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Strauss-Kahn in Toulouse at meeting regarding the 2007 French presidential election

The Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case is the ongoing criminal prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the United States for the alleged sexual assault and attempted rape of a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York Hotel on May 14, 2011. He has denied all allegations.

At the time of the alleged attack, Strauss-Kahn was the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and considered to be a leading candidate for the 2012 French Presidency. As a result of the allegations, he resigned from his IMF post. He said he intends to devote his time and energy to proving his innocence.

Francesco Sisci, Director of the Institute of Italian Culture in Beijing, blogging in Asia Times Online, remarked that the chambermaid's accusations, have perhaps "changed the course of European and global history." Strauss-Kahn's departure from the IMF "could hardly have come at a worse time for the European Union as it struggles with a deepening debt crisis and a spreading wave of angry nationalism", notes Paul Taylor of Reuters. The Economist added that Strauss-Kahn's early departure from the IMF had thrown their succession-planning into disarray and had made the choice of his replacement "more urgent and more complicated."

On May 19, Strauss-Kahn was indicted by a grand jury to stand trial and could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. After posting $1 million bail, he was placed under house arrest. The next court hearing is scheduled for June 6, 2011.

Alleged attack and arrest

On May 14, 2011, Strauss-Kahn was arrested in connection with alleged sexual assaults on a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York Hotel in Manhattan earlier that day. After calling the hotel and asking them to bring his missing cell phone to the airport, he was met by police and taken from his Paris-bound flight at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport minutes before takeoff and was later charged on several counts of sexual assault plus unlawful imprisonment. Strauss-Kahn is accused of having forced the housekeeper to submit to anal sex, to perform oral sex on him, and attempting to force her to have intercourse with him. Strauss-Kahn was held at a police precinct prior to his initial court appearance.

On May 16, Strauss-Kahn appeared in New York City Criminal Court before Judge Melissa Carow Jackson. A prosecutor said that the housekeeper had provided a detailed account of the alleged assault, had picked Strauss-Kahn out of a lineup, and that DNA evidence recovered at the site was being tested. Strauss-Kahn, who had earlier agreed to a forensic examination, pled not guilty. After an initial defense request for $1 million bail had been rejected due to concerns of his being a flight risk, he was remanded to jail.

Indictment and pre-trial

On May 19, 2011, Strauss-Kahn was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on seven criminal counts, two of which are first-degree criminal sexual acts, each of which is punishable by a sentence of up to 25 years in prison.

The U.S. State Department determined that Strauss-Kahn does not have diplomatic immunity. He hired New York lawyer Benjamin Brafman as his defense attorney. He is also reportedly seeking public relations advice from a Washington-based consulting firm.

At the same hearing, New York Supreme Court Judge Michael Obus set bail at $1 million with 24-hour home detention and electronic monitoring. After Strauss-Kahn turned over his passport and posted an additional $5 million bail bond, he was placed under house arrest. Strauss-Kahn's release was delayed until May 20, after residents of the apartment building where he intended to live registered a complaint. He moved first to an apartment maintained by the security guard company contracted to monitor him and then, on May 25, to a four-bedroom brick town house in the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.

Brafman stated in the initial bail application that the "forensic evidence, we believe, are not consistent with forcible encounter", and following his statement, legal analysts believe the defense will argue that the sex was consensual.

The alleged victim is represented by Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Kenneth P. Thompson, former Assistant U.S. Attorney, and Jeffrey Shapiro in anticipation of an attack on her reputation and credibility.

French reaction

A white-haired man in a black overcoat and dress shirt with his hands behind his back at the center of a small group of men walking toward the camera. The two men on either side are wearing jackets with gold badges clipped to the lapels and ties. They are holding the arms of the man in the center. A fourth man, also in a jacket and tie, is visible in the rear.
Images of Strauss-Kahn's perp walk after his arrest were condemned in France, where it is illegal to publish them.

Strauss-Kahn's wife, Anne Sinclair, was in Paris when he was arrested. In response to questions, Sinclair stated, "I don’t believe for a single second the accusations of sexual assault by my husband." Despite these "new strains" in their 20-year marriage, friends of the couple said their relationship remained strong and that the allegations were unlikely to separate them.

According to Hugh Schofield of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), images of Strauss-Kahn's post-arrest perp walk by newspapers and television "provoked a national trauma in France far deeper than anyone could have imagined... ...reawakened an anti-Americanism that is latent in many French souls. ... such humiliating pictures would never be taken in France – indeed the French law on presumed innocence bans 'degrading photographs of prisoners awaiting trial'."

Former French justice minister Élisabeth Guigou stated that the media's images of Strauss-Kahn at the police station the morning after his arrest were an expression of "unheard-of brutality, cruelty and violence". Strauss-Kahn's socialist friends were "unanimous in their condemnation of the way Strauss-Kahn has been treated in the U.S.". Jack Lang, a former Minister of Culture and Minister of Education, described the published images of Strauss-Kahn as a "lynching". Lang afterwards apologized, as did journalist and essayist Jean-François Kahn, who had initially characterized the allegations as just a troussage de domestique ("lifting a servant's skirts").

A number of people close to Strauss-Kahn have publicly supported him. His previous wife, Brigitte Guillemette, admitted that she did not deny her husband was a charmer but it was "unthinkable and impossible that he would have raped a chambermaid." Although he's been considered a womanizer and a "great seducer," others who know him insist he "isn't capable of violence" around women. The widow of Italian novelist Alberto Moravia likewise notes that " ...violence is not part of his culture."

Strauss-Kahn's biographer, Michel Taubmann, who has interviewed many women that have known him, said "these women described him as a sweet and charming man, sometimes engaging, but completely incapable of any violence." Nevertheless, the author admitted that while later claims of a sexual assault by French journalist Tristane Banon had tormented him, he concluded after interviewing several people, including Banon herself, that there was no proof of her accusation. "Strauss-Kahn is a great seducer? Of course! But he's not a raper."

Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, described Strauss-Kahn as un harceleur quasi-pathologique ("a near-pathological harasser") and criticised both the ruling UMP and Socialist parties for ignoring his flaws. Bernard Debré, a UMP member of the National Assembly of France, remarked that Strauss-Kahn's alleged conduct was "a humiliation for France abroad and for French politics."

Media coverage

The media impact of the case after the arrest was measured by the French media analysis firm Kantar Media. They found that during the first ten days of the scandal, 'DSK' appeared on the front page of more than 150,000 national newsapapers around the world, making Strauss-Kahn the most famous person in the world.

On May 17, Paris Match published the name of the alleged victim and discussed Strauss-Kahn's lawyers' opinion of her physical attractiveness. Other French newspapers quickly followed suit in naming her, eventually adding photos and details of her private life.

The French sociologist Irène Théry published two articles in Le Monde commenting on the affair and defending French feminism against American attacks.

Conspiracy speculation

Immediately following the arrest, the media speculated that Strauss-Kahn might have been the victim of a setup. In an interview with Libération on April 28, 2011, Strauss-Kahn had stated he was "worried his political opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, would try to frame him with a fake rape". Paris politician and advocate of gender equality Michèle Sabban said she was convinced there was an international plot to frame him. Strauss-Kahn's political opponent Henri de Raincourt, a minister from the ruling UMP party, stated, "one cannot exclude thinking about a setup."

Two weeks after the arrest, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin expressed doubts about the allegations. Answering journalists' questions on May 27, Putin said "I find it difficult to assess the political background, and I do not even want to touch upon that subject, but I cannot believe that everything is as it seems and the way it was initially presented."

Two days after his arrest, a poll found that some 57% of the French public believed he was the "victim of a smear campaign". Le Monde commented that the poll was a violation of the law Guigou, which protects the rights of a person under investigation, calling the conspiracy theories a sign of a "democracy in regression".

American reaction

"Media circus" in front of Strauss-Kahn's apartment

On May 16, CBS News declared that a media circus had begun because the case involved three elements of viewer interest: sex, politics, and money.

Referring to the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy's defense of his friend Strauss-Kahn in the Daily Beast, the American feminist Katha Pollitt remarked in The Nation," ... let's not forget Bernard-Henri Lévy, whose pretentious drivel has to be the worst thing you've exported to us since pizza-flavored La Vache Qui Rit. Lévy can’t get over the way the New York justice system is treating his friend: 'I hold it against the American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.'"

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg defended Strauss-Kahn's perp walk with the observation, "I think it is humiliating, but if you don't want to do the perp walk, don't do the crime." Commenting on his remark, New York novelist Jay McInerney observed, "The mayor seems to have forgotten about the presumption of innocence, but his statement probably reflects the attitude of his constituents pretty accurately. New York's a tough place. Deal with it."

American-born British journalist Janet Daley remarked that the uproar in the French media over Strauss-Kahn's treatment missed the point about America's robustly open society: "The US does not like secrets. Its political culture takes as a basic premise that nothing should take place out of the public view except the most critical life-or-death security matters. . . And it certainly has no privacy law of the kind that has protected the great and powerful in France for generations."

In the United States, the media normally does not identify by name persons making an accusation of rape, although rape shield law does not oblige them not to name such a person.

Resignation and impact

As a result of the allegations, Strauss-Kahn resigned from his position as head of the International Monetary Fund on May 18, 2011. In his letter of resignation he denied "with the greatest possible firmness" the allegations, saying that his resignation was to protect the institution.

Economic

Strauss-Kahn with musician-activist Bob Geldof April 23, 2009

His sudden resignation has led the IMF to search for a replacement, along with creating new political concerns. According to the Washington Post, "Without Strauss-Kahn at the helm, Europe is at risk of losing a key source of financial support in its efforts to contain the debt crisis buffeting the continent", including potential financial bailouts for nations such as Greece and Portugal. U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz agrees, stressing that because Strauss-Kahn was "an impressive leader of the IMF and re-established the credibility of the institution," the choice of his replacement is important, otherwise "the gains of the institution could easily be lost."

With French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde in 2009

According to The Economist, before Strauss-Kahn became head of the IMF, the fund's relevance to global finance was in question. However, his early endorsement of fiscal stimulus for the Eurozone during its financial crisis was accepted and acted upon, with new contributions to the fund being tripled in size. "The Greeks trusted him", writes The Economist, and he was "one of the few non-German policymakers to have had influence over Angela Merkel." "Whatever his personal failings, was an outstanding head of the IMF." In addition, he championed the need to protect poor countries from the effects of fiscal austerity, helping the IMF become "kinder and gentler" to less developed countries. As a result of his arrest, the IMF is in "turmoil," and the choice of his replacement has become "more urgent and more complicated."

Political

Though he had not officially declared his candidacy, Strauss-Kahn had been expected to be a leading candidate for the 2012 French Presidency under the Socialist Party. Preliminary polling suggested he was favored to defeat the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, but Strauss-Kahn's arrest has left the French Socialist Party unsure of how to proceed. The Economist comments that he was "the candidate with the greatest chance of bringing the Palaeolithic French Socialists into the modern age."

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