DSK Case to Collapse as Accuser is Found to Have Lied to Police, Prosecutors and Immigration Officials

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been put through a ruinous legal ordeal, losing his job as Head of the IMF and, probably, his chance to become French president - all on the word of a Sofitel chamber maid who has been found to have extensive criminal links and to have lied repeatedly to police, prosecutors and immigration officials.

How did we get from a point where a rich, powerful man was immune to accusations by domestic staff to a point where a man can be reviled, jailed, put under house arrest and be ruined politically and personally by a completely unsubstantiated accusation of attempted rape?

The DSK case is on the verge of collapse, according to the New York TImes (NYT), because investigators have found DSK's accuser has a tenuous relationship with the truth.

Forensic tests showed that there was a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the cleaner, an immigrant from the ex-French colony of Guinea, but prosecutors began to doubt the "victim's" story of assault and attempted rape when they found she had told lies about her circumstances and herself.

In fact, the NYT reports that two senior law enforcement officials say the woman is known to have told repeated lies since accusing DSK on May 14 2011.

Prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., initially believed the woman's story was credible but soon began to "have problems with the case" based on discoveries by their investigators.

Consequently, at the end of June, senior prosecutors and lawyers for Strauss-Kahn began discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges.

Although DSK's accuser has been presented by Sofitel managers, her lawyers and her relatives in Guinea as a demure, law-abiding individual, an impoverished hotel worker, investigators uncovered these facts about her:

The woman called a contact, a prison inmate, a day after her sexual encounter with DSK and discussed how she could profit from pursuing charges against him. Her telephone conversation was recorded.

Her friend was in jail after being charged with possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is one of several people who have poured $100,000 in cash into the accuser's bank account since 2009.The unexplained cash deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania. The accuser said she didn't know anything about the origins of the cash arriving in her account.

The accuser had been paying hundreds of dollars each month in phone charges to five companies. Yet she told investigatorsand lawyers that she owned just one phone.

The woman told investigators that she had been a victim of rape in the past and that her application for asylum in the US had described a rape she suffered in Guinea. In fact, there was no such account in the application. She also said she had suffered genital mutilation but the story she told investigators was quite different from what she had written in her asylum application.

All of that,clearly, puts the allegations in a different light. I live in France and, here, DSK has a reputation as - depending on who you talk to - a "ladies' man" or a misogynist who views women as nothing more than sexual conquests. Still, I was surprised to hear so many women friends say from the start: "He's guilty. Of course he's guilty." Whatever happened to "innocent till proven guilty"?

When the allegations were first made either DSK or the chamber maid could have been telling the truth as far as the rest of us knew. We weren't in the hotel room. How could we know what happened? But it was odd that many rushed to judgement, assuming DSK must be guilty. Who doesn't understand that false allegations of sexual assault can easily be made against a man? Who's unable to imagine an unscrupulous female would try to take advantage of being alone in a bedroom with a rich and powerful man? Heaven knows the world show us enough examples of rapists and woman who falsely cry rape.

Now that the woman has been shown to have liedand appears to bepart of a criminal network, many more questions will be asked about the DSK-Sofitel case. If the charges are dropped and the woman is considered to have made false allegations, the obvious question will be whether she wassimply a criminal individual outto get money or whether she was put up to the crime by DSK's powerful political rivals.Strauss-Kahn was considered pretty much a shoe-infor the French presidency beforethe allegations of sexual assaultat the Sofitel New York popped up. Add to that hisjob as Head of the IMF with the many shenanigans going on around the euro just now and there are bound to be questions about the coincidental way he was toppled from his position.

Whatever happens next in this legal saga,Strauss-Kahn has lost an awfullot on the simple say-so of one woman whose allegations could not be verified in any way. He was pretty much obliged to resign as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, was instantly knocked out of the French presidential race (though perhaps he will still be able to pursue that course), had to post $1 million bail plus a $5 million bond and found himself under house arrest in the United States,wearing an ankle monitor like a convicted criminal. For all of that, Strauss-Kahn had the privilege of paying $250,000 a month. Even apart from all this, who knows what effect the allegations have had on his marriage. Even DSK's long-suffering wife will have struggled with these allegations.

There's a long way to go yet in unravelling the truth behind the DSK allegations. But there are already two lessons that should be re-learnt from the case, lessons we shouldn't even need to re-learn in the 21st century. We should never assume a man is guilty of sexual assault or rape before the case is investigated and tested. We should never assume a woman alleging sexual assault or rape is telling the truth.

The truth of the DSK case may be far more complex than a simple set-up by an individual woman, if indeed it turns out he was set up. What are the chances,one wonders, of a woman from an ex-French colony picking a French victim - if it turns out that way - who just happens to be Head of the IMF and a contender for the French presidency? This is a case that may lead from a hotel room in New York to a much wider, international stage...

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/strauss-kahn-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html?_r=1&hp