Like It or Not, DSK Reveals a Lot About Ourselves

‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing.’

There has been no shortage of supposedly progressive bloggers who were more than ready to assume Dominique Strauss-Khan guilty of sexually assaulting a New York hotel chambermaid and who became infuriated when reports came out that the case against DSK was crumbling - because of the purported victim herself.   Some even went so far as to indignantly claim that it was all because the woman wasn't perfectly chaste.   The poor getting hammered by the privileged rich and powerful again.   Nice narrative and oh so convenient but a smear job based on deliberately twisted facts.

When you're out well on the left or out well on the right there seems to be an inability to accept the presumption of innocence for someone you perceive to be on the other side.   I suppose it's that Jacobin reflex coming into play.   Forget the fact that fundamental rights, such as the right to be presumed innocent until convicted, instantly turn into mere privileges when they're extended selectively.

But to say this woman was being persecuted because of her past sexual history is to stand reality on its head, to jettison the real facts of the case as not fitting the convenient narrative.

‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing.’

 

Those lines, spoken  by the supposed victim to her boyfriend in an immigration jail in Arizona the following day, sent alarm bells ringing for investigators.   This guy has a lot of money.  I know what I'm doing.  Would you prosecute a case knowing that was going to be laid before the judge and jury?

It was another ground-shifting revelation in a continuing series of troubling statements, fabrications and associations that unraveled the case and upended prosecutors’ view of the woman. Once, in the hours after she said she was attacked on May 14, she’d been a “very pious, devout Muslim woman, shattered by this experience,” the official said — a seemingly ideal witness.


Little by little, her credibility as a witness crumbled — she had lied about her immigration, about being gang raped in Guinea, about her experiences in her homeland and about her finances, according to two law enforcement officials. She had been linked to people suspected of crimes. She changed her account of what she did immediately after the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Sit-downs with prosecutors became tense, even angry. Initially composed, she later collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning. She became unavailable to investigators from the district attorney’s office for days at a time.

There's no doubt that DSK had been the head of the big, bad International Monetary Fund and that this can easily be spun into a powerful abuser versus powerless victim soap opera but that is to utterly torture truth and to cast away all notions of principle and fairness.  What's progressive about that?

Strauss-Khan Freed Without Bail

The socialist former head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Khan, appeared in a New York court this morning where he was released from house arrest and had his $6-million bail and bond returned.

DSK's lawyer had a few choice words:

"I want to remind all of you that at each appearance in the last six weeks, we asked you and asked the world not to rush to judgement - now i think you can understand why," said Mr Strauss-Kahn's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, after leaving the courtroom.

"We believe the next step will lead to the complete dismissal of the charges," he added.

It was disheartening to observe the number of people, including plenty of self-styled progressives, who were unhesitatingly ready to hold this guy guilty.

In France, the news has been called a "thunderbolt."

The "perp walk", the parading of the accused, the headlines such as "Chez Perv" and "Frog Legs It", were widely perceived as insulting and humiliating.


"He was thrown to the wolves," said Lionel Jospin [France's last Socialist prime minister], in his veiled criticism of the American system.

Ex-IMF Head May Have Been Set Up

I detected a smell in the air when the former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Khan, was arrested for supposedly sexually assaulting a hotel chamber maid in New York.  The story just didn't seem to add up.   His victim's account was that DSK overpowered her and repeatedly, over some considerable time, had his way with her in his hotel room with no one the wiser.

Now, according to Reuters, the case against DSK is "close to collapse."   Apparently the woman has been caught repeatedly lying to investigators and prosecutors.

[A] source close to the case said that the district attorney's office took the case to a grand jury without fully checking out the woman's bona fides.

"Just about everything that was reported on this woman early on was untrue but no one checked or wanted to believe anything else," the source told Reuters.

Reuters notes that a recent poll found fully half of French respondents believed DSK had been set up, the victim of a plot.   Until he fell into this mess, Strauss-Khan had been seen as the Left's answer to Nicholas Sarkozy and a genuine threat to Sarkozy's prospects of re-election.