wow
time mag today:
Strauss-Kahn's Womanizing: Why France Was Silent About It - TIME
When news of the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn broke in France, Emmanuel Pierrat remembered the young woman who came seeking legal advice about half a decade ago. She said she had had an encounter with Strauss-Kahn and, says the lawyer Pierrat, "wanted to know whether I thought what I heard would form the basis for a solid legal case against him." Pierrat says the news out of New York City last weekend was "something I had heard before" because of what the young woman several years ago had described as "the modus operandi of the attacker, [whom] she said was Strauss-Kahn." Says Pierrat: [It] "was almost identical to the details [described by] the woman [who said she was] attacked Sunday in New York."
"In addition to my client," says Pierrat, "I also have a personal friend who came to me and described an unwanted, forceful sexual advance by Strauss-Kahn that she was forced to literally fight off. They're all essentially the same account, the same kind of behavior, with only the places changed."
Even the well connected had qualms about confronting Strauss-Kahn. A regional Socialist Party official stepped up on Monday to say that her daughter had come under sexual attack during a 2002 interview with Strauss-Kahn. She told French TV that she had dissuaded her daughter from filing charges because Strauss-Kahn was en route to greatness — and derailing the ascent of a fellow Socialist Party official would be bad form. She also said that because Strauss-Kahn's second wife was Banon's godmother, blowing the whistle on the alleged attacker would create rifts within Mansouret's circle of family, friends and intimates.
A Paris attorney who specializes in defending victims of sexual violence, who didn't want to be named, says he has "an entire pile of complaints" from women who say they were attacked by Strauss-Kahn. Like Pierrat, he says last weekend's news evoked déjà vu. And like Pierrat, he says he has a consistency of accusations against Strauss-Kahn.
No sexual-assault charges, however, were ever filed in France against Strauss-Kahn, who faces what may be a long legal procedure before a U.S. court can determine whether he is guilty or innocent of the New York City allegations. In 2008, after Strauss-Kahn was reprimanded for his relationship with an IMF subordinate, the economist Piroska Nagy, for which he apologized, a few more people in France were willing to talk openly of his reputation — but only in a bantering, almost jokey way. Socialist parliamentarian Aurelie Filipetti admitted to a newspaper to having suffered a "very heavy-handed flirt" by Strauss-Kahn — one so unpleasant and insistent that "I made sure I was not in a closed room with him" ever again. On a radio show, one French actress asked out loud, "Who hasn't been cornered by Dominique Strauss-Kahn?"
time continues:
"everyone has heard the rumors, you'd have to be deaf not to have heard them," says socialist party member boutih
a "french american pr exec" notes many tell dks stories "approvingly"
"is he the man or what?!"
"three women, same story, same detail"
"the french gender double standard"
"the cult of what the french call the 'seducteur,'"
"it's not just that the word of a woman doesn't necessarily have the same weight as that of a man, it's that there's still this enduring attitude that seduction, conquests, affairs and flings by men is somehow ok, even sort of admirable"
"while women who complain are either making it up or just having buyer's regret"
"dsk may have been abetted by the fact that most of his so-called conquests involved ideological fellow travelers"
they're "all" either socialist party members, supporters or involved in wider leftist causes
they would "either be compliant or keep quiet"
in france, there's also race and class to consider, reports time
"her station in society would probably prevent authorities in france from taking her accusations seriously"
"the pattern of french political behavior in which class, rank and gender trump all"
the french media, according to henry luce's finest production, "never published or mentioned" mitterand's daughter out of wedlock until his funeral
"keep your mouth shut and paper clear of it until I'm ready to inform the public, if you know what's good for you"
i can't emphasize enough that this is TIME MAG talkin, i've never been to france
