Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Strauss-Kahn Case Seen as in Jeopardy
The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.
Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.
Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.
Senior prosecutors met with lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and provided details about their findings, and the parties are discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges. Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to people involved in criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.
[…]
Prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who initially were emphatic about the strength of the case and the account of the victim, plan to tell the judge on Friday that they “have problems with the case” based on what their investigators have discovered, and will disclose more of their findings to the defense. The woman still maintains that she was attacked, the 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.
In addition, one of the officials said, she told investigators that her application for asylum included mention of a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application.
Once again we have a “he said/she said” case. I have no personal knowledge of the case nor do I know any of the people involved. When the story first broke many people jumped to the conclusion he must be guilty. Now many of the same people are saying he must be innocent.
Let’s assume the housekeeper is a really bad woman with lots of unsavory friends. Does that mean she couldn’t be raped?
Of course not. All this new information goes to her credibility, but does not directly contradict the basic allegations. If she was involved in unrelated criminal activity it’s not surprising that she would lie to the police about it.
We know the woman had a sexual encounter with Strauss-Kahn. The only issue is whether that encounter was consensual or not.
My question is this – who is leaking this information and why?
The Crawdad Hole 
I don’t know, but the NYT story implied there was more to the story. Also, the head of the Manhattan prosecutor’s sex-crimes department either stepped down or was fired yesterday. I’m hearing conflicting reports on that.
But yes, you are correct in your assessment. While we’re on the subject, though, what’s happened with the Assange case? Haven’t heard anything there for some time.
Assange is still fighting extradition
Gotcha. Thanks.
They went after the credibility of the women in that case too.
This is how you resolve issues of disputed fact – you put 12 reasonable and impartial people in a room, present them with all the relevant, admissible evidence, let them listen to the witnesses, give them arguments for and against, then let them decide if the state has met the burden of proving the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yes, take it to trial, let the jury decide. These pre trial shenanigans and the NYTimes again playing the role of the leakee and impartial arbiter, all stinks. All I need to know is was she assaulted, and did she plan to be assaulted ahead of time.
Are there any impartial people left after the media circus?
I haven’t followed the case, but yes, she could have been raped even if she is a lying skeeze.
This may seem unrelated, but hubby treated a patient recently who had been bounced from 4 ER’s in 3 weeks. She was a drug addict – narcotic pills, benzos, etc. She was a hysterical flake and not a pleasant woman. And she kept complaining of terrible back pain. Which is pretty common for druggies seeking narcs.
But he did his damn job. He worked her up, found a minor discrepancy on a couple of tests that he could have blown off, but didn’t. Tested some more, and discovered that she had a huge abscess on her goddamn SPINE. He got her to a neurosurgeon stat, but it had been already eating away for weeks while doctor after doctor blew her off, and she now may never walk again. Of course, if he had dismissed her rantings, she might be dead, so at least there is that.
The point being that sometimes batshit drug-seekers have a real reason for real pain. And longtime malingering hypochondriacs get real diseases. And completely unsavory women get raped.
Do your job. Find out the truth.
I didn’t follow it either – I don’t like seeing cases like this tried in the media.
The one thing I remember is that he is an alleged socialist and was staying in a $3000 per night room.
Aka Gauche caviar.
The certainly describes Strauss-Kahn
Daily Beast from May 21st:
Jeralyn thinks he’s innocent but she has a soft spot for rapists (like child-rapist Roman Polanski)
Bostonboomer thinks there was a major conspiracy to get Strauss-Kahn.
This is like the “Weiner is just being attacked because of CDS” argument. Fun for conspiracy theorists, but doesn’t let the perp off the hook.
BB crossed the Rubicon 😉
Or maybe she crossed the streams.
That’s almost as painful to read as her over-the-top smearing of the two (totally untrustworthy, scheming, celebrity stalking!) Swedish women in the case of (poor, innocent, brave, set-up!) Assange.
Oh dear, I didn’t follow that episode of blame the victim. That sucks.
If he’s so obviously innocent why is he fighting extradition?
According to bb:
To give just a small idea. [rolling eyes]
Last I heard, iirc, was that the womens’ stories were accepted as pretty much truthful but minor, and the issue was whether the Swedish police were blowing them up into something that Assange could be prosecuted for.
As for the police in both countries, it’s the same pattern: an incident that would be ignored with a normal accused man, gets incredibly high priority treatment when the accused has influential political enemies. (Eg, Assange iirc was only the second person in c. 10 months to have an Interpol red alert issued for him; the other was accused of serial murders.)
I posted a lot of material about this on my lj at the time.
If her lying is so damaging to her side of the story, isn’t his lying and behavior just as damaging to his?
The first claim was “I wasn’t even in the room at that time.” THEN there was the evidence of semen, which shot down his first lie, FOLLOWED by the “when I said I wasn’t there, I meant I was there having consentual sex with her. Then I decided to leave the hotel room without my belongings and hop on the next plane.”
Dude behaved guilty as fuck, then lied to the police about whether he’d even been in the room when they picked him up.
Information that gets released early in these cases usually comes from the police and prosecutors and they want to make the accused look as guilty as possible.
All very true, WMCB, but when a d00d lies he isn’t a lying whore who can’t be trusted — that only applies to women who lie. This is especially true about lying in sex crime cases, where lying *only* affects the credibility of the female victim, not the defendant, because, duh, all men lie about sex and the only time women lie about sex is when they regret it and “cry rape.”
I wish that was all snark, but it is actually a pretty accurate picture of what happens in sex crime cases.
Rape by it’s nature is committed in secrecy – the only witness is the victim.
Not surprisingly many of the rapists claim the sex was consensual and that the woman is lying.
When the rapist is wealthy, famous and/or powerful and the victim poor and powerless they always claim it was an extortion set up.
BTW – a bona fide rape victim could still try to extort money from the rapist.
When the rapist is wealthy, famous and/or powerful and the victim poor and powerless they always claim it was an extortion set up.
William Kennedy Smith, anyone? That girl was raped, I don’t give a damn what the jury said.
You’re totally right — the defense is always “the lying whore is just after money!” I wish they’d come up with something more original just once, but I guess “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Blaming the woman usually works out pretty well.
I certainly know that I go out and fuck skeezy douchebags in unpleasant ways so that I can possibly end up with the chance of some cash, and/or get viciously smeared in the press for having the gall to have a vagina. I do it all the time. I plan to do it this weekend, actually.
Why do you all hate Strauss-Kahn? Hasn’t he suffered enough? /snark
We hate socialist cheese-eating surrender monkeys
True. I have no idea if I think he did it or not. But the rush to aquit him in the press bugs me, just like rushes to convict in the media do.
I suspect there is a huge amount of political pressure involved in this case
Ya think. 🙂
Just a hunch
The coordination in the media and blogosphere yesterday was a marvel to watch. They must have a tight team with good leadership at the top. I’m assuming the defense team isn’t working pro bono. And if the goal of the team is to get him off, whatever it takes, then this scenario now would seem to make sense.
Of course prostitutes can be raped. We all know that in the moral and ethical sense. In the legal sense, no they can’t. A victim better be on the straight and narrow and preferably belong to somebody, or else it’s almost useless to try and prosecute.
From reading the article, there’s nothing to suggest she’s a prostitute or even a bad woman. It sounds like her prison boyfriend was laundering money thru her account. It doesn’t seem like she would be working as a maid if it was money for her. As to lying on her asylum app, that just sounds like nonsense. She’s Guinean, the odds of her being subjected to FGM and having been raped previously are pretty high. I can think of dozens of reasons why you would or wouldn’t put that info on an application.
“It doesn’t seem like she would be working as a maid if it was money for her.”
Unless she had an ulterior motive for taking the maid job.
Ooh, maybe she was a CIA assassin sent to murder the guy, but she got seduced by his power and money, then had consensual sex with him, then decided to fake rape so he’d at least be out of power and then she could murder him with impunity after he retired…
There is no evidence of her being a prostitute or even of being a “bad woman.” It sounds like her prison boyfriend was laundering money thru her account. It’s unlikely she would be working as a maid if the money was for her.
However, he has a history and a pattern of behavior that is well documented, including women in the past who complained that he raped them.
I didn’t mean to suggest that the woman was a prostitute or a bad woman. I was just pointing out that even if she was she could still be telling the truth.
Bill Clinton was accused of that too.
Vivian Norris at HuffPoop:
{{dons foliehatt}}
Hmmmm.
Moral of the story: don’t entrust valuable information to entitled doods with over-active dicks and under-active brains.
This would never have happened if the IMF was headed by woman.
Seriously.
OK, maybe BB has a point. Hmmm.
Highly doubtful.
Whatever. There’s nothing the IMF has done or will do in the coming months that is different from what the EU/ECB has been planning anyway, at least re the financial crisis in Europe.
Out of curiosity, what precisely would be stored on the cell phone? If it was a smart phone and he was receiving sensitive emails on it, then they’re IDIOTS to begin with. Otherwise, they’ve have a record of what calls he made at what times, a record of phone numbers, but nothing about the content of the calls, unless he’d gotten unchecked voicemail on the damn thing. I don’t buy it.