In a dramatic court hearing today prosecutors informed the judge that their ongoing investigation of rape allegations against former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) raised troubling concerns about his accuser’s credibility.
Among other things, they cited lies about her actions immediately following the (alleged) attempted rape, a dubious, perhaps even complicit friendship with a convicted drug dealer, and, purportedly most damning, a previous false allegation of rape on an asylum application that was rife with misstatements.
They then explained that, even though obliging them to free DSK from house arrest, these revelations do not warrant dismissing or even reducing any of the charges against him. (His six million bond will be returned, he will be unshackled from his electronic monitoring device, and he will be free to travel anywhere in the United States, but not beyond. Prosecutors are holding onto his passport, I suppose, to give the appearance of retaining some belief in his guilt.)
What they did not say, however, is that it was the accuser herself who volunteered the information that gave rise to their concerns about her credibility. In fact, the accuser’s attorney was forced to hold a press conference on the courthouse steps to put DSK’s extraordinary reversal of fortune into context. To this end he began by accusing the prosecutors of throwing her under the bus because a series of losses in recent weeks in other high-profile cases has made them gun shy.
He then stressed an extremely persuasive and undisputed point, namely: that no matter what lies his client may have told, the forensic evidence, which includes her vaginal injuries and his seminal fluids, corroborates the allegation that DSK sexually assaulted her. Indeed, the prosecutors were conspicuous in their failure to proffer any concerns about the credibility and reliability of the incriminating forensic evidence in this case. Which means that she might be a liar, but he’s still an attempted rapist—as all of the women who came out of the woodwork in France to make similar allegations will readily attest.
This is why I agree with her attorney’s assertion that prosecutors deliberately characterized the accuser’s lies to “lay the foundation to eventually dismiss the case.” In fact nothing betrays their motivation quite like the legal axiom that even a prostitute can be a victim of rape. And every prosecutor will tell you that he/she would be just as obliged to prosecute a prostitute’s case as that of a victim who happened to be a nun.
Curiously enough, reports are that, in order to justify their professional cold feet, the prosecutors are now treating the victim as if she were nothing more than a common prostitute. It’s usually the defense lawyers who put the victim on trial. In this case, the prosecutors are doing so….
Apropos of context, though, nobody can deny that if DSK were some poor black guy, the prosecutors would not be informing the judge, defense team, and potential jurors of their concerns about this accuser’s credibility. Instead, they would be spinning her lies into a heroic yarn about an immigrant single mother who did what she had to do to spare her daughter the genital mutilation and gang rapes she suffered in Africa only to be sexually assaulted again in America….
In any case, DSK can be forgiven for thinking that, in just a matter of weeks, he will be free not just from house arrest, but from all criminal charges. No doubt this is why he walked out of court today with a beaming Cheshire-Cat grin on his face (looking every bit the cat who ate the canary).
He might well win his freedom and return as a national hero to some in France — where the media are now portraying him not as an accused rapist, but as a victim of a crude American justice system. But DSK will never get his reputation back — especially because, no matter how his defense attorneys and political enablers spin it, there’s no denying the DNA that marks him as a sexual predator who tried to have his way with a lowly hotel maid. Moreover, I can’t imagine the French ever countenancing a man with such boorish sexual proclivities becoming their president.
Finally, this seems an appropriate occasion to address concerns about prosecutors forcing suspects like DSK to take the infamous “perp walk”. This clearly leads to idle-minded presumptions of guilt. However, I fear that, in our media-saturated world, there’s simply no escaping chatter or images that lead to such presumptions.
Therefore, to level the playing field … a little, we should get rid of rape-shield laws, which make it illegal to reveal the identity of (alleged) rape victims. These laws only infantilize women and unwittingly impose shame upon them. Not to mention that, when their perpetrators are rich men, rape victims end up making a mockery of this paternalistic device by strutting into civil court without their shield to sue for money damages—as I have no doubt the victim in this case will do in due course. (Remember what the victim in the William Kennedy-Smith case did…?)
NOTE: The irony will not be lost on DSK that prosecutors were disclosing dispositive doubts about the allegations that forced him to resign less than 24 hours after the IMF selected his successor – a Frenchwoman no less: former French finance minister, Christine Lagarde.
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