{"id":41027,"date":"2011-07-07T16:38:28","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T20:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=41027"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:50:33","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:50:33","slug":"nobody-knows-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/nobody-knows-her\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobody Knows Her"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had written\u00a0in May\u00a0when the story broke that\u00a0the world would be thrown against\u00a0the Sofitel maid<\/a> who charged Dominique Strauss-Kahn with rape. And it has. On\u00a0June 30, the day before the solar eclipse, the prosecution’s case\u00a0charging\u00a0Strauss-Kahn with sexual assault began to fray\u00a0when the victim’s credibility was found to be questionable.<\/p>\n

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During the course of discovery\u00a0leading\u00a0to the July 1 hearing, prosecution lawyers found she had dabbled in\u00a0welfare fraud and tax evasion,\u00a0was associated with drug dealers, and her immigration status was unverifiable —\u00a0that she may have lied on her petition for asylum to the US.\u00a0She had evaded interviews with the prosecution’s legal investigators for weeks\u00a0and\u00a0had an emotional breakdown during one of\u00a0their few meetings, which led prosecutors to believe her\u00a0rape accusation\u00a0will not hold legal water.<\/p>\n

Adding further to the diminishment of the case,\u00a0the judge decided to release Strauss Kahn from house arrest without bail. This\u00a0completed what amounts to a\u00a0low 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\u00a0to\u00a0seek the dismissal of charges against Strauss-Kahn\u00a0or a plea deal.<\/a> Nothing yet has been been resolved.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0admit it’s hard for me —\u00a0a woman of color and a child of new immigrants —\u00a0to be objective\u00a0about the accuser, an immigrant.\u00a0If you’re lucky, you keep your head down and work your ass off for many years, and stay out of trouble\u00a0until you’re settled in. But right now, this woman\u00a0is vulnerable to the whims of the street as well as\u00a0the halls of power.\u00a0Like 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 \u2018untouchable\u2019 in America’s class system, fucking her long before she was raped.<\/p>\n

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The facts on the maid’s dubious credibility as reported to us last Friday came as no surprise to\u00a0American women.\u00a0Depending on the state you’re in, we have\u00a0a\u00a0legal system that reminds you that you should\u00a0know better than to complain about a man’s abuse, let alone rape. Reading the Times on Friday, all you could do was shake your head and let the lack<\/em> of shock register. It was a story so neat you didn’t need to write it, you’ve read it all before.<\/p>\n

Entering the US as a political refugee, Strauss-Kahn’s accuser probably knows how rigged a game the US immigration system\u00a0is<\/a> better than most of us, doing and saying anything you can to get out of\u00a0Guinea and over here.\u00a0Vulnerable and exploitable like most new\u00a0immigrants are in this country,\u00a0this could\u00a0explain her erratic behavior towards\u00a0court authorities and investigators; people whose job it is to get her the justice she deserves aren’t usually on\u00a0her side.\u00a0This is just my conjecture, but as for her shadier connections — the drug money from the sales of pot deposited\u00a0to accounts in her name, the lying to the city’s social services about the number of dependents — these are the petty crimes of\u00a0the poor\u00a0that say more about her\u00a0being in over her head than being a criminal. I would imagine\u00a0this woman\u00a0is more than likely living in\u00a0fear of everything surrounding her right now — facing her day\u00a0in court, the press, the international notoriety.\u00a0Include in that mix\u00a0the circumstances of\u00a0how most dark-skinned new immigrants are\u00a0treated here, let alone being black in America. If she wasn’t feeling fear, I would check for her pulse.<\/p>\n

I’ve read a young French female author,\u00a0Tristane Banon,\u00a0is finally pressing charges of attempted rape by Strauss-Kahn during an interview she had with him eight years ago. Because French law allows the accuser up to 10 years to press charges, her case will be pleaded within France’s court system. A young African woman from Guinea, a woman with no name, pressed charges against Strauss-Kahn in a matter of hours,\u00a0and in America she will be guilty until proven innocent.<\/p>\n

This is not about judging Mr. Strauss-Kahn before his trial. There is a judge and jury who will decide the merits of this case.\u00a0No one knows outside of the two involved what happened in that hotel room. The actual trial has not begun, but there is a history in this country of economic,\u00a0sexual, class\u00a0and race\u00a0presumption that\u00a0tarnishes the entire\u00a0situation and should be put on trial as much as the accused and the accuser are now.\u00a0If there\u00a0was a play\u00a0written\u00a0that would tell the\u00a0tale of\u00a0what it is\u00a0to be in over your head,\u00a0the\u00a0story of the Sofitel maid — a woman who nobody has seen, nobody knows, and whose accusation against a man of great power and prestige may have changed the future of\u00a0an entire\u00a0continent —\u00a0could be the\u00a0beginning of\u00a0an epic\u00a0story. Perhaps ironically,\u00a0a Greek myth.<\/p>\n

Then again, that’s another tale waiting to be told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had written\u00a0in May\u00a0when the story broke that\u00a0the world would be thrown against\u00a0the Sofitel maid who charged Dominique Strauss-Kahn with rape. And it has. On\u00a0June 30, the day before the solar eclipse, the prosecution’s case\u00a0charging\u00a0Strauss-Kahn with sexual assault began to fray\u00a0when the victim’s credibility was found to be questionable. During the course of discovery\u00a0leading\u00a0to the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}