-By Warner Todd Huston
In 2011 when French socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn was swept up in accusations that he’d raped a hotel maid in the United States, many on the left immediately came to his aid claiming that he was being framed. But the left’s continued support for him is odd in that, regardless of the facts of that particular incident, Strauss-Kahn has a very long, well-known history of accusations that he has indulged violent sexual acts of a non-consensual nature–something upon which the left usually frowns.
Strauss-Kahn is again in the news for yet another sexual imbroglio, this time being charged with aiding and abetting prostitution; or as it is being reported, “aggravated pimping,” a crime in France.
Prostitution itself is not illegal in France, but arranging for prostitutes to service others and paying them to do so (i.e. “pimping”) does happen to be a crime. Strauss-Kahn is being accused of attending multiple parties over the last few years where prostitutes were arranged for and supplied to him and others. The full charge is “proxénétisme aggravé en bande organisée” or “aggravated procuring in organized group.”
Strauss-Kahn’s excuse is novel. He’s saying that it is hard to tell a naked woman from a naked prostitute, so he shouldn’t be held accountable. Of course, one wonders how he imagined that, if they weren’t prostitutes, why so many nubile, young girls were hanging out in hotels with his group of old, overweight, white friends and offering sex to them.
Some of the prostitutes in this new set of accusations claim that Strauss-Kahn was often “rough” or violent with them while having sex. But this accusation leveled against him is nothing new at all. In fact, for over a decade it has been a common feature to the many accusations of sexual misconduct.
Yet, even after a raft of women have come forward to accuse him of abusing them, the left has never turned against him as one might expect.
Strauss-Kahn had a very promising future in 2011. Being the leading socialist in France, it was widely expected that he had a lock on the Presidency for the then upcoming 2012 election cycle. But allegations that he attacked Nafissatou Diallo, a maid in the hotel Sofitel in Manhattan, derailed his political career. The hotel is popular with French diplomats and is rumored to being “easy on its customers’ mores.”
Things got so hot for Strauss-Kahn after authorities in New York arrested him for the assault that he even resigned from his position as head of the International Monetary Fund.
Eventually all charges that he attacked Diallo were dropped due to the lack of proof that the sexual encounter between the two was forced upon Diallo as she claimed it was–though there didn’t seem to be any doubt that a sexual encounter took place.
Still, if the mounting accusations are to be believed, Strauss-Kahn seems to have a long history of treating women like objects. In fact, these newest revelations show that he referred to women as “luggage” and “equipment” in text messages sent both to friends and the alleged pimps with whom he is accused of planning a string of obscene sex parties that spanned several countries.
This sort of objectification of women is exactly the sort of dismissive treatment that the left usually decries.
But it is of a piece with Strauss-Kahn’s history with women.
At least since 2007, Strauss-Kahn has been apologizing for sexual conduct. It was in 2007 that he apologized for having an affair with Piroska Nagy, a married junior colleague. Nagy reported that she had an affair with Strauss-Kahn but felt coerced because of his position of power over her.
Also in 2007, Aurelie Filipetti, a respected French Socialist MP, said Strauss-Kahn groped her and said from then on she made sure she was never alone in a room with him.
During the 2011 incident in New York several women came out to level their own accusations against Strauss-Kahn. One was a French journalist named Tristane Banon.
Banon told the media that in 2002, when she was 22-years-old, Strauss-Kahn attacked her in Paris. Banon is the God Daughter of Strauss-Kahn’s second wife Brigitte Guillemette.
“I kicked him, I called him a rapist, he didn’t seem to care,” Banon told the French media. She also described Strauss-Kahn as acting like a “rutting chimpanzee.”
Interestingly, Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, also claimed to have had an affair with Strauss-Kahn three years before he accosted her daughter.
Mansouret described her encounter with Strauss-Kahn in very unflattering terms.
Mansouret said her sexual tryst with Strauss-Kahn was consensual, but had turned “clearly brutal.” She said he acted like an “obscene” soldier and described him as a sexual predator. It was then said that the Frenchman’s “Sexual lust makes him want to dominate” women.
The 2011 incident at the hotel Sofitel isn’t the only time Strauss-Kahn was accused of misconduct in America. In 2012 another investigation was launched to look into allegations that in 2010 Strauss-Kahn was involved in a “gang rape” of a prostitute at the W hotel in Washington D.C. This allegation seems to be part of the current charges.
One of the prostitutes, a Belgian woman flown into the US for the sex party, claimed that Strauss-Kahn was violent with her and engaged in nonconsensual sex after she told him to stop and leave her alone.
There was also an American prostitute that accused Strauss-Kahn of being rough with her while engaged in sex back in 2006.
In a similar incident as the one at the hotel Sofitel, in 2010 Strauss-Kahn was accused of attacking a maid in a hotel in Mexico.
It al amounts to a lot of smoke making one wonder if there is fire present. And all this is an awful long list of accusations to support a rote charge of a “conspiracy” against Strauss-Kahn, but he has his supporters nonetheless. Half this number of accusations of sexual misconduct, and violent sex at that, would be enough to destroy the life and reputation of anyone right of center. But Strauss-Kahn has many supporters and despite all this evidence of his sexual predations he has never been disowned by the left on either side of the Atlantic.
In 2011 when authorities in New York dismissed the case against Strauss-Kahn for raping Diallo, his supporters in the French socialist Party were exultant. They also supported him all through the case.
Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sinclair, and several of the Frenchman’s ex-wives also rushed out to declare him innocent of such charges.
In an interesting side note, Anne Sinclair, Strauss-Kahn’s current wife, recently revived her journalism career becoming the head journalist for the Huffington Post’s French language daily.
His supporters in France have given up the ghost on the idea that Strauss-Kahn will be their political savior, granted, but there has never been any full-fledged disowning of the man. Disappointment, yes, but never condemnation even after so many women have come forward to reveal his boorish, sexist, and even violent behavior against women.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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