Strauss-Kahn Accuser Files Libel Suit Against NY Post over ‘Hooker’ Claim
The hotel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault has filed a libel lawsuit against the New York Post over its claim that she was a prostitute.
The newspaper headline was “Maid cleaning up as ‘hooker,’ ” report CNN and the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.). The Post story said the maid was “doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests” at the Sofitel hotel where she worked.
Prosecutors and police have said they found no evidence that the woman engaged in prostitution while employed at the Sofitel, the Wall Street Journal says. The Post says it stands by its story.
The case against Strauss-Kahn, the former chief of the International Monetary Fund, began to disintegrate after prosecutors confessed doubts about the maid’s credibility. The woman reportedly told her imprisoned boyfriend in a recorded phone conversation about the benefits of pursuing charges. Questions were also raised about differences between the woman’s statements to police and her asylum application. The woman had lived in Guinea before moving to New York
Meanwhile Yale assistant professor Mike McGovern, who is writing a book on Guinea, warns against a rush to judge Strauss-Kahn’s accuser. About 70 percent of the people in Guinea live on less than $1.25 a day, and state security forces have raped and massacred demonstrators, McGovern writes in a New York Times op-ed. “People fleeing state-sponsored violence and extreme poverty will do anything to leave,” McGovern says, including embellishing or lying on asylum applications.
