DSK Released As Case Verges On Collapse
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Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released without bail from house arrest Friday as the sexual assault case against him continued to unravel due to the now tarnished credibility of his accuser. Strauss-Kahn is accused of sexually assaulting a maid in a New York hotel. The case initially appeared strong, given the DNA evidence linking Strauss-Kahn to the alleged rape.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn (Creative Commons)
However, prosecutors in the case have provided details that show that the housekeeper lied not only about the details of the assault but also on her application for asylum from her home country of Guinea. Prosecutors have also found links between her and possible criminals involved in drug dealing and money laundering. These credibility issues could lead to the outright dismissal of felony charges.
The housekeeper admitted that she lied about what happened after the episode on the 28th floor of the hotel. She had initially said that after being attacked, she had waited in a hallway until Mr. Strauss-Kahn left the room; she now admits that after the episode, she cleaned a nearby room, then returned to Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite to clean there. Only after that did she report to her supervisor that she had been attacked.
(Read the prosecutors' full letter to DSK's defense attorneys.)
Still, prosecutors said, the untruthfulness of the housekeeper’s stories do not change “one very important fact, namely, that Dominique Strauss-Kahn violently sexually assaulted the victim inside of that hotel room at the Sofitel.”
As Jezebel points out, the evidence against the accuser is a far cry from proof that the charges against Strauss-Kahn are not true.
Meanwhile, reactions to the revelations have been emotional and mixed in France. Some ponder whether Strauss-Kahn, who was long considered a frontrunner for the French Presidency, could return to politics. Others still believe his public career is over, whether or not the charges stick (NYT):
“People are not going to forgive him. At a political level, he is dead,” said Agnès Bergé, 44, who works for a law firm in the same up-scale district.
“It would be terrible for France if he came and if we give him some credit again.” But Sophie Leseur, 50, an artist, said the saga could turn Mr. Strauss-Kahn into a “martyr.” “His reputation is tarnished forever,” said Marie Chuinard, 25, a legal adviser. “I think he can come back to French political life, but internationally he is burned.”
Some are angry at not only the American justice system but at the U.S. press, which many saw as having convicted Strauss-Kahn before the case came to fruition. The Nation magazine in May called the treatment of Strauss-Kahn "demeaning" to the justice system. The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik has a blog post examining the issue:
The reaction, let us be honest, was a wholesale public auto da fé of a man who, as I said at the time, had a reputation for sordid behavior but not for assault. It was ruthless and cruel, and lacked not only the minimal compassion even a seemingly guilty man should get, but any sense at all of what justice is and ought to be. What has happened now ought to vindicate those, Bernard-Henri Lévy high among them, who at the time of D.S.K.’s arrest expressed the unexampled thought that when someone is accused of something it might make sense to wait until the accusation is fully explored and tested before rushing to judgment, and that not every word the police or an accuser says should be treated as holy writ in advance of a trial—and were themselves sneered at and pilloried for saying so. At a minimum, the story should remind us why there should never be a public perp walk of anyone merely accused of a crime.
However, the Atlantic points out, the tables of pre-judgment have now been turned: "Just as there was the typical rush to judgment against Strauss-Kahn, a deplorable but now sadly routine part of the American criminal process, there will now likely be a rush to judgment against the woman." This may turn out to be especially problematic, given that the woman's credibility problem does not prove Strauss-Kahn's innocence.
