Is the Head of the IMF a Sex Criminal?

As far as my lifetime experiences had indicated there is a large overlapped between smart women and good looking women.

Appearance fees for talk shows, book deals, the tour circuit

The maid entered a suite she believed to be unoccupied in order to perform her housekeeping duties.

How is the mission suffering? If DSK sustained injuries from an accident and couldn't perform his duties, would the world end? Not likely.

Let's talk about men behaving badly. No, actually, let's talk about rape and sexual aggression, the accurate descriptions of some of the behaviours that have just caused a media frenzy. Most of the myths around the subject have surfaced during the past seven days. I'm going to list them as a small public service.

It wasn't really rape. The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, claimed some rape cases are something else, such as consensual sex between an 18-year-old and his 15-year-old girlfriend. This has never counted as rape in English law; Clarke got it wrong, going on to cast doubt on "date rapes"and putting his fitness to continue as Justice Secretary in question
She's too ugly to have been raped. Sections of the French press reported that lawyers for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF, were shocked when they saw how "unattractive" his accuser was. Such claims are a further assault on the alleged victim, based on the myth that suave, successful men couldn't possibly have a sexual interest in someone who isn't young and beautiful. Rape is an indiscriminate crime, perpetrated against girls, women and indeed men of all ages, appearances and ethnic groups.

She overreacted. He didn't mean anything by it. When influential men misuse their position to grope someone with less power, their behaviour is reinterpreted as something less culpable. DSK has been known for years in France as a "great seducer" even though his aggression towards women was an open secret. A French journalist, Tristane Banon, broke the silence when she claimed DSK tried to tear off her clothes during an interview in 2007, but she was persuaded not to make a formal complaint.

He can't help himself. He likes women too much. The former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, portrays himself as a red-blooded male who can't resist an attractive woman, but he's been accused by more than a dozen women of grabbing their breasts and bottoms. Schwarzenegger is a serial predator. That he had sex (and a child) with a domestic employee while his wife was pregnant should surprise no one.

It wasn't a serious rape – he didn't use violence. Ken Clarke again, suggesting that rape involves a man "forcefully" having sex with an unwilling woman. Rape is a serious crime whether or not it involves physical force. As with other serious crimes, individual circumstances are taken into account at sentencing.

It's a conspiracy. Sixty per cent of the French public believe DSK was set up. There's a parallel here with the accusations against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, which his supporters dismiss as a dastardly plot to lure him to Sweden andthen extradition to the US.

He's the real victim. It was reported (wrongly, says her lawyer) that DSK's alleged victim is HIV-positive. This is a sneaky way of casting aspersions on a woman's sexual history, while the suggestion that DSK may need an HIV test turns the alleged attacker into a victim.

But after a week in which these myths resurfaced, something interesting has happened: DSK faces serious charges, Clarke is only just hanging on to his job and Schwarzenegger is being divorced. Even Le Monde accused French journalists of dressing up sexual aggression as libertinage and reinforcing toleration of sexual violence. "Libertines" everywhere had better watch out.

Were I in his position and convinced I was 100% innocent, I'd never have resigned.

Listening to you and the other two, he was bigger than God.

The fact is, so far we have not heard the voice of the victim, we have only heard what the police say she said. That's very different—especially since she is not a native English speaker (and anybody working between two languages knows how quickly translating can be betraying, as the Italians say—let alone in a police station!). And the accusations were so numerous, they seemed so extravagant—I still find it hard to believe that, in 28 minutes, a 62-year-old man weighing some 224 pounds can rape three ways (per the complaint) an unwilling woman of 32, pack his suitcase and (we all know he was naked) get dressed adequately enough to appear composed to a couple of French tourists in the elevator—that it was difficult for many of us to feel sympathy for the woman who was said to have uttered them.
The differences between the French and American judicial systems are at the heart of the misunderstanding. In France, we are used to criminal cases being handled by a judge whose mission is to examine all the facts, incriminating or not, before deciding on an indictment. So from the very beginning a police investigation is conducted under the supervision of the judiciary and the voice of the defense can make itself heard. Although plea-bargaining recently has been introduced in France and other reforms are in the works, French judicial culture is not one of deals being struck behind closed doors. When indicted, you cannot make an arrangement with the prosecutor to avoid a trial. As we say here, "Justice must pass" and, traditionally, the prosecution only comes into the light in the courtroom.
So this is why we frogs have been so shocked by what we've seen and heard last week. It is easy to guess why the sordid mix of sex, money, politics and conspiracy theories has proved so fascinating that, here, it overshadowed the Cannes Festival, as well as the announcement of Carla Bruni's pregnancy—and that even after former president Jacques Chirac's wife hailed the unborn baby as "the future of France" as if Nicolas Sarkozy were some kind of a king! But why has the event stirred up in the American press some of the most anti-French comments I have read since the same Chirac said no to the war in Iraq?
Societies do evolve and can learn from one another. A few years back, French cops used to laugh when the kids they arrested indignantly pointed out that they hadn't been read their rights. "You watch too much television," they would say, "you're not in America!" Today, French police have to comply with the equivalent of that section of the 14th Amendment. Is the United States above learning some of what the French system has to offer?

Nina Sutton is an Anglo-French writer living in Paris. The author of a book on the Watergate affair, she covered American politics for some 30 years, notably as the Washington correspondent for Paris-Match and Libération.

Even smart women who are good looking can sometimes feel they have to rely on their good looks

such as consensual sex between an 18-year-old and his 15-year-old girlfriend. This has never counted as rape in English law; Clarke got it wrong

Joan Smith is obviously another idiot feminist on a mission

We are doing without his expertise now because of an allegation which he denies.

He does deny the allegations, as do his attorneys. They said he couldn't have done it because he wasn't there.

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He does deny the allegations, as do his attorneys. They said he couldn't have done it because he wasn't there.

He was there. His attorneys now claim what took place was not "forcible".