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Anorak News | Media Plays Baseball Outside Dominique Strauss-Khan’s House In New York As It Waits To Feed Off The Maid

Media Plays Baseball Outside Dominique Strauss-Khan’s House In New York As It Waits To Feed Off The Maid

by | 3rd, July 2011

OUTSIDE Dominique Strauss-Khan house in New York, journalists are playing baseball. It’s game. It’s all a game. It’s just news – the dirtier, more salacious it is, the better we love it. Had only Strauss-Kahn been accused of attempting of raping someone as famous as, say, the Dali Lama, Pippa Middleton or Michelle Obama’s dog. We’d have lapped it up. So long as some high and mighty sort is being undone, we’ll take it. Tony Blair is caught in bed with Sarah Ferguson, you say? Nice one. The Pope fathered a child by Mother Teresa? Brilliant!

With Strauss-Kahn, we were keen to believe that a man able enough to rise to the top of the International Monetary Fund is a bad man. The legal eagles in the US believed the word of a local maid. The poor, black woman was clearly of more noble stock than the rich, French Jew. Strauss-Kahn was made to do the perp walk, a parade of the charged men before the press and the people. The woman remains anonymous. Can that be fair?

We might be loath to talk in terms of winners and losers in this case, but to the naked eye, Kahn is losing. We know his name.

John Solomon looks at the latest reports that the alleged victim might “have been a gold-digger – even a prostitute – who staged the encounter“. We learn:

She also admitted that her application for asylum had included embellished and false information, recanting a story she had told investigators about how she had been raped in Guinea years ago.

There is no evidence that she is a prostitute. But like Kahn, we are being invited to play armchair detective. We can show off our own prejudices and intelligence by making a case for guilt or innocent.

A source tells us:

“Her story was corroborated by witnesses in the hotel, electronic evidence, and forensic evidence… There is still overwhelming evidence of a sexual encounter but, with the changes in her story, it has become more of a he-said-she-said.”

There was a sexual encounter. He says it was consensual. She says it was rape. The New York Sofitel hotel where she works and Strauss-Kahn was staying provides some evidence:

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.

Does this suggest a pre-meditated plot? She thought the room was empty.

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.

One source says it. That’ll do. His mouth is smeared in white paste. He’s accused of oral rape. Make a joke. Tick some mental boxes.

We learn more:

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.

“She didn’t have time to clean 2820 again. The key cards show her supervisor took her to Strauss-Kahn’s room almost immediately. And it would not have made sense to clean 2820 again, she had done it earlier between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., which would suggest she simply got confused.”

This story – and what story – tells us that after the alleged oral rape, she spat the semen all over the room. Why? Well, the DNA is not hard to harvest. Did she enter the room after the alleged rape and before police arrived? This story said she did.

What else?

And investigators in the prosecutor’s office also began following a financial trail that linked the woman to suspected criminal elements in the drug world. They found several phones in the woman’s name that she hadn’t told them about as well as tens of thousands of dollars in suspicious deposits into her banking accounts, one source said.
The investigators began checking calls on those other phones, and eventually found that the woman, the day after the alleged attack, had made a call to a detention center in Arizona where one of her male acquaintances was being held on drug charges, according to the sources.

Because most inmate calls are normally recorded, the investigators sought and found a prison recording of the call. When they got it, the recording was in the woman’s native Guinean language of Fulani so a translator was summoned, a source said.

Go on:

A rough translation arrived on Wednesday and it included a section in which the woman hinted at a financial motive, suggesting Strauss-Kahn was wealthy and telling her incarcerated friend – who she was possibly involved with romantically – that she knew what she was doing. By that time, she had already hired a private attorney, the sources said. The woman hired one attorney almost immediately, and then switched to a second lawyer shortly thereafter. Some of the evidence that led prosecutors to their concerns actually originated with the maid’s second attorney, the sources said.

We heard how she was allegedly roughly handled and may need surgery to a damaged shoulder. Cynics may see dollar signs. Others may just see what she is entitled to.

Meanwhile, we wait to hear her name and see her face. But before we do we will form an opinion of her. When this maid emerges, only a maniac would envy her. The media feeding frenzy will be voracious.

The rest of us just up a chair and wait to see what happens next..?

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Dominique Strauss- Kahn leaves New York State Supreme court with his wife Anne Sinclair, Friday, July 1, 2011, in New York. A judge has agreed to free former International Monetary Fund leader Strauss-Kahn without bail or home confinement in the sexual assault case against him. The criminal case against him stands. (AP Photo/David Karp)

Spotter: Cheryl



Posted: 3rd, July 2011 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink