DSK: do you have to be nice person to get raped?

Portrait of a used Kleenex

Although the Manhattan district attorney’s office agreed last week to release Mr. Strauss-Kahn from house arrest, prosecutors said they still believed that there was evidence of a forcible sexual attack. Most of their problems with the case, they said, had to do not with the woman’s account of the attack, but rather with inconsistencies in her life story — lies she told on her asylum application and tax returns; deposits that were made to a bank account in her name; and a conversation she had with a man in federal custody in Arizona.  New York Times

David Seaton's News Links

The question here seems to boil down to this: do only "nice" people get raped, while non-nice people merely get fucked, because that is what they are here on earth for?

Or is it OK to rape a poor African woman who told a lot of stories to get into the USA, and who has a boyfriend that sells dope, because nobody will ever believe her, even when all the objective evidence supports her version of events?

At this point it looks like ace-District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is going to drop charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn because he is afraid to put the victim on the witness stand. Frankly it appears that he has lost his nerve.

I discovered, while reading Le Monde, that some of the best coverage of this case is from The Daily Beast

I followed a link in the French newspaper to the following article by Christopher Dickey in the Beast, and I have taken the liberty of putting a few phrases I find significant in bold type:

The prosecutors sought the additional hotel key records on Wednesday, informed defense lawyers about the victim's credibility problems on Thursday, then got the hotel security key logs for the other rooms the next day, one source said. Prosecutors “may have undercut the victim's story before fully checking it out,” the source said.

The logs, according to the source, appear to track the maid's original story. They show the maid entered room 2820 – around the corner from Strauss-Kahn's luxury suite – at around 10:30 a.m., then again at 11 a.m., and then at 11:30 a.m.

She then used her key to enter Strauss-Kahn's room around 12:06 p.m. A room service colleague has told authorities he went into Strauss-Kahn's suite at around noon to pick up dinner trays, saw no sign of Strauss-Kahn and then told the maid the room was empty and OK to be cleaned, sources told the Beast.

Other hotel witnesses said the woman told them she believed the room was empty and was even fearful she might lose her job for walking in on a VIP client, sources have previously said.

The maid alleged the sexual assault occurred between 12:06 p.m., when she entered the room to clean it, and 12:28 p.m., when Strauss-Kahn hurriedly left his room and checked out. Witnesses at the hotel checkout counter told investigators that the normally prim and proper Strauss-Kahn appeared so rushed to leave that he still had toothpaste foam around his mouth, one source said.

The maid has alleged that she managed to flee Strauss-Kahn's room shortly before he left and hid around the corner, right near room 2820 which she had been cleaning earlier, sources said.

A supervisor told prosecutors she found the upset maid near a linen closet outside room 2806, Strauss-Kahn's suite, shortly before 12:30 p.m. and that she took the alleged victim back to Strauss-Kahn's room to calm her and debrief her about the incident, sources have said. Hotel colleagues reported the woman spit on the floor and walls in front of them, and appeared so traumatized that she wanted to vomit.

The hotel key card records that prosecutors belatedly got from the Sofitel on Friday show the maid keyed room 2820, which she had cleaned hours earlier, at 12:26 p.m. and, during the same minute, also keyed room 2806 where Strauss-Kahn had stayed – which would support the assertion that her supervisor took her there, according to a source directly familiar with the evidence. Daily Beast

What more can be said for the moment, except that this is the most sordid political-money-sex case I can ever remember... and all I can say is that I hope that District Attorney Vance will finally man up and let this lady have her day in court. DS