By now we all know about former IMF head and leading French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault of a New York hotel maid. Predictably, DSK's defense team has begun to dig up information about the maid's past that is designed to call her credibility (and, transitively, the credibility of her accusation) into question. In this disheartening article in the NYTimes, which details the apparent 'collapse' of the prosecution's case against DSK, the maid and alleged victim of sexual assault is accused of having a drug-dealer boyfriend, being connected with charges of money laundering and drug dealing, and discussing with a criminal the potential remunerative benefits of pursuing a case against DSK the day after the incident between DSK and the maid took place (that a sexual encounter took place between the two is not in dispute; the nature of that encounter is). Among other things, these bits of information would, indeed, seem to endanger the maid's case against her alleged assailant, striking at the heart of her credibility.
Well, actually, not really.
The fact is, this case is about more than the conventional problem of he said/she said in cases of rape and sexual assault. This case is a prime example of one of the most prevalent and under-acknowledged injustices in the US and similarly developed countries: the widespread exploitation, sexual and otherwise, of female asylum seekers, illegal or conditional immigrants, etc. And the under-acknowledgement of this problem is so systematically ingrained that what would be its starkest manifestation in the internationally prominent DSK case--the fact that the accuser is a documented Guinean asylum-seeker in the US--has been used by DSK's defense team, and not the prosecution, to damage the maid's credibility. The NYTimes' coverage of this aspect of the story plays right into the hands of DSK's defense, treating information about the maid's asylum application as a blow to her credibility (in light of inconsistencies between the text of her application and subsequent comments she made to police after the DSK affair about her asylum bid). Instead, both the prosecution and the media need to acknowledge the very real circumstances of disenfranchisement faced by female asylum seekers and trafficked and illegal immigrants.
We know that DSK's accuser may have lied about some of the details of her past and her asylum bid to authorities, may affiliate with a drug dealer, and may have actually tried to benefit financially from her accusation against DSK.
We also know, however, that many women seeking asylum, a better life, etc. in countries like the US come from places where police and other authorities are corrupt and untrustworthy. Many women facing harsh circumstances in their former countries, many of them places where women are systematically raped, tortured, sold, enslaved, disenfranchised, etc., will lie and withhold information in order to avoid being deported back to harsh circumstances.
Likewise, many such women have dark pasts and drug-dealer boyfriends, and will have latched onto powerful and exploitative figures thinking it a means to get out or get away (as many places in the world are largely controlled by people like drug dealers). Many will have tolerated and endured sexual abuse from the men who traffic them, bring them to the US, keep them, look after them, etc. Many will have been willing to go through hell for the prospect of a new life.
And many women who have been systematically disenfranchised, both home and abroad in the US--women who have had to live and survive by their wiles and sometimes by their bodies--will certainly turn to opportunism when they are exploited by rich and powerful men. Would you blame them?
The point here is that, even if not much or all of this applies directly to DSK's maid (though, from what we do know about her, an asylum seeker, she fits the profile pretty damn well), the kind of behavior that journalists and defense attorneys are calling damaging to the maid's credibility is actually very common and very justifiable behavior for women in like circumstances of disenfranchisement, or existence outside the protection of the law. When such women have their circumstances of poverty and desperation leveraged against them for sex by exploitative men, the lying, equivocation, unsavory liaisons, and even opportunism are all not just predictable, but justifiable pasts and modes of behavior. Rather than treating this reality like a character assessment in a vacuum, we need to consider it within the broader context of the systematic and widespread exploitation and sexual abuse of women in harsh circumstances by predatory men who know that their victims would rather endure abuse in the US than seek legal recourse, risking deportation, imprisonment, further threats and abuse, etc.
And this is something the 'near-collapsing' prosecution needs to take into serious account.
