@JTT,
Quote:"Sir, you've just committed one serious offense by locking me in this room without my consent. Do you really want to jeopardize everything in your life, your whole life for ... ?"
I think that's the most intriguing question in this entire situation.
I couldn't care less whether the maid is collecting unemployment, or using victim resources, or why she left her native country, or any of the irrelevant speculations about her. She's of little interest if you give her the benefit of the doubt regarding the truthfulness of her account that she was sexually assaulted. And I haven't heard anything that seriously calls into question her credibility. And the grand jury listened to her testimony and indicted Strauss-Kahn, so they must have found her credible--credible enough that the case should go to trial.
I think we have to consider that he might be guilty. But, why would this man risk everything?
Perhaps because he had done this sort of thing before, if not with hotel maids, perhaps with other vulnerable women in menial jobs, and he had gotten away with it. We know he has a reputation for being aggressive in his advances toward women. We know about a French journalist who claims he sexually assaulted her, but she never filed charges against him. This man may be so grandiose about his ability to do this sort of thing, and get away with it, that he never even perceived there was a risk with this hotel maid.
Maybe he offered her money as he advanced on her. Maybe he figured he could buy her off before she fled his hotel suite. Maybe he threated to get her fired or deported if she opened her mouth and told anyone--immigrants working as hotel maids can be easily threatened. We have no idea what he might have been saying to her during the time she was in the suite with him. We know what she claims he did to her, but we don't know what he might have said to her, and that might be important, and it will likely come out at trial.
He won't be the first powerful man who got himself into trouble because of a combination of lust and a sense of grandiosity.
Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had both his pregnant wife and his pregnant mistress in his house at the same time, and risked his political career and his marriage over that affair and the years of deception it involved. It didn't catch up with him until recently, but it caught up to him.
Why would Bill Clinton have risked everything for some blow jobs in the Oval Office from a White House intern? Ultimately it got him impeached. And that was a consensual relationship, but it was an
extremely reckless affair, for a sitting U.S. President.
Assuming she is telling the truth, and I have no reason to think otherwise right now, I think the hotel maid was sort of a random victim--she was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with this particular man. And I don't think he considered the risk because he might not even have perceived a risk, particularly if he has done this before and gotten away with it. I am curious to see how many other women, who previously kept silent about being assaulted by him, might now come forward.
So, I don't think the victim is particularly interesting at all. The interesting figure is obviously this man, who is known for a sexually rapacious appetite, and for making aggressive, often harassing, sexual advances toward women, and who has been protected by French privacy laws, and who might have serious lapses in judgment when lust is a factor--and who might just have jeopardized his entire life over another conquest and another orgasm.
Such character flaws are the stuff of Greek tragedy.
