Head of the IMF arrested for sexual assault

I was surprised to see that this hasn't been posted yet. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has been arrested after a hotel employee claimed he tried to rape her.

Quote :

As she was in the foyer, “he came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Mr. Browne said, adding, “He grabs her, according to her account, and pulls her into the bedroom and onto the bed.” He locked the door to the suite, Mr. Browne said.

“She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaults her a second time,” Mr. Browne added.

At some point during the assault, the woman broke free, Mr. Browne said, and “she fled, reported it to other hotel personnel, who called 911.” He added, “When the police arrived, he was not there.” Mr. Browne said Mr. Strauss-Kahn appeared to have left in a hurry. In the room, investigators found his cellphone, which he had left behind, and one law enforcement official said that the investigation uncovered forensic evidence that would contain DNA.

They wound up pulling him off an Air France plane that was about to depart. The police have labeled him a definite (and literal) flight risk.

Quote :

Mr. Browne said the city’s Emergency Medical Service took the maid to Roosevelt Hospital for what Mr. Browne described as treatment for “minor injuries.”

This and the DNA could corroborate her story. Since this only happened on Saturday, no definite evidence has emerged, but several important folks in the international community are already wondering about the possible repercussions for the IMF and French politics in general. Quoth Reuters (from a repost on huffingtonpost.com:

Quote :

The allegation will be a major worldwide embarrassment to the IMF, which has authorized billions of dollars in lending programs to troubled countries and has played a major role in the euro zone debt crisis.

It follows the announcement on Thursday the IMF's No. 2 official, John Lipsky, plans to step down in August when his term ends.

The IMF managing director has yet to say whether he will run for president, although French opinion polls put him as a clear winner over conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy if the two faced off in an election.

No word yet on whether conspiracy theorists are going to claim "chambermaid in pay of Sarkozy" as this season's hot new lunacy.

Meanwhile, there's been some outrage over the way Strauss-Kahn was treated--namely, by the fact that he got the perp walk treatment, being escorted to the police vehicle in public view. An NYT blog has some roundups here. This one is probably the best:

Quote :

“The heart can only contract before these humiliating and poignant images that they’re giving of him,” Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a leftist senator and former minister, wrote on his blog. “A horrible global lynching! And what if it were all a monstrous injustice?”

What, indeed. How this case develops over the next few days is going to be interesting, especially with someone so high-profile involved and the conflict between the two justice systems.

Update: Plaintiff's lawyer responds to charges that the accusation is false and/or a conspiracy and information on Strauss-Kahn's living situation at Riker's Island, here. Apparently, he's been placed on suicide watch.

We should have let Germany keep France.

I heard they sent him to Riker's Island. What the fuck?

Seule wrote:

I heard they sent him to Riker's Island. What the fuck?

Yeah, I saw that too. Just put an update in the original post. Apparently he's in solitary, not in with the general population, and he said or did something in the intake interview that made them concerned about the possibility of suicide.

Seule wrote:

I heard they sent him to Riker's Island. What the fuck?

That's standard - anyone arrested in New York City who is held pending a bail hearing, or bound over for trial without bail, is sent to Riker's Island. They have facilities for both detained and sentenced individuals.

Most French political parties are already aaallll over the "but what about his reputation?!" outcry. I think it was the environment minister who claimed that, alongside the alleged victim, there was a proven victim: France.

Yeah, lady; forget about the supposed rape victim, this is all about what it means for your country's politics.

I mean, fucking seriously?

Tungsten Monk wrote:

but several important folks in the international community are already wondering about the possible repercussions for the IMF and French politics in general.

I don't know about French politics, but I heard in a radio broadcast that usually the leader of the IMF is an European and the president of the World Bank is an American, always has been, always will be. With the sudden and shocking way in which DSK has been demoted, several emerging countries have been pushing their own candidates. These are countries such as India or china to which Europe overall owes a lot of money. If a non-European is elected to guide the IMF, one can say bye bye to the policy of bailouts.
Draghi, who's the only candidate for leader of the European Central Bank, was briefly indicated as a possible successor to DSK, but denied the possibilty of this happening.

He's resigned.

Adagio wrote:

Most French political parties are already aaallll over the "but what about his reputation?!" outcry. I think it was the environment minister who claimed that, alongside the alleged victim, there was a proven victim: France.

Yeah, lady; forget about the supposed rape victim, this is all about what it means for your country's politics.

I mean, fucking seriously?

My thoughts exactly. Somewhere in the afterlife Charles de Gaulle, Joan of Arc, and Napoleon are facepalming big-time at the environment minister's utter stupidity.

And milllions of living French citizens would probably like to throw her off the top of the Eiffel Tower.

The one possibly positive thing that may come of this is justice for other victims. Apparently this guy has a reputation for being quite the womanizer, and more women are coming forward with their own stories of being sexually assaulted by him. Although he doesn't have a police record, chances are he has a long history of assaulting women (which may or may not have something to do with his supposed suicidality...) From The New Yorker:

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...D.S.K. had not yet formally declared his candidacy, but there was little doubt here that he would. In anticipation, the journalist Michel Taubman has just published a sort of biographical portrait, composed with enough literary license that he called it, “Le Roman Vrai de DSK“—“The True Novel of DSK.” Taubman was on TV today, declaring that the hero of his story always had good relations to the women in his family, and was not some frustrated, hard-up guy, but a man of great intelligence who had no difficulty scoring. (As if that were the issue in this case.) Of the now-former I.M.F. boss, imprisoned in Harlem, Taubman said: “This Dominique Strauss-Kahn bears no resemblance to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn I know, and those close to him know: a seducer, yes, a rapist, no.”

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Funny, quite often those two go hand in hand...

I'm sorry, but I always thought seduction involved both the parties being willing. Or is rape the default status if you can't seduce someone?

Also, seduction suggests an attempt to get to know the other person by taking them out to dinner, buying them gifts, etc. Seduction may exist for the sole purpose of getting someone to have sex with you, but at least the seducer is open about it and the person being seduced knows what's going on.

Running out of the bathroom naked and trying to have forced sex with someone on a hotel bed is not seduction.

Rabid Badger wrote:

I'm sorry, but I always thought seduction involved both the parties being willing.

Seduction is convincing someone to have sex. So, yes, seduction is consensual unless it involves some other factor such as an underage partner.

However, many male rapists also have reputations as seducers (they get a lot of willing women, but their lust for power, broken morality, lack of respect and/or sense of entitlement causes them to force themselves on unwilling women).

What I'm getting at (and maybe didn't phrase very well) is that calling Strauss-Kahn a "seducer" or a "womanizer" was used to downplay and excuse his well-known aggressive tendencies toward women.

The definition of the word "seduction" does imply that all parties are consenting, whatever their motives as you said. But in reality the actions being discussed here are more accurately called rape. When I said that the two often go hand in hand I was referring to the tendency to excuse rape in general. (Edit: Plus what Notanoni said above applies as well.)

This article puts it in context really well:

Quote :

...What's hard for American journalists (and readers) to comprehend is that Strauss-Kahn's predilections were well-known in France. Although many claim not to have known the violent nature of his "interest," he was euphemistically called a skirt-chaser, seducer, and womanizer by the French press, and his actions were either ignored, downplayed, or accommodated. Examples of this -- recounted below -- are chilling.

From Reuters:

"When Strauss-Kahn arrived at the IMF, everyone knew his reputation as a womaniser, so "women were deliberately very careful not to be alone around him," said a former IMF official who asked not to be named. There was an understanding in the IMF press department never to leave a female reporter alone with DSK, just in case something inappropriate happened..."

The IMF rapes the economies of entire countries and people are surprised that the managing director is a rapist? What am I missing?

Quote :

Dominique Strauss-Kahn,

I'm sorry I didn't notice this early, I think I'm beginning to get sloppy in old age.

Ahem. KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!1!

Another update: DNA found on maid's clothes (allegedly a semen sample) matches Strauss-Kahn. And in other news, Strauss-Kahn's lawyers swear they have information that it's all just a big fat lie.

Also, I called it. Sarkozy is one of many who are now being pointed to as the conspirators who set up poor, innocent DSK.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Quote :

Dominique Strauss-Kahn,

I'm sorry I didn't notice this early, I think I'm beginning to get sloppy in old age.

Ahem. KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!1!

You should have also noticed that his name sounds like "sex crimes"

XLT-100852.0 wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Quote :

Dominique Strauss-Kahn,

I'm sorry I didn't notice this early, I think I'm beginning to get sloppy in old age.

Ahem. KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!1!

You should have also noticed that his name sounds like "sex crimes"

There is a third thing off-putting about his name that I can't quite put my finger on.

Dominique = Dominate ?

Looks like he may walk.

Quote :

A separate law enforcement official who is familiar with the case but not authorized to speak about it publicly told the Associated Press that the issue was not necessarily about the rape accusation itself but about questions surrounding the alleged victim’s background that could damage her credibility on the witness stand.

Fucking... argh.

Adagio wrote:

Quote :

A separate law enforcement official who is familiar with the case but not authorized to speak about it publicly told the Associated Press that the issue was not necessarily about the rape accusation itself but about questions surrounding the alleged victim’s background that could damage her credibility on the witness stand.

Fucking... argh.

Yeah. WTF does her background have to do with this particular case?

^
Well, maybe she's a serial false rape accuser who has traveled the world falsely accusing random people of rape for reasons I can't be bothered to make up in an interesting enough fashion to list them.

Or maybe the defense is going straight to the Desperation Time section of the playbook because the He's Actually Innocent plays aren't going to work.

Or maybe the prosecution is looking for ways to bitch out of the case because it's gotten a little too hot due to France's political asspain.

Lady Anne wrote:

Yeah. WTF does her background have to do with this particular case?

Goes to credibility. All of the other evidence is, at best, circumstantial. Could they win with circumstantial evidence? Sure, but it's a much harder task.

They needed her on the stand to make the case airtight, and they sure as hell didn't want an "October surprise" being dropped in the courtroom on cross. So they did a background run to protect their case, and when they found that:

- Large sums of money (totaling $100K) had been deposited in and out of her checking account from all over the country
- She had called her boyfriend, who's currently sitting in a jail in Arizona on drug trafficking charges, and told him "Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing."
- Her account of what happened after the alleged assault changed, and didn't match the records provided by the hotel or her grand jury testimony (which could mean she perjured herself)

They realized that putting her on the stand would be a disaster. The DA did want to prosecute this case, and up until recently was pushing hard to put this one in the win column. It also doesn't help that the two attorneys who had been representing her bolted unexpectedly - indicating that either they couldn't or wouldn't continue to defend her actions.

Now, none of this means that he didn't do what he's been accused of. All it means is that they can't proceed with the case unless they can find some other independent, untainted evidence.

Wow, that is total fucking bullshit.

So the fact that this guy has a miles-long reputation for being a rapist, and that at least two other women have come forward with their own stories of being victimised by him mean absolutely nothing. Hell, the fact that HIS DNA WAS ON HER means nothing, because of some throw away comment she made about him having money and changing her story after a traumatic experience.

Why is her background the only one that matters here?