WASHINGTON — The facts keep changing. Dominique Strauss-Kahn
(DSK to the cognoscenti), the managing director of the
International Monetary Fund, is nabbed by New York police Saturday,
having just boarded an Air France flight to Paris. Accused of
sexually assaulting a maid at the Sofitel Hotel back in Manhattan
hours earlier, he is hustled off the plane. DSK, also the leading
candidate against France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, is taken into
custody, identified by his alleged victim in a police lineup, and
lingers in a Manhattan holding cell. He undergoes some sort of
tests wherein DNA samples are taken from his fingernails and skin
— he volunteers for this.
In a matter of hours he is a fallen man. He got up
Saturday morning the head of the respected International Monetary
Fund. He goes to sleep that night convicted in the eyes of the vast
majority of the public as sex offender.
He is subjected to that peculiar American institution of
justice, the Perp Walk, and the pictures are grim. He is not the
dapper Frenchman anymore, but a guy in a trench coat looking
disheveled and woebegone. Judge Melissa Jackson denies him bail,
though his wife is on her way from Paris with a million dollars. He
may spend the rest of his life behind bars. He is sent to Riker’s
Island, a brutal place.
Yet the facts keep changing to those who follow the story
with care. He booked the seat on the plane at least a week before,
so he did not hightail it to the airport after the alleged assault
took place. In fact, he had lunch with his daughter in a Manhattan
restaurant about a half hour after the alleged assault. The
personal cell phone that he allegedly forgot in his hasty exit to
the airport and called the hotel about, tipping the cops to his
whereabouts, has completely slipped from sight. Still, he is jailed
with no hope of bail and charged with several felony counts for
chasing a maid around his hotel room and forcing her into various
humiliating positions.
The news accounts echo with tales of earlier sexual
assaults and behavior that suggests he suffers from the Clinton
Syndrome. At least one woman in France is opening up a case against
him from years before. My hunch is that he will never be elected
president of France. In fact, he might not ever get out of
jail.
Now DSK is claiming that there was indeed sexual activity
in that hotel room, but it was consensual. Someone close to the
defense tells the New York Post, “There may well have been
consent.” After all it was midday, and the hotel was busy. How did
he manage to chase the maid from room to room in his $3,000 a night
hotel suite as she claimed without raising a commotion, and did he
secure the outer door to the hallway? Oh, and by the way, he got
the hotel suite on a discount. He paid between $500 and $800. So it
is not a $3,000 suite.
In France opinion is in conflict. Some say DSK, head of
the International Monetary Fund and leading candidate for the
presidency of France, was set up. Others are embarrassed and some
blame the French press. As for the French journalists, there seems
to be an awakening that the English-speaking people are not so
puritanical after all. “We felt that we were superior to the
Americans and the British by upholding the principle of protecting
private life,” Pierre Haski, co-founder of the website Rue89, told
the New York Times. Well, hang on, Pierre. You did not
have it so wrong. Public figures have a right to a private life.
Yet when they draw attention to their private lives, they go too
far. Or when their behavior in private affects the public life of
the nation, they have gone too far.
When Bill Clinton continually held up his private life as
exemplary he played the public for fools and he got just what he
deserved, exposure. When he disported with an intern in the Oval
Office, he went too far. When he engaged in “phone sex” on
unsecured lines that were open to foreign intelligence agencies, he
went too far. Who knows what foreign nations have done with those
embarrassing tapes of him and Monica Lewinsky? When indiscretions
committed in private affect the commonweal, a public figure has
gone to far.
In the case of DSK we have the presumption of innocence in
this country until he is proven guilty. He has not been proven
guilty. He can wear a bracelet and be bailed out. He should not
have been forced to make the Perp Walk. This is not one of our
justice system’s finest hours.
