LE MONDE (France)
LILLE – Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s legal troubles have taken a troubling new turn. The former director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and onetime French presidential hopeful has been cited in a new ‘gang rape” investigation, a prosecutor in the northern French city of Lille announced Monday.
The preliminary investigation concerns events that took place in December 2010 at the Hotel W in Washington D.C., when Strauss-Kahn was still heading the IMF. A woman named Marion who was present at Hotel W claims she was forced to have sexual relations with Strauss-Kahn.
“I kept saying I didn’t want to … I didn’t yell, but I said it clearly … several times, out loud,” she told police, according to a transcript obtained by Le Monde. “I tried to get away … but Dominique Strauss-Kahn held me with his weight.”
She related these events to Lille police in a deposition in an ongoing case in which Strauss-Kahn already faces preliminary charges for “aggravated pimping in an organized gang.” She has not pressed charges.
Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer reacted swiftly to the announcement, telling Le Monde that “Dominique Strauss-Kahn has never had any forced relationship with his partners and has never, under any circumstance, acted violently.”
Witnesses have given contradictory accounts of the events. The woman says another man helped Strauss-Kahn pin her down, but both denied it. A friend of Marion’s who was also present told police she “did not hear her say no” and that “if she had cried out, I would have heard her and I would have intervened.”
Read the full story in French.