Former IMF chief found not guilty
Judges acquit Strauss-Kahn of sexual wrongdoing.
He admits to being a sexual libertine, but judges find no grounds to convict him.
— Dominique Strauss-Kahn had a caustic reaction as four years of legal battles involving sex charges on two continents ended without a single conviction: “All that for this?”
From a sordid New York hotel encounter to orgies in Paris, the former International Monetary Fund chief has admitted to questionable behavior that destroyed his political career and onetime presidential ambitions in France. He’s a sexual libertine, by his own admission. But courts have repeatedly found no grounds to convict him as a criminal.
Friday’s ruling in the northern French city of Lille closed a sometimes surreal chapter for Strauss-Kahn and for France, where the unusual public airing of his private life sent shock waves through society and upended high-level politics. Some Frenchwomen hoped the DSK scandal, as it became known, would make it easier to hold powerful men accountable for sexual wrongdoing — a hope largely unfulfilled.
In a packed courtroom Friday, a panel of judges acquitted all but one of the 13 defendants of accusations of involvement in a prostitution ring. Strauss-Kahn faced charges of “aggravated pimping,” but the judges said he was not involved in hiring the prostitutes involved or paying them.
That’s what StraussKahn said all along: “All that for this?” he scoffed as he rose to leave the courtroom with his girlfriend and adult daughter. “What a waste.”
The 66-year-old economist freely, even proudly, admitted during the February trial that he took part in sex parties from 2008-2011, while he was heading the IMF and married — events he called much-needed “recreational sessions” at a time of intense pressure to steer the world through economic peril.
Two prostitutes, in searing testimony, described sometimes humiliating experiences and “beast-like” behavior by Strauss-Kahn.
The trial confirmed a sense among many French people that Strauss-Kahn was no average philandering politician, and had crossed the standard limits of decency.
Yet as presiding judge Bernard Lemaire said at the opening of the trial: “The court is not the guardian of moral order, but of the law.”
The prostitutes acknowledged they never told Strauss-Kahn they were paid, and other defendants described their voluntary efforts to protect their powerful friend from embarrassment.