Dominque Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest and had his bail lifted after serious questions were raised about the credibility of the Sofitel maid who accused him of rape. The questions were raised by the prosecution team, not the defense.
The woman in question retracted her earlier statement that she hid in the hall until DSK left the premises and then reported the event to her supervisor. Now she says she cleaned two rooms, including his, before reporting the attack.
The prosecution team says they uncovered her involvement with criminals. She lied about the circumstances that led her to seek asylum in the United States. She is a con-artist, with several bank accounts with over $100k in them, and she has been paying big phone bills on five cell phones, though she says she only owns one.
This is quite a different story than the one we heard about after the alleged attack. The woman then was painted as a devout Muslim with a stellar work record who had escaped her country after being gang-raped by soldiers. She had been so traumatized by DSK's attack that it was thought she could only be telling the truth.
We were told he fled the hotel in such a hurry that he left his cell phone behind. How could such an important man do that unless he was rattled?
I certainly rushed to judgment. At first I thought it might have been a political set-up, but all the news reports seemed to indicate guilt. When the goddaughter of his second wife revealed that he had attacked her in much the same way, and former call girls said he had been "very aggressive," I was convinced of it (see The Defense, May 27 and Bad Boys, June 11).
Now I am inclined to think they had consensual sex, as he said, and she tried to extort him. "Can't liars also be raped?" someone asked. Yes, but do they vacuum rooms right afterwards? It all points to her guilt now, doesn't it?
This time, though, I am not rushing to judgment.
NOTE: Hotel maids do get attacked. Less than a month after the DSK affair, Egyptian businessman Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar was accused of sexual abuse of a maid at The Pierre hotel in New York City. He entered a guilty plea.
