Politics, Sex, Sex Scandals, Sexism

Things Fall Apart: Now Starring Dominique Strauss-Kahn

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Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to be the key witness in a sexual misconduct scandal involving a rich and powerful Frenchman. After you are savaged in the international press, be prepared for the prosecutor handling the case to abandon you.

From the New York Times:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on Friday as the sexual assault case against him moved one step closer to dismissal after prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that they had serious problems with the case.

Prosecutors acknowledged that there were significant credibility issues with the hotel housekeeper who accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her in May. In a brief hearing at State Supreme Court in Manhattan, prosecutors did not oppose his release; the judge then freed Mr. Strauss-Kahn on his own recognizance.

If Strauss-Kahn’s strategy was to attack the credibility of the witness, it worked…

If you are going to claim that you are the victim of sexual assault in this country, you better be a saint. Otherwise, this happens to you:

Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

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Are we ever going to know what really happened in the Sofitel? Probably not. And that’s a failure of the American system. We want the truth.

But I think I’d still take the American system over whatever the hell is going on in France. Here’s a disturbing possibility raised by the American Prospect:

Strauss-Kahn, who is now out of a job, may even resurrect his campaign for president of France (once he gets has passport back), as the wronged victim of the Anglo-Saxon rush to judgment and media frenzy.

The French socialists have no other strong candidates. If it turns out that this was not a rape after all, the French incumbent, Nicholas Sarkozy, has at least as checkered a sexual past as Strauss-Kahn. He could even benefit from a sympathy backlash.

Instead of a belated victory for French feminism, l’affaire Strauss-Kahn and the French election could be a battle of the womanizers. Plus ca change!

I guess we can all believe what we want to believe. Me, I believe that it’s going to be interesting when Cy Vance comes up for reelection.

Strauss-Kahn Is Released as Case Teeters [New York Times]
Applying Occam’s Razor to Strauss-Kahn [The American Prospect]

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