Former IMF chief Strauss-Kahn cleared of pimping charges

Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was among more than a dozen defendants, including hotel managers, entrepreneurs, a lawyer, and a police chief, accused of participating in or organizing collective sexual encounters in Paris, Washington, and in the Brussels region.

|
Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn enters his car as he leaves his apartment in Paris, June 12, 2015 before he traveled to Lille to learn the verdict in the trial called the Carlton Affair where 14 people including Strauss-Kahn stood accused of sex offenses including the alleged procuring of prostitutes. A French court on Friday acquitted the former International Monetary Fund chief of charges that he instigated sex parties with prostitutes.

Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was cleared of pimping charges on Friday in France, putting an end to four years of legal drama that began with a sexual assault charge in a New York hotel room.

The trial hinged on sex parties that took place in the midst of the global financial crisis — events Strauss-Kahn described as much-needed "recreational sessions" at a time of intense pressure to steer the world through economic peril. He said he did not know the women who took part were prostitutes.

"All that for this?" Strauss-Kahn said as he rose to leave the courtroom with his girlfriend and adult daughter. "What a waste."

In often sordid testimony, the women involved in the sex parties described sometimes-brutal nights that, they said, were not fun for them at all.

The panel of judges ruled that Strauss-Kahn, a one-time French presidential hopeful whose political career was tarnished by the allegations, was not involved in hiring the women or paying them.

Prostitution is currently legal in France, but prostitutes are often arrested and charged for soliciting in public. Brothels, pimping and the sale of sex by minors is illegal.

The verdict was the last step in four years of legal drama for Strauss-Kahn that began when a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault in 2011, killing his ambitions to be French president. That case was later settled out of court.

The New York allegations shook France — both because it lost a leading presidential contender and because it splashed allegations about a French public figure's private life onto media worldwide.

It prompted expectations among many women in France that the country would start holding male politicians accountable for infidelity or other sexual misconduct that had long been ignored.

The maid's accusations prompted some French women to go public with accusations of harassment or other sexual mistreatment by Strauss-Kahn in the past, including a writer who tried to sue him for attempted rape but whose case was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired.

In the four years since, however, French attitudes have stayed generally unchanged. The media and public largely shrugged when President Francois Hollande was photographed in 2013 by a gossip magazine taking a scooter to visit his lover, unbeknown to his first lady.

Strauss-Kahn was among more than a dozen defendants, including hotel managers, entrepreneurs, a lawyer, and a police chief. They were accused of participating in or organizing the collective sexual encounters in Paris, Washington and in the Brussels region in 2008-2011, when Strauss-Kahn was IMF chief and married. Only one, a hotel manager, was convicted in the pimping case.

During the three-week trial in February, the man known in France as DSK never wavered in his insistence that he did not know that the young women at the parties were prostitutes. He said he thought they were simply "libertine."

The sometimes tearful testimony of two prostitutes cast a harsh light on Strauss-Kahn's sexual practices. But they testified that they had never told him directly about their professions.

Other defendants described how they had voluntarily erected a wall of silence around their powerful friend to protect him from embarrassment.

Even the prosecutor, unusually, asked for Strauss-Kahn's acquittal, saying the trial did not back up the charge of aggravated pimping, which requires proof that he promoted or profited from prostitution. However, the prosecutor asked for conviction of the co-defendants who admitted having organized the evenings and paid the girls.

___

Angela Charlton and Lori Hinnant contributed from Paris.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Former IMF chief Strauss-Kahn cleared of pimping charges
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0612/Former-IMF-chief-Strauss-Kahn-cleared-of-pimping-charges
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe