and livery-cab drivers, said sources close to the defense investigation.”
(6) “It’s unclear how many encounters took place, the source said.”
(7) “The DA suspects that the $100,000 she deposited into her accounts over the last few years included proceeds from sex-for-money exploits, said another prosecution source.”
NUMBER OF ON-THE-RECORD SOURCES:
0
Explanation: The central allegation here — that she worked as a prostitute while being housed by the DA — appears to stem from a single ”prosecution source.” Other anonymous sources get some play in the story, including “sources close to the defense investigation,” a “law-enforcement source,” and a “senior prosecutor.” What’s not clear is, well, many things: Whether these people are all the same; which people are responsible for what information; whether they may have a stake in providing misinformation to the New York Post.
The favorite moment of the Erik Wemple Quantitative Defamation Meter came when the paper itself appeared to lose track of its fleet of anonymous sources. Here’s the passage:
The woman has a regular fleet of gentlemen callers who range from wealthy clients she met at the Sofitel to counterfeit-merchandise hawkers and livery-cab drivers, said sources close to the defense investigation.
Some of her clients also gave her pricey jewelry, the source said.
What source? The first graph in this excerpted passage cites “sources”; then, in the next graph, it references simply “the source.” Who would that be?
ERIK WEMPLE BLOG QUANTITATIVE DEFAMATION METER READING
7/0
The New York Post stories that underwent Defamation Meter scrutiny today have a common tic:
“The Sofitel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of a sex attack in his suite wasn’t just a hotel hooker — she continued to work as a prostitute in a Brooklyn hotel where she was stashed by prosecutors, The Post has learned.”
And:
“The Sofitel housekeeper who claims the former IMF boss sexually assaulted her in his room was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned.”
Emphasis added to highlight sourcing depravity. Whenever a news outlet makes a serious allegation and says, “we have learned” or something along those lines, the story may well be flimsy. Those lame words are a clever way of dodging the tough work of stating the depth of your sourcing. “We have learned” is shorthand for ”we have no on-the-record sources.”
As an editor, I once reluctantly assented to such phrasing, and my colleagues pummeled me for it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/new-york-post-libel-suit-part-2/2011/07/06/gIQAP4Js0H_blog.html
NY Post Smears DSK Rape Victim as "Hooker," Can't Back Up Their Claim
by Alex DiBranco
July 11, 2011
The New York Post's sensational headline calling the hotel maid who reported being raped by Dominique Strauss-Kahn a "hooker" probably sold a lot of papers. Too bad the claim is completely unsubstantiated, not to mention irrelevant, sexist, and offensive.
As a petition launched against the NY Post on Change.org points out, participating in sex work does not make a woman incapable of being raped, although smearing the "working girl" is a typical tactic used to discredit victims. "Our culture has no sympathy for a woman we consider to be less than pristine," commented National Organization for Women-NYC Executive Director Sonia Ossorio.
"Not only is this abhorrently sexist, but it takes on a grossly racist tone," states the petition. "Black women have been historically cast as 'Jezebels'—a synonym for 'hooker'—which has been used as the reason why Black women could not possibly be 'good' (meaning 'sympathetic' or 'relatable') rape victims."
"I just couldn't stand by and couldn't stand being angry without doing something about it," says Andrea Plaid, who formed the Coalition to Support Sexual-Violence Victims and Survivors and started the petition on Change.org in response to the NY Post article. "Everyone who signs is saying to NY Post that no one has the right to put their hands on anyone else, literally and metaphorically--in the case of NY Post, not journalistically." The petition is supported by SisterSongNYC, Women's Media Center, and End Violence Against Women, which is organizing the New York Slutwalk.
Furthermore, it appears that this smear by the NY Post -- which has resulted in a libel suit against them -- was basically made up. An article by Erik Wemple in the Washington Post looks deeper into the "salacious" story, which relied on a single anonymous source identified as "close to the defense investigation." But the claim, that the maid was placed at Sofitel Hotel by her union to rake in "big bucks" through sex work, isn't substantiated. In fact, it's directly contradicted by the union, which provided documentation proving that it had no part in getting her the job.
The NY Post failed to mention the existence of these documents. Instead, after printing their baseless assertion, which seems to have about the weight of a rumor, "the New York Post wrote nearly 30 paragraphs of copy blasting the accuser from various angles." Wemple reports that he's been unable to get a response from the NY Post, but that the union statements back up the libel suit's argument that the tabloid "knew, or should have known” they were publishing falsehoods.
This kind of victim-shaming coverage has far-reaching impact. Sexual assault survivors advocacy groups have raised concerns that the negative media attention will deter other rape victims from coming forward. This is already a huge problem: only 40% of sexual assaults are reported to police, a mere half of those result in arrest, and even fewer end up prosecuted, according to Department of Justice figures compiled by RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
You can tell the New York Post to stop degrading sexual assault survivors by signing the petition here. http://www.change.org/petitions/ny-post-stop-degrading-sexual-assault-survivors-2
https://news.change.org/stories/ny-post-smears-dsk-rape-victim-as-hooker-cant-back-up-their-claim
You seem to forget that the NY Post is the defendant in the maid's libel/defamation suit. They have to prove the truth of their statements about her being a hooker--nothing else about her background is relevant to the suit, or to their defense.
so first the Post have every right to question her under oath about every strange dime under her control to see if the funds can be trace back to hooking.
No for the reasons above her civil suit will not even be allow to go to discovery even if the Post can not show she was a hooker.
and if it can be shown that she have no good name in any case
The Post can't go on a fishing expedition to try to prove their hooker claims after the fact--the judge can limit the scope of questioning.
Of course she has a good name--the woman hasn't been convicted of anything and the D.A.'s office found no evidence she worked as a prostitute. In addition, she had a good employment record at the Sofitel for the three years she worked there--during the time the Post claimed she was turning tricks at the hotel.
Guest post by Sonya Ziaja
Since the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape scandal broke, American writers have called on French society to do some “soul-searching” about its attitudes toward women. As an American woman living in Paris, I’ve taken the opportunity to do some searching of my own: trying to understand how two societies that each espouse equality as a central value could produce such seemingly different gender relations cultures.
I’ve spoken with both French and American women here about their experiences of sexual harassment, discrimination, and unwanted flirtation in the work place.While the details of their stories varied, one observation held surprisingly constant—harassers would frequently end up saying something like: if this were the U.S., you could send me to jail, but it isn’t.
Initially, I thought that the men in such stories were admitting in a backhanded manner that their behavior had been inappropriate. I also thought they might have been power-tripping the women harassed, emphasizing their lack of legal recourse. The women I spoke with assured me I was wrong on both counts, suggesting the common understanding that it’s un-French to complain about sexual harassment. The sentiment might translate better as: what are you, American?
American Puritans vs. French Libertines?
The French typically and famously consider American culture to be puritanical, and perplexingly so. The French view our intolerance for sexual harassment as excessive, often far in excess of reality. It’s not uncommon to hear misconceptions such as in the States, you can go to jail for telling a woman that her eyes are blue.”
Few if any French women wish to be seen has having such an over-the-top aversion to sexuality. Such a woman would be seen as a social hypochondriac, not to be taken seriously. Likewise, what France imagines to be true of American gender relations can come to serve as an excuse to treat sexual harassment complaints as frivolous.
What results is a sort of negative feedback loop. The more Americans insist that French culture is misogynistic, the more it seems to encourage certain forms of French misogyny.
However misinformed the French line of thinking may be, and however disrespectful and abusive the behaviors it seems to enable, I’ve had a hard time denying that we Americans have sometimes taken our zeal for sexual purity to excess. The hastiness of the DSK prosecution and the media frenzy that surrounded it seems to have confirmed the stereotype.
American Lip Service vs. French Benefits
While it’s easier for a woman to feel respected in an American work-setting – as a financial officer with CitiBank or engineer at Boeing – French society offers some forms of equality to women that American society typically doesn’t.
The United States lags far behind France in maternity leave and reproductive health care services, for example, and permits women to balance their career and family lives with greater ease than can their American counterparts. There are also myriad ways in which French women are free to express their sexuality where Americans are not.
France and the United States can seem like polar opposites in many ways. When it comes to women’s rights, each place comes with its costs and benefits. Nonetheless, the DSK episode has offered the chance to reconsider both cultures’ response to the inevitable conflicts between men and women in the workplace.
But what is "unwanted flirtation".
How does a bloke know the flirtation is unwanted until he tries?
If a bloke risks being accused of "unwanted flirtation" when he makes a move we are going to end up with relationships being organised by parental negotiations or bureaucratic match-ups sort of bullshit.
Even if Dominique Strauss-Kahn manages to avoid facing sexual assault charges in New York, he still faces accusations in France, where 31-year-old French journalist Tristane Banon claims he tried to rape her in 2002. Why she never came forward at the time has largely been chalked up to pressure from her mother, Anne Mansouret, a senior official in France's Socialist Party and best friends with Brigitte Guillemette, DSK's wife at the time as well as Tristane's godmother.
That case just got a whole lot messier: According to a report by the French magazine L'Express, Mansouret recently revealed to the special prosecutor investigating Tristane's case that she had a very real, very messy reason for advising her daughter as she did: her own sexual past with DSK.
Mansouret told the prosecutor that she had a single, violent sexual encounter that took place in the OECD building in Paris, where DSK worked as special advisor to the organization's Secretary General. The time frame isn't clear, but DSK began working at the OECD in 2000, and the alleged attack against Tristane Banon took place in 2002 — if the events occurred as the two women claim, only a year or two elapsed between the incidents.
More and more, looks like Dominique Strauss-Kahn came to New York that fateful weekend in May looking for some major R&R before launching himself on a much-hyped presidential campaign back in France. A friend of Anne Sinclair, DSK's wife, is now telling French magazine Le Point that DSK confessed to having had sex with three women while in New York that weekend. One woman was actually caught on a surveillance tape with DSK heading up to his hotel suite around 1:30 a.m. that Friday night, a little over ten hours before the French politician allegedly assaulted the Sofitel maid. (She left around 3 a.m.) According to one of the Post's myriad anonymous sources, the married woman and mother of two works in the finance sector and is actually DSK's "secret girlfriend." As for the other two lucky ladies, nothing has leaked out yet on their identities, though there were reports that Strauss-Kahn flirted heavily (and unsuccessfully) with a Sofitel VIP hostess and later a receptionist at the hotel, so he may have had several fishing lines cast and waiting for the telltale tug. As for when DSK confessed this infidelity to his wife — certainly not the first time, see the Piroska Nagy affair — let's just hope it wasn't while celebrating Sinclair's 63rd birthday out in the Berkshires this past Friday.
What do we do with the multitude of teasers izzy?
That was expected. This was not: According to L'Express, Mansouret told investigators that she, too, had sex with Strauss-Kahn. The encounter allegedly happened in a Paris office of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development while Strauss-Kahn was a special adviser to the OECD secretary general. If true, this means Strauss-Kahn had sex with Mansouret in 2000 and then, three years later, went after her daughter.
It also means that when Mansouret initially advised Banon not to file a complaint against Strauss-Kahn, she wasn't just a mother counseling a daughter. She was—without her daughter's knowledge, according to L'Express—a former sex partner of the alleged assailant.
But that's history now, because Mansouret isn't just supporting Banon's account of the 2003 incident. She's also reporting that her own encounter with Strauss-Kahn in 2000 included, in the words of L'Express, "consensual but clearly brutal sex." (That's a translation courtesy of our sister publication, Slate.fr.) L'Express reports that Mansouret "describes DSK as a predator who isn't looking to please but to take, and behaves like an obscene boor. Sexual lust makes him want to dominate."
In fact, Mansouret reportedly claims that Strauss-Kahn, through his second wife, Brigitte Guillemette, confirmed both incidents. According to L'Express, Mansouret said she phoned Guillemette soon after the Banon incident, and Guillemette "allegedly told her she knew he had already had inappropriate behavior with students." Mansouret asserts, on this account, that Guillemette asked Strauss-Kahn about the Banon episode and that he told her, essentially, "I don't know what happened to me. I slept with the mother, I lost it when I saw the daughter."
So here's where we stand. Two women have accused Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. Three (including those two) have accused him of sexual brutality. A fourth has accused him of sexually pressuring her when she worked for him. Others have accused him of crude advances. In the IMF case, he has admitted to a sexual relationship. In the New York case, the evidence reportedly shows semen and bruising in a first-time encounter with a maid that took less than 20 minutes.
But there's a big problem with Mansouret's story: Guillemette denies it. L'Express says that when investigators asked Guillemette about Mansouret's version of events, she told them, "All this is false." And if Guillemette rejects Mansouret's account of their conversations, that could undercut Mansouret's credibility about her own incident as well as Banon's.
Mansouret's sordid tale, as reported by L'Express, deepens the portrait of Strauss-Kahn as a sexual aggressor with a pattern of pressure and violence, including the sequential pursuit of a woman and her daughter. But precisely because this portrait is so grotesque and so reliant on a mother and daughter whose stories are now sexually intertwined—and now challenged by another woman—Mansouret's allegations could make Banon's story harder to believe. That doesn't mean Strauss-Kahn will walk away a free man. It just means that some other woman will have to come forward. And if the portrait of him is accurate, that woman almost certainly exists
