I had written in May when the story broke that the world would be thrown against the Sofitel maid who charged Dominique Strauss-Kahn with rape. And it has. On June 30, the day before the solar eclipse, the prosecution’s case charging Strauss-Kahn with sexual assault began to fray when the victim’s credibility was found to be questionable.
During the course of discovery leading to the July 1 hearing, prosecution lawyers found she had dabbled in welfare fraud and tax evasion, was associated with drug dealers, and her immigration status was unverifiable — that she may have lied on her petition for asylum to the US. She had evaded interviews with the prosecution’s legal investigators for weeks and had an emotional breakdown during one of their few meetings, which led prosecutors to believe her rape accusation will not hold legal water.
Adding further to the diminishment of the case, the judge decided to release Strauss Kahn from house arrest without bail. This completed what amounts to a low and double body blow to the prosecution and office of New York’s District Attorney, Cyrus Vance. As an additional insult to the prosecution, Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman met yesterday to seek the dismissal of charges against Strauss-Kahn or a plea deal. Nothing yet has been been resolved.
I admit it’s hard for me — a woman of color and a child of new immigrants — to be objective about the accuser, an immigrant. If you’re lucky, you keep your head down and work your ass off for many years, and stay out of trouble until you’re settled in. But right now, this woman is vulnerable to the whims of the street as well as the halls of power. Like so many others who live in this country with residency status uncertain, she’s already easily exploitable and prey to the standard canon of epithets in American demonization: Welfare cheat. Drug dealer. Illegal immigrant. This trifecta defines perfectly the present-day ‘untouchable’ in America’s class system, fucking her long before she was raped.