Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2011, on the day after Strauss-Kahn’s French TV interview about the New York case. The criminal charges had been dropped in August 2011, and the hotel maid’s civil suit was settled in 2012.
Strauss-Kahn has publicly admitted that he had sexual relations with the hotel maid. He says they were consensual and never forced, and that he is therefore guilty of betraying his wife, but nothing more. We will now see that, whether Strauss-Kahn is guilty or innocent, the problem isn’t what he did, because both verdicts lead us down the same road: we live in a world full of corruption.
As soon as the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest broke, we gave our opinion on the matter, leaning rather towards his innocence, because there were several coincidences. Frankly, I’m not someone who believes in coincidences, especially knowing that in the United States anyone who is about to uncover something “fraudulent”, or to propose something that goes against the interests of governments, tends to be accused of rape. We gave our view in Strauss-Kahn: coincidence or conspiracy?.
Let’s imagine that Strauss-Kahn is guilty.
In that case, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a poor working woman who was assaulted, degraded and raped by a public figure, a powerful man. A brave woman who dared to report what happened, even knowing that her own community would reject her.
This woman fought against power. Her past was investigated, and she was humiliated in a trial where an expensive lawyer, with his tricks and strong contacts in the CIA, managed to strip her of all credibility.
If Strauss-Kahn is guilty, it has been shown that justice can be bought with money and that powerful people are untouchable in the United States. We would know for certain that justice is corrupt, because it doesn’t deliver justice for the victim but protects the guilty party, if the guilty party has power.
Let’s imagine that Strauss-Kahn is innocent.
In that case, it would be fully proven what a government is capable of doing in politics to hold on to the presidency, or what the European Union is capable of doing when it knows that certain proposals by Strauss-Kahn could harm the interests of the eurozone.
Or, far worse, what the United States is capable of doing when someone is about to raise doubts about the dollar as the international currency.
In this scenario, the maid would have been hired by other, far more powerful people to set a trap for the head of the IMF, removing him from the opposition, from the presidential race and from his post at the International Monetary Fund.
So Strauss-Kahn, guilty or innocent, reflects the kind of society we live in: a society where money and power always get their way, and can bring anyone down whenever they see fit.
Welcome to harsh reality!
Featured image: International Monetary Fund (photographer uncredited), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}