Strauss-kahn cleared of gang-rape charges
PARIS — Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund director whose promising political career in France was immolated by sex scandals, was cleared Tuesday of charges that he participated in the gang rape of a prostitute in a Washington hotel.
The decision, announced by a French prosecutor in the northern city of Lille, constituted rare good news for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 63, who had been considered a leading candidate to become president of France until he fell into disgrace after being arrested in New York in May 2011 on an accusation that he sexually assaulted a Manhattan hotel housekeeper.
The New York charges were dropped when prosecutors there discovered that his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, had lied concerning other subjects. But she followed up with a multimillion-dollar civil suit, filed last year in the Bronx. As part of the maneuvering, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s legal team filed a $1 million countersuit, alleging damage to his reputation based on false charges.
Since the spectacular New York arrest, Mr. StraussKahn has been ostracized from French politics, reduced to giving economics lectures in foreign cities. His wife, a former television personality, has expelled him from their spacious apartment in a stylish Paris square, and he has been accused — in court and in sulfurous dinnerparty gossip — of long leading a double life as a sexual predator.
Despite the dismissal of gang-rape charges, Mr. Strauss-Kahn still faces charges in Lille of participating in the procurement of prostitutes, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. His lawyers have attacked the charges on procedural grounds, and the prosecutor has scheduled a decision Nov. 28 on their objections.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn has not denied that he took part in sex parties in Lille, Washington and Paris. But he has maintained that he did not know the women involved were prostitutes, saying he believed that they had traveled to various cities and made themselves available because they found it enjoyable.
The gang-rape charges grew from accusations by one of the prostitutes who traveled to Washington. She told police that she was held by her feet and hands while Mr. Strauss-Kahn sodomized her in a room at Washington’s W Hotel. Her cries to stop went unheeded, police said she told them.
But the prosecutor’s office, in its announcement, said she did not lodge a formal complaint during her interrogation and later sent a letter to the prosecutor saying she had consented to paid sex with Mr. Strauss-Kahn and did not intend to make a legal complaint against him. As a result, the prosecutor’s office said, the charges were dropped because, without a complaint, “the crime of rape was not constituted.”
Mr. Strauss-Kahn had no immediate reaction. But Henri Leclerc, one of his Paris lawyers, said in a statement that he expected all along that the gang-rape charges would be dropped.